THE ALBUM YEARS

I suppose my love of record collecting really began when my dad came home one night with a pile of secondhand records that he had bought from the man stocking the jukebox up in the local bar room of the George pub on Walsall Road. And that's where my love of collecting records started to take root. The only problem was that they didn't have the middles but more importantly, I didn't have a record player to play them on. So I used to take them to the local youth club that was held in the hall every week next to Saint Barnabas church in Hampton Street and I'd play them there. They were in terrible condition because the A-sides were nearly worn out but the B-sides still played pretty well, and more importantly, the record player in the church hall had a stacking system so that you could play more than one record at a time which made it easier to use. And there was one particular single out of the pile of worn-out scratched records that I played more than any of the others and that was Honky Tonk Woman by the Rolling Stones. The other records I can remember having were Your Song by Elton John, Another Day by Paul MacCartney, and Burlesque by Family. And that's where my love of record collecting really began. And I can remember when my sister Pam was married and was about to move out of the family house in Forest Avenue, she gave me this battered old record player which was built like a Sherman Tank and seemed to go on forever and so I started to buy my own singles when I used to go up into Cannock with my mom shopping. The first brand-new single that I bought was David Bowie John I'm only dancing. And then I bought Alice Cooper School's out. And that was it, I was hooked. I later graduated to a state-of-the-art Pye record cabinet that my mom and dad had bought which had stereo speakers and FM radio which sounded amazing because it was the first time I was able to listen to stereophonic sound. It's really funny when I start thinking back because I remember listening to Get it on by Marc Bolan and T Rex in the red telephone box on Walsall Road just opposite the George pub because you could listen to the latest records that have been released by dialing a particular number. I think there were four of us that squeezed into the telephone box. But that's how I started collecting records, most of them at first were second-hand because I didn't have much money. Then, as I got older I was able to do a paper round and work on the milk float for a few shillings, I even got a job tire changing at the local Esso Garage on Walsall Road so then I was able to buy albums. The first one that I can remember buying was Aladinsane David Bowie, and then I bought Genesis Selling England by the Pound and so on. Following the current music scene became a ritualistic pastime where everything had to be listened to and nothing could be missed otherwise you almost felt left out of the conversation when you went to school the next day because if you hadn't heard the new release by String Driven Thing or recorded the latest session of Be Bop Deluxe in the John Peel Show. It was all one-upmanship but it was a harmless and healthy rivalry because we probably spent more time at the back of the classroom reading Sounds or NME than we did concentrating on the next bit of English homework we were supposed to be writing. I can remember the Aladinsane tour by David Bowie because I felt so left out when I didn't manage to get a concert ticket to go and see him especially as most of my schoolfriends were, and the only consolation was getting a copy of the concert program for the tour which is probably worth a fortune now but is absolutely priceless. Those were halcyon days for buying and collecting records as far as I was concerned because Saturday mornings were usually spent over in Birmingham scouring the rare record shops like the Diskery, Reddington's rare records. I can remember one particular occasion when we were in HMV records in Birmingham when a friend of mine managed to persuade one of the sales assistants to let him have an old advertising display that was about to be thrown out and replaced with the Genesis live album which included a full-sized cardboard cut out of Peter Gabriel wearing his bat's wings for the watcher of the skies. You can imagine the looks we got from the bemused passengers on the number nine bus going back to Cannock. or buying a ticket to go see Roxy Music or Gong at Birmingham Town Hall or even scampering down to Hurst Street to get to the Hippodrome and be one of the first die-hard Genesis fans to stay up all night in the hope that we could get some decent seats or any ticket for that matter to go and see our idols perform the Lamb lies down on broadway. I can remember how excited I was to go and see Pink Floyd at Knebworth for the first time because one of my friends had passed his driving test and his dad let him borrow his car for the day so we could get there and we had a great night until we tried to get off the car park to come back home and we only moved ten yards in six hours because everybody was trying to get off the car park at exactly the same time, which explains why the band themselves arrived in a helicopter and left the same way while the rest of us idiots were still trying to get off the Knebworth car park at six the next morning. And those kinds of almost insignificant incidents at the time which I will remember forever. We sat in that car park for nearly six hours listening to some of the greatest albums ever released because they were the album years. Music has a habit of coming alive when I listen to it and that's because I'm living the dream, living the emotions, living the fantasy of the record itself because music is fantasyland created by the melody and the lyrics. The melody entices you and the lyrics cement the relationship, and then we're hooked line and sinker, emotionally tied to that 45 forever. But that's what a great record does it draws you into the emotion and never lets you forget it. Tamla Mowtown was particularly good at producing emotional 45s by the bucketload. There was a time when vinyl ruled the world, with a record shop in every town. but time moves on, and the record industry has all but gone, but, some things never change because the song will always remain the same. Millions of memories and emotions are trapped on pieces of vinyl spinning around and around, crackling away full of imperfections of a lost generation. Music becomes a storybook, a reflection of our time. 1972 was the year when music really started to get into my brain. and it became very serious and very important to my psyche. It was the essence of my soul. The thing that really mattered to Rob Keene. Because as far as I could see, life didn't exist without music. There was very little beyond Pink Floyd and the dark side of the moon. Just a crater of emptiness and drudgery. All I could hear were the imaginary English landscapes of Genesis, the outer planetary Moog synthesizers of Yes, Emerson Lake, and Palmer who were telling me that the show must never end, and Paul MacCartney and his band Wings traveling the world with their