49p Skidoo & Help The Randy Aged

'I'm being led up the garden path..'

Fresh coffee, Lindt Roasted Sesame chocolate (dark) and Chick Corea on the turntable - whoo-eee! - I know how to live! That's as exciting as my life gets. Sorry, I'd love to post about my latest white-knuckle must-do-before-you-die near-death adventure but...I'm sure you can find that kind of blog somewhere. I'd never follow such a thing. I prefer seeing that people are leading duller lives than mine. Don't you? It's a way of making myself feel better.

More excitement this morning when I found these for 49p each in the charity shop. Yes, it was a case of 'I'm having that at this price' which, as you know, usually means buying what you wouldn't if it was a pound more expensive, i.e., mediocre albums. Still, there's nothing mediocre about Charles Lloyd's playing on the Chico Hamilton albums, or the prog-modernist-neo-bop excellence of the Chick Corea double, Inner Space. I owned 23 Skidoo's Seven Songs when when it came out, sold it years later, got it on MP3 then, as you can see, welcomed it back in its original form. Ain't it funny, this modern music lark...all the possible mediums and the way we utilise them? The way they play with your head. They do mine, anyway, because buying it again on vinyl was unnecessary, of course, yet the combination of price, condition and nostalgia for vinyl won me over easily. 'Pay No More Than £2.99' is says on the sleeve. 

I've a weakness for cha-cha-cha or mambo albums, in good nick, original (of course), so here's Perez Prado's Mambo Jambo, complete with obligatory young woman in exotic attire amid skins (it's usually that or semi-naked go-go babes, you know)...

...and it's helpful to have hand-written descriptions next to tunes, don't you think? It whets the appetite. I wonder if the previous owner was a DJ...

...David Hamilton, DJ for the Help The Aged radio station, was entertaining me whilst I flicked through the vinyl. He was more entertaining than he intended when, having played Randy Crawford's version of Rainy Night In Georgia, he started to name it as 'Randy Nigh-' before stopping himself - ha-ha! Well, I thought it was funny...talk of randy nights on a Help The Aged station. Mind you, I'm not saying old folk shouldn't be randy...