Record Store Day 2013 and why Monorail records in Glasgow continues tobe brilliant

So yesterday was Record Store Day 2013 and I made my yearly early morning pilgrimage to Monorail records to buy some exclusive vinyl. An important thing to note is that this is not the only day during the year that I visit Monorail, it is just the only day when I get up at 7am and get a taxi there as quickly as possible. Usually I just stroll in, in a relaxed fashion some time after midday.

I got there at about 7:45 and by then the queue was already about 60 strong. I had my iPod so I was fairly self-contained in the queue listening to some Mars Volta as well as ....and you will know us by the Trail of Dead. I had been at a work night out on Friday but I'd restricted myself to one pint and an early departure in readiness for the start of Record Store Day.

The doors opened at 9 and by 10 I made it to the front of the queue. I was able to get most of the stuff I was after but sadly the Velvet Underground LP was sold out. Fortuitously a large number of Velvet Underground LPs are now available on eBay at only moderately inflated prices suggesting that many of the true fans at the front of queues world wide had already listened to the vinyl and decided that it was so brilliant that they had to share it as soon as possible with other fans less able to face an early morning start. Obviously eBay is the easiest way to democratise music in this way.

Anyway, I did manage to pick up the beautiful double 7" reissue of the first Husker Du single Amusement. I had been thinking about this record for some time and it has met my expectations. I also bought the Mogwai & Aidan Moffat split single and the Aidan Moffat/Twilight Sad singles. Possibly a more interesting spur of the moment buy was the Damon and Naomi demo album which is amazingly packaged in a vandalised reproduction of an old Sonny and Cher LP. It truly is a thing of beauty. I picked up the Primal Scream City Slang 12" partly because of my teenage love of the Scream and partly cos the drummer from the Stooges plays on it and partly cos it's a great song.

Finally I bought the new Flaming Lips LP package. It wasn't an exclusive release but it is very nice indeed.

I haven't mentioned my other good buy, a DVD of the film Last Shop Standing which charts the rise and fall and possible re-emergence of independent record stores. It features an all too brief appearance by Monorail and Dep and it is an interesting cultural document. I have spent a lot of time and money in record stores over the past 25 years and I will continue to do so, at least in places like Monorail.

I do enjoy Record Store Day but I find the instant eBay secondary market thing to be frustrating although some of my friends in bands find it even more frustrating. At the end of the day at least the small independent shops have hopefully had a worthwhile infusion of cash that will keep the wolf from the door for another year and hopefully the Internet scampers will be forced to reduce their profit margins. Independent record shops may be our only record shops in a few years time and hopefully they will continue to thrive for years to come.

Digital comics

I never thought that I would enjoy reading digital comics but I do. The app on the iPad makes the experience very enjoyable and convenient. I now feel like I have a portable comic book collection. I love the aesthetic quality of books and old comics but they are not very portable. Now I can read a whole run of a comic book with ease.

I do grudge paying for a PDF file but marvel comics have very generously taken to supplying a digital download code with their best selling titles (but not with second stringers like Young Avengers sadly). I have to say that this is a nice touch from marvel.

I might even consider paying for digital comics if a title is hard to find in the shops. eBay prices are crazy for some newer titles.

Digital comics will never replace the sheer nerd joy of the below however.

iPad adventure

I bought an iPad mini yesterday and I'm using it to write this post. I'm not sure that I needed it but it is a nice toy. It has a lot of the functionality of a laptop but it's only the size of a paperback. I don't want or need a smartphone so this is a nice substitute.

I did have a bit of a negative encounter with a mobile broadband provider yesterday (3 mobile who have the worst customer service ever) but generally the whole experience is great. Some functionality is missing compared with my laptop but not much.

I've got a few text books on here and some PDFs for work. I also have a couple of comic reading apps which is interesting. I don't want to overfill it with music so I just have a bit of Spacemen 3 and Philip Glass on here just now.

If my 8 year old self saw me now I would have believed that the future was here.

Thatcher is dead

An old lady who suffered from dementia and stroke died last week. She lived in luxury in the Ritz hotel. She did not believe in society and her modern disciples have made things more difficult for the worst off in society. She is lucky she was rich.

Thatcher stamped on our country and the word. She dominated my childhood and gave many of us a target to shout at. We are Thatcher's children but we don't need to like our parents.

The Uncle Books by JP Martin

When I was a child my parents had a couple of paperback novels from the Uncle series by JP Martin.  I was also able to borrow one or two of the other books in  the series from the local library.  Uncle is an  imperialist elephant who lives in a massive castle and lives a life of luxury.  He is troubled by the unpleasant inhabitants of Badfort who regularly cause him problems.  Uncle is a flawed hero but the stories are entertaining and beautifully illustrated by Quentin Blake.

Sadly, the books are hard to obtain.  They have been out-of-print for several decades and second-hand copies cost several hundred pounds.  Thankfully, someone has started a Kickstarter project to reprint them.

Uncle Kickstarter Project

This project on Kickstarter seems to be going well and the initial target has already been met.  I've backed the project and I'm anticipating the books.  If you like books or have kids that like books (or may like books in the future) I urge you to invest!

JP Martin Wikipedia page

so what do I think of Twitter nowadays?

I've been using Twitter (@drphunkneuro) for a couple of years now.  I think I like it.  At least, I like it the way that I use it.  I'm not sure that I use it properly.

