Miscellaneous - John Clarkson

  by Dave Goodwin

published: 31 / 7 / 2013

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Article

Hello, and welcome to the first edition of 'Vinyl Stories', and what a way to start it too. Vinyl Stories is a chance to dive into people's vinyl collection whether it be albums, 12" singles or the good old 7". It may be a chance to polish some of those 10" 78s too as long as it is vinyl and to find out about why they bought them, when, who for, where from and so on. A life story in vinyl if you like. This year is Pennyblackmusic's fifteenth anniversary. So to kick off the column, I couldn't think of anyone finer to nail down to the floorboards and rummage through their collection with than our own gaffer. Born in November 1965, John Clarkson was educated in Edinburgh, but spent three years at Loughborough University of Technology (as it was then) between 1983 and 1986. He returned to Edinburgh in 1986, and has worked there for the last twenty-seven years. John has been editing the Pennyblackmusic Magazine since the site first went online in September 1998. Over the years, John has built himself a great collection of the beloved black wax, and has picked out six albums from it that have clearly featured in his life so far. John's favourite Vinyl Stories start here. 1. Stranglers/'Rattus Norvegicus' (1977) ‘Rattus Norvegicus’ was one of the first albums that I ever bought. I can remember exactly when and where. I was thirteen. It was June 1979, and the last day of school before the summer holidays. While it was just the Stranglers’ debut, tracks such as ‘Sometimes’, ‘Hanging Around, ‘Peaches’ and ‘(Get a) Grip (on Yourself)’ thirty-five years on are timeless, and amongst the best of Hugh Cornwell’s tenure with the band. I bought 'Rattus Norvegicus' in Ezy Ryder, which was a vast second hand record store in Forrest Road in Greyfriars Market in Edinburgh. It shared premises with a clothing retailer, and so you could buy jeans and shirts from one side of the market and then from the other side records from the record exchange, which ran all the way along the back and the sides of the store. It closed down in 1984 when I was away in Loughborough at university. I came back home after a term away, and it was gone and had already been converted into a wine bar. Like a lot of Edinburgh teenagers of the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was a very big part of my early musical education and even now all these years on I still wish it was there. The person who had owned the record before me was a girl called Cathy, and she lived at Pipe Street in the Portobello district of Edinburgh. I know this because she had written her name and address on the top left hand corner of the back sleeve of the album, just above the track listing and the silhouette of the rat. My girlfriend now lives just a few streets away from Pipe Street, which is situated just off the High Street in Portobello. I never met Cathy, but felt some kind of bond with her as an adolescent because we had both owned the same record. Often when I am walking along Portobello High Street past Pipe Street, I think of Cathy and wonder where she is now and if she ever regretted selling on that record. 2. David Bowie/‘The Best of Bowie’ (1980) David Bowie left a huge impression on me as a thirteen and fourteen year old. The singles ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ and ‘Ashes to Ashes’ and the videos that accompanied them – Bowie in drag slashing off his lipstick in one; in a Pierrot clown’s costume and on that strange psychedelic beach in the other – pointed out for me the first time the endless possibilities of pop music. I made money for myself in the early eighties by babysitting the neighbours’ kids. I would charge £3 before midnight, £4 afterwards, and then spend the money on records and books. During the course of 1982 and when I was sixteen I bought nearly all of Bowie’s records from Phoenix Records, another thirty-years-gone record shop on the Royal Mile. It billed itself as “cheap and nasty” on its bags, and those David Bowie albums cost £2.99 each, just enough from a babysitting session. I could highlight any of those records here – ‘Ziggy Stardust’, ‘Diamond Dogs’, ‘Aladdin Sane’, ‘Low’, Heroes’. They were all important to me, but it was ‘The Best of Bowie’, a sixteen track 1980 compilation of his RCA years which featured songs from all of those albums and most of his singles, which was the first Bowie album that I bought. From there, I closed in... 3. Friends Again/'Trapped and Unwrapped' (1984) Friends Again were an indie pop group from Glasgow, which released one album ‘Trapped and Unwrapped’ in 1984. I saw them in the Student Union at Loughborough University in June of that year, playing support to the Bluebells on a tour. I can remember James Grant, one of their two front men, telling the audience that he felt depressed that night. I also remember a tiny blonde girl asking if she could squeeze past my brother who was down that weekend into the front row so that she could see them properly, and then her singing along to every word. Beyond that I have got no real memories of them other than that they left me slightly cold. ‘Trapped and Unwrapped’ didn’t sell well, and they split up a few weeks after that gig when Grant frustrated at the direction in which they were going left the group. It was only over two years after that in July 1986 that I became interested in Friends Again when back in Edinburgh and with university over I saw Grant’s next band, the then funk-influenced