God I'm glad this didn't happen...
Around 96ish I had a dilemma, the music biz had dried up for me, I didn't join Oasis, couldn't get on with Ryder and the mondays, they wanted musos they could push around, where I was a guy that would've laid the Gallaghers out or Ryder with one punch...Damn that held me back. Besides, in them days I had stopped playing Blackpool tower with my uncle in the Steve Dennis combo (northern club goers would understand) I later met Alan Magee through an album cover artist and he wished he'd known me at that time, great arranger I am, nowadays I arrange and play bass onstage for Cornwalls' highest paid cabaret RnR 50s and 60s band but it's still only small time. A big drop from the heady heights of my Goth days, supporting Sisters of Mercy, The Cult, New Model Army etc, we never made it, a result of my suspicious nature regarding men in suits waving contracts around with lots of small print on them, but...I digress.
I had three kids, the car repairs business wasn't going too well, lots of welding and building RS200 replicas from Mk2 Escorts wasn't paying the bills very much. In music terms my 'stick' was an ornament on the wall hanging by a string, the fact it was a 4001S was meaningless at the time, I had very little in monetary terms.
What about this gas/phone/electric bill? What about the mortgage? Were my lovely wifes mantras at the time. In short I needed one hundred quid and fast. Nowadays I have big collections of Series 1 Land Rovers, vintage guitars, victorian mineral water bottles, Zeiss binoculars, loads of eclectic interesting stuff but then I had one thing that I thought I could sell, my northern soul 45s.
So I phoned a few guys, pretty well known to this day, they post here at SS. The records a 100 count box were, to me precious, MVPs, Younghearts, Gwen Owens, Tomangoes, Barbara Randolph, Dobie Gray, Rubin, Johnny Sayles, The Gems, Susan Barrett, Herbert hunter...You get the picture.
'I'll take a look' was the reply, I had to walk to the other side of town, didn't even have enough petrol or any insurance to drive, the only insurance I had were the trade plates for my bonnetted FG that was insured Recovery for business use only at the garage where I worked, I walked nonetheless, me bing so bad that I daren't drive, my old man bless 'im said I had ' your own seat at the law courts' due to my numerous convictions for violence, drugs and driving (believe it or not it was classed as 'occupational hazard' at the garage I worked at, getting done)...
He looked at the records ' quid apiece I want' (hundred quid bill) 'Johnny sayle on St Lawrence...nah, MVPS nah, Gwen Owens pfft!' It wasn't hapnin. 'But...I have a Tomangoes, that's gotta be twenny quid?' 'Nah it's a reissue, look it says Nashville 95, it's a 1995 reissue' I knew I'd had it longer than that. No offer was coming on the whole box. 'You might try Steve' this was the guy that introduced me to Heroin at 17, so off to his I went... 'I'll give you twenty quid for the box, there's nothing in there but I might sell some for 50p each'...
I walked home dejected and told the dog to 'F**k off' when I got home, only temporarily, he was my best mate... I fronted the wife out and within days had a Talbot to weld, not a Horizon but the smaller sunbeam one, forget now, it was a couple hundred quid job. Did that and fifty notes from work, bill paid and even bought some hash from the rastas...
Everything comes right, my Stick stayed on the wall, I made a point of playing all my records, we had f*** all but as the fabulous furry freak brothers said 'Times with money and no dope are far harder than times with dope and no money'.
So glad that I didn't get a bite on the 45s, here they are now, so many memories, most were gifts from women at niters, I'll let you into a secret here from my womanising days, you didn't hassle them at niters...no, they hassled me, being so young, that's why I was called Babyboy, in the end I settled down with one but that's a whole heap of other stories, my Tomangoes Nashville boot may be worthless but hell, you won't buy it off me, I still remember Jenny who bought it for me, yeah 19 and being shown the 'ins and outs' by a woman of 34, who cares if it's a reissue? Those same records all have a value now, Out of the past boots, Kent 6ts aniversaries all have a value now.
Best wishes, Simon, mad collector/hoarder of worthless junk.
More stories of this nature wanted...
