Recently a friend suggested I try to acquire some Russ Henderson vinyl I wanted via Discogs. I’d landed on this site a few times but had never really investigated it. When I checked it out, I was disappointed to find only two Russ Henderson titles were listed there, the 1966 vinyl album Caribbean Carnaval! (sic) and the CD compilation London Is The Place For Me 2, which features a Henderson track taken from Caribbean Carnival; only the latter was available in the Discogs marketplace, but needless to say I already had both it and the release it is taken from. I double-checked my copy of the 1966 vinyl and ‘Carnival’ is spelt correctly on the sleeve and labels, the spelling error had been generated in the Discogs listing, although I’ve now amended it.
My interest in Russ Henderson stemmed originally from the fact that he lived in a flat beneath my mother at 24 Bassett Road way back when in the sixties. He is also a supremely groovy, if sometimes overlooked, musician. A few years ago I went into a used record shop in Bexhill-On-Sea, and was flipping through some sixties vinyl when the owner asked me what I was looking for. I told him I wanted anything by Russ Henderson other than Caribbean Carnival. He told me he was an expert on rare records but he’d never heard of this act. I explained that Henderson was a highly regarded jazz musician but that he’d also led the first steel band on the streets of London. The shop owner asked me if I was looking for anything else. I told him I wanted some releases by The Global Village Trucking Co. He proceeded to scream at me to get out of his shop, wailing as I left that he was a vinyl expert and I must be making up names because he’d never heard of this band either. In reality, the vinyl nerd simply didn’t know the depths of his own ignorance. My mother, Julia Callan-Thompson, had been acquainted with The Global Village Trucking Co. The Globs, as they were fondly referred to on the seventies free festival circuit, don’t particularly groove me; but I was still interested in getting my mits on their releases for research purposes primarily…
The Globs aren’t too well served on Discogs either, they don’t even have their own page, just entries for their appearance on the double compilation album Greasy Truckers Live At Dingwalls Dance Hall. When I looked there was no sign of The Globs sole long player at Discogs. This served to remind me that I’d missed the documentary BBC4 broadcast on The Globs then (1972) and now (2008) last year… and it ain’t available on BBC ‘Watch Again’ either! Having investigated a few records that had some connection to my mother’s life at Discogs, I figured I might as well go the whole hog by moving on to looking at myself. When I searched for myself on Discogs, I turned up an artist profile, but again the discography was very partial. I have four albums to my own name, three fiercely independent productions and one that came out on Paul Smith’s King Mob label which was also indie, but distributed by Sony. Strangely this latter title, my best distributed and promoted record, was missing from Discogs. Likewise, the list of releases I either appear on or contribute tracks to was very patchy.
So I figured I’d join Discogs and add my missing releases. That said, I found completing and submitting the form for my King Mob album Pure Mania such a pain in the ass, that I’m not sure I can be bothered to add my missing compilation and guest appearances. What do you think? Should I go for it or is this wasted effort? I certainly can’t be arsed to add other omitted King Mob releases; such as Ken Kesey in the form of recordings made of the Acid Tests, and Charles Bukowski. At first I was surprised by what I couldn’t find on Discogs, but gradually the limitations of the site began to make sense to me. It suffers from all the faults that disfigure huge swathes of the web, since it is both a market place and a popularity contest (other people vote on the accuracy of your submissions). The only reason I can see to add items to Discogs is either because you have a copy you want to sell, or because it is a release on which you feature. The idea that someone would upload all the items from their record collection not already on Discogs is mind-numbingly depressing; the term anorak isn’t insulting enough to cover a saddo of this calibre! A series of searches showed I have several dozen releases not currently on the site – ranging from Eddie Bo (whose discography is incomplete) to Ward 34 (whose only single isn’t listed, yet anyway) – and if I was to do a thorough investigation, I suspect I’d find what I have that isn’t there runs well into three figures…
Just in case you’re interested, my still rather partial profile on Discogs can be found here. Likewise, I mentioned Technorati earlier this month, and following on from that I joined BlogCatalog. If the aesthetics of boredom really grove you, then you could do worse than check out the latter site, starting with my page, of course, which is here.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Comments
Comment by The ghost on the coast on 2009-07-20 11:45:41 +0000
That Bexhill record shop closed down about a year ago….most of the locals get their vinyl from the numerous charity shops, which are ideal hunting grounds for fans of those ’70s “Top of the Pops” albums and the Geoff Love Orchestra.
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-07-20 11:54:17 +0000
Good to know that shop has closed down, if the twat who ran it treated everyone who went there like he treated me, then no one would have wanted to buy anything from him. Charity shops are better anyway. My last charity shop vinyl buys were the following all in one go and all at 50p each: The Best Of The Dave Clark Five, The Dave Clark 5 Play Good Old Rock & Roll, A Session With The Dave Clark Five, June Imray The Torrie Quine, Steve Burns Whispering Winds, Hawklords 25 Years On.
And I play this shit on a Sanyo TP1010 that I bought for a fiver from a boot sale! Works a treat, I love my deck!