Love and Money, play a gig and thought they were phenomenal. I became and remain a huge fan of Love and Money, and from that Friends Again’s other front man’s Chris Thompson’s next group, the sultry strings-drenched Bathers. I spent the next three years looking for ‘Trapped and Unwrapped’. While I found an EP ‘Lullaby Love No. 2’ easily enough, and a single ‘Honey at the Core’ in of all places the bargain bin upstairs room of a Toronto record store, ‘Trapped and Unwrapped’ remained in those pre-internet days more elusive. It was only when I was it was reissued as a “lost classic” in 1989 that I finally managed to find a copy on vinyl at the original FOPP store in Cockburn Street in Edinburgh. It is a flawed record. It involved several producers including Bob Sargeant and the band themselves, and it suffers because of it. A lot of it remains a little too upbeat and twee for my tastes, and presumably for that of both James Grant and Chris Thompson as well if one listens to the melancholic turn of path that both Love and Money and the Bathers in their separate ways eventually went down. The second side of ‘Trapped and Unwrapped’ is, however, really strong, and tracks such as the soaring Tom Verlaine-produced ‘Swallows in the Rain’; the country-fused, spiky ‘South of Love’, and the gorgeous love songs and singles ‘State of Art’ and ‘Honey at the Core’ provide a fascinating early account of the talent of both songwriters. 4. The Clash/'London Calling' (1979) I can't remember exactly when I first bought ‘London Calling’, but it wasn’t at the time it was released and would have been at some point in the mid 80s. From what I remember it didn’t leave much impression on me initially, but it was a grower and by the end of the late 80s and in my first years in my flat in Edinburgh I was playing it a lot. At twenty tracks, it is an epic record, but unlike ‘Sandinista!’,its even grander scale successor, there is not a dud song on there, and it shows the very best of Joe Strummer’s lyricism. I bought it on vinyl initially and then updated it to CD. When the extended 25th anniversary edition came out in 2004, I got that too. I still have all three, but it is the vinyl I like best with its blown-up sleeve of Pennie Smith’s photo of Paul Simonon axing his bass down across the floor of The Palladium in New York. It captures for me not just sudden rage, but, in the dying days of the 70s when that photo was taken, a lot of the rage of that era. I had for years a ‘London Calling’ poster in my bathroom, and now have in my hall a frame of Pennie Smith’s photo which I picked up as an impulse buy last year in a memorabilia shop in Glasgow. I usually regret almost immediately impulse purchases, but I am glad that I made this one. It is a fabulous photo. 5. Kepler/ 'Fuck Fight Fail' (2000) One of our early writers, a Canadian girl called Cara Ross, who was with us for about a year or a year and a half, got me into Kepler. Like Cara, Kepler came from Ottawa, and I was so intrigued by what she had to say about them after she wrote a review of ‘Fuck Fight Fail’, their debut, that I ordered the album, which was only available on vinyl in Britain, from the shop that Pennyblackmusic had at the time. With a title like that, you might expect ‘Fuck Fight Fail’ to be some kind of heavy metal or punk album. It is not, but instead a slowcore record of windswept soundscapes and mournfully reflective, brooding vocals from their bassist and front man Samir Khan. We all have our records for different occasions, and ‘Fuck Fight Fail’ is one of mine. I tend to stay up late working on the magazine. I like the early hours, and play ‘Fuck Fight Fail’ a lot then, usually when I am a day or two away from finishing off an edition. It is perfect late night music. I was able to interview Samir Khan in a phone call to Canada one Friday night in late 2005. By then Kepler were reaching the end of the road. He had moved to Toronto. Jeremy Gara, their guitarist, had jumped ship to join Arcade Fire. There were other line-up difficulties, and they had had problems getting out their third album ‘Attic Salt’, which in contrast to ‘Fuck Fight Fail’ and its 2002 also slowcore sequel ‘Missionless Days’ had a country blues sound. It had been delayed after their record label had dithered over whether or not they were going to release it for eighteen months before finally doing so. Kepler broke up a few weeks after I made that call. I was glad that I able to tell him what ‘Fuck Fight Fail’ meant to me. 6. The Distractions/'The End of the Pier' (2012) The story of the Distractions – this English new wave band who got back together to record a second LP thirty-two years after their first despite one of their principal members living in New Zealand – is remarkable in itself. It was our writer Malcolm Carter who introduced them to me, and he has since then done a lot to promote them on the site with two interviews and various reviews. Their label Occultation Recordings is run by Nick Halliwell, a long-term fan, who ended up becoming both their producer and one of their guitarists. Occultation Recordings have done a CD edition of ‘The End of the Pier’, but the vinyl edition is the one to go for. It has a slightly more rugged and earthy sound that suits the Distractions, and its packaging like that of ‘London Calling’ is a work of art. Its front cover photograph of a massive old seaside pier signifies something of another time and era, but which continues to hold great durability – very much like the Distractions themselves.

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