rock show. There was absolutely no doubt that prog rock ignited the flame in my love of listening to music, especially albums. And as much as it all seemed so serious and crusty, pompous highbrow music that was superior to every other type of music on the planet except the Beatles, that only long-haired students who wore cheesecloth shirts and trenchcoats could like, it just made buying an album that, little bit more fun and interesting. Listening to music as a teenager became very ritualistic in many respects because we did the same things in the same order every time. Everything revolved around the music. There were usually five or six of us at school who would rush out during our dinner break and run like bats out of hell to reach the chicken barbecue shop which was situated between Taylor's bakery and the bus station before the queue built up for the lunchtime workers in the town center. We'd either buy a chicken and pork stuffing roll which was always neatly rolled up and sealed in a bag, or we'd have a hot beef pasty which was always far too hot to eat, and end up burning our tongues or the roofs of our mouths in our desperation to eat before we had to go back to school. And if we didn't get indigestion through eating far too quickly. We'd have a few minutes to spare to have a quick look in Martin's newsagents at the music papers. Then, if we had any time left at all, and there usually wasn't we would have a quick look at the new releases in the window of MacConnels music shop then race back up Calving Hill and try to get back into class before afternoon registration. Then it was a case of talking music in between lessons and planning whose house we would go to visit that night, and which album to listen to. It was all serious stuff for a fifteen-year-old prog rock fan. The 1970s was definitely a record collectors' paradise and for me, it was the time when I really got into music in a big way. Following the current music scene and record collecting became more than just a pastime it became a way of life. You'd listen to a new band on the radio or tv. You'd find out as much information on them as you could by looking through the music papers. Then you would take your records round to a friend or he'd come to you and you'd listen to and discuss bands all night. And if you really liked them and they happened to be on tour you get tickets and you'd go and see them play live. Apart from going to school, college or even having your first job. The rest of the time in the '70s ( apart from chasing girls) was spent doing just this and very little else. You built up your record collection and cuttings from the NME, Sounds, or Melody Maker. When you weren't at school you'd be scouring the record shops or record fairs for rare records that nobody else had. And if you found something that nobody else had you would parade it like a cockatoo in front of everybody. Owning the rarest record or having the best posters on the wall became a sort of status symbol or badge of attainment. I wonder how many of you have still got your record collections, cuttings, and concert ticket stubs gathering dust in your loft. Or still have that very complicated and expensive hi-fi stack system with extremely large speakers that had woofers and tweeters and even a graphic equalizer that took up half the bedroom or living room. Genesis in the Peter Gabriel Years years was a very big influence on the music that I liked at that time especially when I was at secondary school where it was the 'in thing' to be a progressive rock fan until the day when punk rock came along and then it wasn't so cool to like progressive music, but the album I have chosen to highlight today is Selling England by the Pound because it was only the second album that I could ever afford to buy having saved up my pocket money. And I can remember going down into Cannock one very sunny lunchtime during the school dinner break to buy it from McConnell's music shop and then when I was on my back to school all I could think of was how I could wag the next lesson and sneak into the music store cupboard where there was a decent record player to listen to it. Such are the delights of a misspent youth and then my next thought was how the hell am I going to get the money together to buy a concert ticket to go and see them at Birmingham Hippodrome that autumn? But I did manage to get the money together eventually and spent quite an eventful night queuing up and waiting for the box office to open the next day so that I could get a ticket to see the band that was my whole world at that point in my life. The invention of the mp3 was the final nail in the coffin of the record shop because they were so convenient and easy to use. But they weren't just easy to use they were easy to buy. You didn't have to go out of your own home. You could purchase the music you wanted to hear online. And, when that happened it was more or less the end of the high street record shop as we know it, and, as much as we embrace the changes in technology, there's also a certain sadness attached to it as well because it destroyed the relationship between the record buyer and the record shop owner. And I for one used to enjoy going into the local record shop because it was a social thing to do, a ritual, a way of life. It seems to be an outdated thing in this day and age but I miss it terribly. Particularly MacConnell's music shop in Cannock where I had been going to buy my records since 1971. That was always the first place I would go, as did many of my friends over the years. I got to know the people who worked in the shop, namely Mary and John Jeavons who I still know to this day. The original record shop was situated at the top end of Cannock near the bus station and just up from the old outdoor market stalls near the Cannock forum. The original shop if I remember correctly was very small and crammed full of records. In fact, it was so small that you could hardly get in there. But it was always worth a visit because you could invariably get the record you were looking for. I can remember going in there to buy one of the very first records I ever bought, The Jean Genie by David Bowie. In fact, it was a particularly memorable record because I had to take it back to the shop three times because every time got it home to play it jumped, and then when I took it back to the shop John would try it on the turntable in the shop and it played perfectly much to my embarrassment. But, John was such a nice and accommodating guy and was always willing to replace it. And, then when the multi-story car park was built in the center of Cannock, the shop moved to one of the new base units at the foot of the car park itself. This offered more space and more scope for the shop to expand into selling musical instruments, and equipment. and offering music lessons as well as records. The great thing about MacConnell's as a record shop was that John or Mary was always willing to let you listen to the new releases or any other record for that matter if you showed an interest, which is why we enjoyed going there to buy records because it was a friendly place to be.