My first big disadvantage is that I don't have a smart phone.  I have a 4 year old crappy Nokia that I'm fond of and I don't want to change.  I can tweet easily from this phone via text message and I can recieve tweets directed @drphunkneuro but I can't see my Twitter feed from my phone.  This probably means that I don't get the full joy of Twitter but it also means that I don't spend my whole fucking day pissing about with it.  I guess that at some point in the future I will be seduced by the evil of the smartphone (although I suspect that I might first be seduced by an iPad mini some time before that) 

Despite not having a perfect constant interface I still get a lot out of Twitter. My feed focuses on my interests - alternative music, comic books, Glasgow, neurology, people I know, news and politics.  It keeps me up to date with musical happenings and comic book events.  Both of these things can be a bit obscure and certainly don't pop up on the BBC website regularly.  I hear about gigs and comic books early, giving me a chance to pick up tickets. 

I also like to get a few different opinions on current affairs.  I follow at least one blogger that I can't stand on Twitter, mainly to know what evil people are thinking.  I also follow BBC and Radio Clyde to get regular, up to date local news that is relevant to me.  I also follow a couple of big medical journals that sometimes flag up important research papers.

Twitter can sometimes give you additional information behind the headlines.  This was fascinating when the Saville story broke although much of what is written is not factual resulting in unfortunate consequences for innocent people.  People often tweet before they think and unguarded tweets can tell you a lot about a person.

I also use  Twitter to communicate with friends.  It's a public forum so it's not great for this but it has some uses.  Overall, I guess I like Twitter.  It's probably less unhealthy than ebay or facebook.

James Herbert - RIP

As a young teenager I loved horror novels.  I went to the library a lot and read a lot of them.  Stephen King was probably my favourite but I was also a big fan of James Herbert.  Books like The Rats and The Fog were creepy and fairly well written.  I think I still have the hardback bookclub copy of Creed that I bought when it came out.  I was 13 then and I loved the book.

As I grew older I read less of his stuff but I still have fond memories of his books.  I was sad to hear that he had died at the relatively young age of 69.

RIP

Spiral (Engrenages) Series 4

Spiral is one of the best television shows broadcast on UK TV.  The French language series is broadcast on BBC4 and is available on DVD in the UK.  It is unremittingly bleak.  I have just finished watching season 4 and I found it to contain some of the most unsympathetic characters I have ever encountered.

Paris, as portrayed in Spiral, is a horrible place.  The police commit crimes regularly and often appear to be differentiated from criminals only by a badge.  The courts are corrupt with lawyers and judges out to make money and nothing else.  The criminals are even worse.  The left-wing terrorists featured in series 4 are some of the most pointless and unpleasant people in existence.  I wanted to throw something at the screen every time that they appeared.

Spiral draws you in and emotionally involves you.  The plot is complex.  It is a French answer to the Wire.  Watch it and overcome your fear of subtitles.

Different experiences

One of my friends came out to me yesterday.  I've known him for about 8 years and I never suspected that he was gay.  He said that he had come to terms with it a couple of years ago and that he was slowly telling his friends.  He's living away from home at the moment so it had actually been a while since I'd seen him.  He seems to be a bit more comfortable with himself now.  He comes from a fairly religious background and his religion sometimes struggles with homosexuality.  He tells me that he still has religious faith but he feels a bit distanced from the church he grew up with.

It's good to know that your friends trust you enough to tell you stuff like that.  He said that he knew I wouldn't be freaked out and when I asked him he reassured me that I had never said anything horribly homophobic to him (not that I am in the habit of saying horribly homophobic things, but being from the West coast of Scotland words such as 'fuck' and 'cunt' are often used as commas and you worry about using the term 'gay' as an adjective). 

I know a few gay folk but most of them had established 'gay' identities when I met them or were very obviously gay.  When I think back to the conversations that my friend and I have had over the years about women and relationships I guess that his perspective must have been very different to mine.  At least he feels he can be totally open now (although I really don't want to know what he does on certain sexuality-orientated websites).

A lot of artists and musicians that I admire are gay.  Bob Mould had perhaps not been the most admirable person at times (when dealing with ex-bandmates) but he writes well about his sexuality in his autobiography and that book is worth reading for the insight that it gives the heterosexual reader.  At the end of the day, people are people, and people can love anyone they want as long as nobody gets hurt. 

Adventures in bin-raking

I'm staying at my parents house for a couple of days.  I haven't been out here since Christmase so it's noce to catch up with them a bit.  I've also been tidying out my old room at their house and getting rid of some of the crap that's still cluttering the place.

I went to the local dump with my mother this afternoon.  My mother likes a bargin and keeps her eyes open for useful things whenever she goes to the dump.  We were fairly lucky today.  At the top of the dump was a pile of about 30 CDs and DVDs.  It looked as if somebody had thrown out someone elses possessions.  The collection looked rather female in origin and contained a lot of stuff by the likes of Michael Buble and Jess Stone.  There was also a few Beatles CDs and stuff by Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, Miles Davis and BoB Dylan.  Randomly there was also a copy of 'the last time I did acid I went insane' by Jeffrey Lewis.  I promptly jumped into the dump and salvaged all this booty.  As a family we are not proud.  I even found a copy of Johnny Cash 'American 5' for my Dad (I own this one already but my Dad is a Cash fan too).  We also picked up the first series of the Wire and a couple of books.

At the end of the day we figured out that the collection of stuff was probably worth about £150.  Not bad for stuff that was due to be landfill.  The stuff that we don't want for ourselves will be donated to charity shops with some of the other stuff we were getting rid of.

My parents and I are not poor.  I have a good job and they have decent pensions.  However it does sicken me to see useful stuff condemed to landfill when it could be used by someone else.  My Dad will enjoy watching Finding Nemo and the Wire and my Mum will enjoy listening to Elton John (hopefully when I'm out of earshot).  I'm happy with my free stuff too.

So, if you go to the dump - keep your eyes open.  And if you are going to dump stuff maybe think if someone else could use it.  We suspect that all this stuff was thrown out by an idiot in a fit of anger which is sort of sad but hopefully the charity shop may be able to do something useful with it.