I went to a Record Fair this past month with a couple of friends both of whom are approximately twenty years younger than me. Other than the obvious cultural difference of trying to convince them that they are not called “vinyl’s,” it did occur to me that the major change in their visiting a fair as a punter to my record hunting two decades ago is that they are searching for things they have already heard. My mission was almost always based on the desire to find things unavailable for me to listen to, the discovery of exciting fresh sounds both newly released and from previous decades. Tracks that do not get played on the radio, or those that were given a spin once by the more eclectic late-night DJs only to vanish from your life, destined to be added to an expanding list of holy grail finds you are on the look out for. All of that has gone now in an age where pretty much everything is available to listen to, even tracks unavailable on download facilities or streaming services can at least be found and listened to if you plough the internet deep enough. Personally, I do not even have a list anymore, Record Fairs are a place I search for things that I am already familiar with but would like to own a decent quality vinyl pressing of.

Obviously, there are still things I never found back in the twentieth century and now appear so obscure even the internet has not logged thus far, but as time passes and people increasingly upload old video tapes and cassettes to YouTube the more these dark corners of music’s back pages are uncovered. I had this proved to me a few moments ago, as I started this paragraph, I recalled a song Mark Radcliffe played on his late-night Radio One show around 1995-96 called ‘Expecting Joe’ by The McTells. I wrote it down at the time and have kept half an eye out for it for nearly thirty years. Even when Discogs and eBay appeared I would occasionally type it into a search and come up blank. But I have just heard it for the first time since that radio play, it is sitting there on YouTube with a grainy old video clip to add to the time capsule. Turns out it was released on a cassette in 1987 which might explain why my looking for it on vinyl came up short. It does prove that my taste for lo-fi pop and scuzzy garage-rock sounds has been present for a good three decades, it would appear that the McTells were loosely associated with the C86 movement but were a little too rough around the edges to be fully embraced even by that scene.

The sad thing is I do not really feel like I am looking for it anymore, I sort of feel like I found it, but the payoff is not so sweet when there is no physical artefact to show for the conclusion of the hunt. So maybe I am still looking? I dare say if I find a copy of that particular cassette I would buy it, if it was cheap enough as I do not really collect tapes, but the heart and soul of the mission was to hear that music again, which is a desire that has now been satisfied. I do not mean to appear lukewarm about record collecting, those moments when you find a clean original pressing of music that you love, take it home and play it being sure to really listen to those sonic details can be magical. This month’s cover star is Sandy Denny in the late sixties fronting Fairport Convention and I recently enjoyed such an experience listening to their ‘Unhalfbricking’ on an original 1969 Island Records pressing. They really were one of the all-time great Rock-era bands around 1968-1969, a period in which they released a mind blowing three classic albums whilst struggling to overcome the turmoil of a motorway van crash with fatalities. No wonder this combination of their line-up splintered before the seventies for, on top of the tragedy and in addition to the wandering sprit of Richard Thompson’s genius, they also had a singer in Sandy Denny who threw all her raw emotions into her art and music. That is what I love about the above photo, she looks wound up and annoyed which, if true, was sure to have fed into the music Fairport Convention were playing that night. One of their most rousing pot-boilers from 1969 opens this month’s playlist, a selection which represents the range of music, both new and old, I would love to source on vinyl pressings when looking around a Record Fair…