PS That last charity shop trip was insane, there was also very obviously one person’s very tasty sixties soul and jazz collection, but the records were totally mashed up, so not even worth 50p. It looked like the vinyl had been used for what it was meant for, playing at parties and then eaten off when they’d run out of plates! I was very taken with a Sue compilation coz I used to love picking up Sue singles for next to nothing from junk outlets when I was a kid, but I never see those 45s cheap now…. But when I checked inside the sleeve there was a completely destroyed copy of Otis Blue and not the platter it was made to house… You still can pick up charity shop bargains but mainly I have to travel well outside of London to get them….
And on the Discogs tip, if you love music surely you’d prefer listening to it over entering details on a site like that?
Comment by Geoff Jordan on 2009-07-20 18:29:20 +0000
Fascinating! It reminds me of the time that I went into an Oxfam shop just next to an off-license which in the 30s had been run by my mother (who totally captivated everybody she met, despite being a talentless scrubber) and found a suit with a cum stain on the trousers, a stain which reminded me of the shroud of Turin. I bought the suit (luckily I’d just been paid five quid by my agent for my best-distributed and promoted vinyl “I’m a total wanker”) and took it to a friend of mine who had a brief scene with my mother and had access to DNA testing gear. He told me that he’d had more fun at the dentists than with my mother and that the stain belonged, can you believe this, to another ex-lover of my mother, who once nearly had a hit single. Well, I’m on it, and I’ll soon be uploading that fab single to my other website: http://www.evenworsebullshit. cum
Wow man, I mean we’re not in the perfect communist world yet, but it’s still a great groovy world, and aren’t you all just luvin it!
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-07-20 19:14:36 +0000
Mutton Geoff, I think it was also you that left the penis enlargement comments that my spam blocker won’t allow (unless you happen to have access to admin). I managed to partially save this one, which is actually much better than any other comment you’ve left: “Penis enlargement products reviews for penis size enlargement by world’s best natural herbal penis enlargement products like ( penis enlargement pills, penis patches, penis devices, and penis exercises ) for increase penis size in girth and length in weeks with more harder and solid erections…”
Comment by Geoff Jordan on 2009-07-20 19:25:16 +0000
I think you’re confusing me with a friend of your mother’s Mr. Trippy. Nobody cares less than I do about your sex life; what I find ridiculous about you is your ability to take yourself seriously.
Still, that’s enough. I promise I’ll have no further dealings with you or your truly preposterous blathering bullshit.
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-07-20 19:44:38 +0000
“Still, that’s enough. I promise I’ll have no further dealings with you or your truly preposterous blathering bullshit.”
Unfortunately I doubt that you can be trusted to keep your own word, but it is no loss to me if you stop leaving your half-baked comments on my site. It was you that sought me out and left comments here, not the other way around. Your perceptions appear to be a complete inversion of reality.
Comment by Geoff Jordan on 2009-07-20 19:59:36 +0000
But I thought you were a fan of dialectical thought, Mr. Dippy. Inversions of reality are surely the way to go, are they not?
Woops, there we go, one more contradiction.
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-07-20 20:26:48 +0000
Viz I was correct to suggest you can’t be trusted to keep your word. As for dialectics, you should try reading Marx. Check his Theses on Feuerbach. See in particular XI.
I
The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.
Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. Hence, in The Essence of Christianity, he regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-judaical manifestation. Hence he does not grasp the significance of “revolutionary”, of “practical-critical”, activity.
II
The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.
III
The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.
The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.
IV
Feuerbach starts out from the fact of religious self-alienation, of the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis.
But that the secular basis detaches itself from itself and establishes itself as an independent realm in the clouds can only be explained by the cleavages and self-contradictions within this secular basis. The latter must, therefore, in itself be both understood in its contradiction and revolutionized in practice. Thus, for instance, after the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must then itself be destroyed in theory and in practice.
V
Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, wants contemplation; but he does not conceive sensuousness as practical, human-sensuous activity.
VI
Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual.
In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.
Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence, is consequently compelled:
- To abstract from the historical process and to fix the religious sentiment as something by itself and to presuppose an abstract – isolated – human individual.
- Essence, therefore, can be comprehended only as “genus”, as an internal, dumb generality which naturally unites the many individuals.
VII
Feuerbach, consequently, does not see that the “religious sentiment” is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual whom he analyses belongs to a particular form of society.
VIII
All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.
IX
The highest point reached by contemplative materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is contemplation of single individuals and of civil society.
X
The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity.
XI
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.
Comment by Michael K on 2009-07-20 23:32:25 +0000
I’m with Deaf Geoff on this one, Tory accountancy is the new rock and roll, so let’s get some more of that over at this new thread rather than leaving it on that old one about how groovy the credit crunch is. BTW: Tory accountants don’t like the credit crunch, when people go out of business they stop handing us their money…
Comment by Frank Discussion on 2009-07-21 01:18:33 +0000
We think it convenient that some shall take their neighbour’s bed for their own, some the son for the mother, and (if elelectric light bulbs could tell tales), some will take a familiar for a flea…. It is also agreed upon that long-bearded men are seldom the wisest, and that for the increase of every fool in his humour, he should read Mister Trippy’s blog.
