On The Pleasures of Someone Else’s Record Collection…

Friday is about music, so playlists, links, reminders of the music you loved, and sometimes great, new tips and recommendations. Today, I’m on holiday, listening to someone else’s records. Good times!

Hey there. We made it! It is the end of a very awkwardly placed set of school holidays. We had that long weekend for Easter, and for the last wee while the school holidays conveniently stretched either side of it, but this year we were back at work and school for not much more than a week and had to plan all our childcare and arrangements all over again. And for what felt like an excruciatingly long two weeks.

I’m thinking of parents everywhere, working parents jostling their time, and parents hardly working, balancing their money. The holidays are a tough gig, but necessary. And if you’re lucky to actually have a break, and have it all lined up then I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you don’t have kids, and come here to read about music, I’m sorry — and we’ll get there very soon…

Our holiday this time around is just a couple of days. We juggled work-from-home days and half-days with a bit of help from the grandparents, a sleepover with friends, a visiting older cousin, and now we’ve escaped to lovely Whanganui for a few days. There was a public holiday yesterday, and so many are making the most of a long weekend I’m sure.

We’re heading over to Masterton on Saturday (tomorrow) because Dirty Spoons has a gig!

Meanwhile, it’s lovely over here by the muddy river listening to blues and jazz and movie soundtracks and funk and pop…

It used to be, when going away on holiday, I’d pack a box of CDs. Then it was all about the iPod and making sure I had a charger and hoping there was somewhere to plug in some RCA leads. Then it was to the handy little portably bluetooth speaker, and the ubiquitous cellphone.

But this place where we’re staying has a turntable. What a treat! I don’t usually even look at the photos of the place beforehand. I figure I’ll see it when I get there. Katy books it and says “do you want to look at the photos of the place beforehand”. And I, frustratingly, say something like, “nah, I’ll see it when I get there”. But in needing to find the address to share with friends, I had a peek, and I’m glad I did.

I packed a small handful of records, only a dozen. And then I thought that the record-player might have been for show, might get locked away when they have guests; or be “missing” a tonearm or stylus when the place gets booked. But no. It’s here. It’s working. The notes that help you to know how to use the gas cooker and what the wifi code is and where the local walks are at even tells you to help yourself to the record player, so long as you’re careful.

This sort of trust is nice.

They also have a little record collection, which passed the 3-second scan and flick by revealing two Talking Heads albums, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Prince’s Purple Rain, a few Motown compilations, some reggae, some vintage hip-hop and the sort of perennials you never feel like listening to but suddenly seem magical when you’re in someone else’s place (the self-titled Crosby Stills & Nash debut, The Best of Rod Stewart).

So, yeah, right now, early in the morning, up before anyone else to write the homework I’ve been giving myself for the best part of 20 years (currently in the shape of this newsletter, previously whatever I could dump down on the Off The Tracks website, and before that a blog for Stuff on something called Blog On The Tracks), I am listening to one of my own records:

Because it’s morning, and I’m up alone, it’s definitely Soundtrack Time. And this Morricone score is new to me, it was re-released in 2022. I haven’t seen “When Love Is Sensuality” aka “A Village Girl”, but I’m sure it’s a perfect slice of slightly pervy, creepy male-gaze cinema-schlock from 50 years ago. Its wonderful score will be enough for me. And sitting in a room all alone in a house on a hill by myself (I’m downstairs, the family is upstairs, essentially in a seperate wing) this mix of strings, early electronica and that great wig-out prog-rock-meets-jazz-jamming feels utterly sublime.

But, last night, and yesterday afternoon, it was all about the treats in the record cabinet. There is a special warmth, and a lovely buzz around listening to someone else’s records. They’re there for you, many of them you own already, or used to own, and even things you don’t quite care for somehow seem a little more precious than ever was the case. It’s like time stops for a bit…

First up was A Hard Road, by John Mayall and his Bluesbreakers. Their second studio album. Clapton’s gone by this point. Peter Green is in the fold. And in fact, on some of the tracks it is the start of the early Fleetwood Mac you might say. John McVie is the bassist throughout, and mostly it’s Hughie Flint or Aynsley Dunbar on drums, but Mick Fleetwood does get a turn. I used to own this album, hadn’t heard it in years, but it was the perfect first thing to play in someone else’s house. The perfect unpack-your-bags album.

Next up was Bessie Smith. And, again, just the right vibe for being in a strange, new (but welcoming) environment. Can’t really describe it beyond that. A compilation from 1971, that I’d never seen before. I knew some of the things on it, but a lot of Bessie blurs for me. It’s like listening to Robert Johnson in a way. You know where you are. You know you were never there. You’re pleased you were never there. You can’t believe what you’re hearing. It’s incredible. But it’s never specific. It’s just something from another world.

