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Articles: The Story of Bob Abrahamian and his radio show Sitting In The Park


Chalky

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Great article.

I didn't realise Bob was tied up with Rick from Dusty Groove so that was interesting (I met Rick when he came to London sometime in the late 90's).

It's interesting how different people get into it isn't it? In the North of the UK in the late 60's and early 70's obscure Soul music was relatively easily available in most places. Even the youth clubs were playing decent Motown and Soul, so from a relatively young age we were exposed to it and had plenty of opportunites to dig deeper if we wanted to. Record supplies were abundant and cheap with Bostocks, Global, Soul Bowl, Robinsons etc mass importing U.S. 45 cut-outs which cost the equivalent of 5p-25p each. So really we were spoilt with choice. I did a Saturday job in Bradford in 1971 and brought 40 U.S. records back home every week for £2.00 (my Saturday wage was £2.50 at the time). That was a brilliant way to discover music for me. And cheap.

However, in the U.S. I've found many collectors who were self-generating, i.e. not necessarily influenced by a 'scene' but rather by their own curiosity and passion. So they'd tend to have wider collections which took in a lot more influences and their collections would often be better to look through because they'd have all sorts of oddball records. The best stuff I found in L.A. in 1976 came from a 'Garage' (60's local L.A. recordings) collector who looked like Charles Manson and had a similar taste in music. But the stuff he had was incredible.

It's good to see that the U.S. has people who care enough about the local scenes. If there was a Bob in every U.S. state, then loads of stuff would be unearthed.

Nice one!

Ian D biggrin.png

So, you had the pleasure of meeting John Hillyard, or, perhaps it was Chris Peake.  Hillyard is weird, but very friendly.  Peake is harmless, but looks incredibly sinister.  He looks less like Manson than Hillyard, but might bring Manson to mind more than John.

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Bob amassed an incredible music collection, and learned an incredible amount about Chicago Soul and US general Soul music in a very short time (as opposed to us normal "lifetime collectors".  And he was able to share it with all of us, and thousands more.  What he did was amazing.  

 

Too bad his understanding of that fact did not provide him with the feeling that would have overridden the feeling that caused him to commit the irrational action to take his own life, when he'd likely have been better off to live on and see the fruits of his work do more and more good for a lot of people.

Nicely put rob

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