Comment by Sons of Sodom on 2009-07-21 02:09:35 +0000
Whatever happened to the Smiling Revolution?
Comment by Guy Debord’s Cock on 2009-07-21 02:13:33 +0000
Next time don’t bite so hard when I come!
Comment by Simon Strong on 2009-07-21 06:57:24 +0000
IMHO the ultimate Stewart Home audio rarity is the interview with Mick Norman (Lawrence James) on the Hexentexts Creation Books Sampler (CodeX dics). The full length version (with intact references to Johnny Cash comics and the Graham Bond Organisation) is even better! Gonna go check discogs.org – nope! didn’t think so…
Comment by Anal Wax on 2009-07-21 12:17:27 +0000
Small wonder so many independent and second-hand record stores have gone by the wayside when they’re badly organised, badly stocked and run by anuses who think they know everything but clearly don’t and charge rip-off ‘Record Collector Price Guide’ prices for badly worn tat.
I was sad to learn yesterday that Jack’s in Sheffield is closing at the end of this month. It was well stocked and the prices easonable, but the guy who ran it was still something of an anus – the time he declined my Scottish tenner simply because he wouldn’t take ANY Scottish notes was quite representative. Alas, there will now be no record shops in Sheffield and tracking down vinyl on-line is a major pain in the arse, especially given how crap and careless the mail services are.
Oh and Hornby clearly knows nothing about music or record shops. Sure, the one I worked in in the 90s did see endless discussions as to what band should be in which category, and did attract some real bozos (the sort who walk in and ask ‘Where do you keep Luther vandross, under D or R?) but it wasn’t all top 10s featuring Genesis and the like. And hey, where else would you go and hear The Honolulu Mountain Daffodils or The Vocanoes playing on the shop stereo?
Comment by Howling Wizard, Shrieking Toad on 2009-07-21 13:49:17 +0000
Record store staff are notorious assholes — I worked in a number of such places over the years,( early 80’s onwards), selling rare funk, reggae, 60’s garage music etc, and all the staff, in every specialist store I worked in in central and NW London were socially awkward nerds, with incredible delusions of grandeur, who sneered and jeered at the people who came in to buy their over priced tunes.
Utter creeps.
I won’t shop in such places — I’d rather not give my cash to c***s.
Comment by The ghost on the coast on 2009-07-21 17:39:30 +0000
Though in general agreement with both Wax and Wizard, I have to say that snotty record vendors are not a patch on guitar shop salesfolk.
Have you ever tried buying a replacement G string in a guitar shop? It’s like living through the worst imaginable Frankie Howerd routine.
Comment by Anal Wax on 2009-07-21 19:34:11 +0000
You’ll probably struggle to find any sch places to shop in nowadays, Howling Wizard…. but whatever you spend your dosh on, it’s almost inevitable that it’s cash to cunts (unless you know a lot of tax-evading barterers).
Comment by Martin C on 2009-07-21 22:10:14 +0000
Daddy Kool also had a reputation for treating its customers like war criminals, though to be honest, Keith Stone was always OK with me! Think it’s cos I bought a King Stitt LP there and he was a massive fan. Though we sort of fell out when I ordered a ragga sampler CD off him and it turned up in some waterstained, shredded cover with marks all over the disc. He seemed outraged that I’d dared to ask for a few quid off.
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-07-21 22:33:05 +0000
I’ve had some good record shop experiences too. One time I went into Stupido in Helsinki to buy some J.M.K.E albums (I already had them, they were for a friend as they were hard to source in London), and the guys in the shop which also released J.M.K.E. on their label said: “You’re Stewart Home, you don’t need to buy records” and proceeded to give me a load of stuff. Nice guys!
Comment by raymond anderson on 2009-07-22 00:41:14 +0000
agree there ghost..(always wanted to say that)
It’s always the bloody G string isn’t it? The amount of duff ones cropping up in classical sets these days is appalling
I remember taking second hand albums back to the shops in the 70s and saying they jumped. The vendor told me to sellotape a tuppence to the arm.
Comment by Michael K on 2009-07-22 01:35:32 +0000
I mistakenly called the Tory accountant on this thread Deaf Geoff Jordan, just a typo coz what I meant to write was Deff Geoff, sorry Geoff!
And I agree with Raymond and Ghost about G strings, when I was living with a stripper she was always borrowing G strings from my K guitar (the real wonder of Woolies) and when they came back after being used in her act they were too sticky to play. So I’d nip down the lingerie shop to get a replacement and the sales girls were always rude and useless!
Comment by K MAIL on 2009-07-22 02:05:33 +0000
I rock therefore I am
Comment by Michael K on 2009-07-22 02:42:15 +0000
It’s all about $$$ bo$$!
Comment by Michael K on 2009-07-24 22:08:18 +0000
Wow, I’ve just found this thread left open on a computer in my gym and I don’t know who you all are but I just want to say PENIS! BOTTOMS! and Country Joe and the Fish. Thanks.
Comment by walk on 2009-08-16 16:54:05 +0000
figure;