In the car, on the way up, we were playing our regular car trip playlist, which changes every time, but the consistency is that we all get to pick the same amount of songs, then shuffle. One of my tunes was Back in Baby’s Arms by Ms Patsy Cline. And to my delight, 12yo Oscar greeted it with the very best response: “Oooh this is a VIBE”, he said, quite correctly. I mean how could you not like that song, right? Well, I knew a whole Patsy album would go down just fine after that — I recently described her to someone as being in My Starting Five. I’m not quite sure what I meant, but I can tell you the other members are Billie Holiday, Anita O’Day, Abbey Lincoln and probably Sarah Vaughan (with Ella on the bench). So I hope that’s high praise. That’s all I was aiming for…

Sometime around the late 80s and early 90s when it was all China Beach and Tour of Duty and their soundtracks, and all the other similarly placed and vibed compilations I took a deep dive into the world of Diana Ross and the Supremes. I really just knew Diana Ross as Michael Jackson’s role model, and the person he was most trying to physically emulate. And then I knew some of her runaway pop hits from the 80s. Of course I knew Baby Love from everywhere too. And You Can’t Hurry Love from Phil Collins covering it. But those songs like Someday We’ll Be Together, my god. They’re just so fucking glorious. But these days I never listen to the Supremes beyond a track or two. This double-LP was such a nostalgia-crawl, and so, so good!

If there’s a Rick James record in the house you’re visiting, I say play it! Even if that Rick James record is The Flag, a mid-80s attempt to get back to the hard funk place where Rick started and to try to be political. He’s cocaine-bloated and has hacked his own life. But it’s still Rick James. B’arch. The LA Times correctly assessed that this “is meant to be a return to the hard-core funk sound that established James, and while it’s a step in the right direction, it doesn’t stomp hard enough”. But it was here in the house where I’m staying, and I ain’ t mad that I played it.

I owned every Steely Dan album on vinyl — as a white guy in his 40s I would expect that no one would be expecting otherwise. But I did get rid of most of them recently, including this. So it was actually ‘nice’ — the right word entirely — to hear this again right through. First time in many years. And though it was never my go-to (I like the second half of the band’s career more for repeat-listening, the real ‘Yacht Rock’ of it all) I certainly did my time with this record. And it sounded wonderful last night. Sometimes time off really gives old records a whole new charm right? Also, proper-good record cover eh….

The absolute FIND though was DM and Jemini The Gifted One’s 2003 collab, Ghetto Pop Life. You know DM now (if you didn’t know him then) as Danger Mouse, the producer and multi-instrumentalist who formed Gnarls Barkley and had massive hits with Gorillaz and Black Keys, but this was back when he was an experimental prankster (soon to be taking Jay-Z’s Black Album and The Beatles’ White album to make his own version: The Grey Album — banned!) But what of Jemini The Gifted One? You can still find his name if you look, but perhaps another sprawling double-album masterpiece by a hip-hop duo released the same year (OutKast’s Speakerboxx/The Love Below) kinda doomed this album down into collector/cult obscurity. Damn, but I loved this record at the time, reviewing it for Wellington’s Newspaper, which back in the old days carried weekly reviews of new music and even regularly commented on live gigs — I know, I was there! And though I’ve heard this a wee bit over the years, and often thought fondly of it without even needing to listen through, it was just such a damn treat to find this on this format. Music finds you at the right time. And then finds you again when you need it. I truly believe that. Always have. Anyway, the whole family was digging this one. It was, quite correctly, a VIBE. And we were feeling it, just like a bunch of awkward whities that had recently been jamming on Steely Dan.

So that’s the score from last night.

And currently the score is:

So it’s back to my own records that I brought with me today. But tonight, Matthew, I’m looking forward to another dive down into the pleasures of someone else’s record collection…

Oh, and here’s the family grab-bag of car-trip listening on the way over. Our random family playlist which works best if you hit shuffle and then it’s a surprise every time:

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And, as always on a Friday, I have made a playlist for your weekend. Plenty here to enjoy! This is A Little Something For The Weekend…Sounds Good! Volume 166. I hope you like it, or find something you’ve never heard before to dig, or maybe get reminded of a wee gem you’d forgotten all about. Happy listening. And happy weekend. Thanks, as always, for reading…

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Earlier in the week, I reviewed Beth Orton and Chris Isaak gigs. See here if you missed them:

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And if you must know, and maybe wanna stay here to check out the records sometime (and bring your own) it’s very much recommended!

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