#2 The Stranglers - La Folie

I bought my first Stranglers record in 1984, when Aural Sculpture came out. Not their greatest effort, but I'd been busily making up for lost time by devouring their previous efforts by way of three C90 tapes full of their first albums taped for me by a helpful school chum. La Folie was on one of these cassettes, and it was matched up with Feline on the other side. Feline, as I recall, was pretty dire - awful electronic drum sounds and a 'mellower' direction. I always have associated La Folie itself with the title track, which is a wistful lament sung in French,  (though atmospheric, a long way from 'Bring on the Nubiles'.) As a result, that particular tape got a lot less play than the ones containing their first 4 albums.

 

As years went on, I slowly and surely bought their early albums on vinyl, mainly from secondhand shops. I've got two copies of Black and White for some reason! Evidently from the sticker on the front, I bought this from one of London's Record & Tape exchanges for £2, which isn't a bad deal at all. So, how does La Folie stand up years after being paired with Feline & consequently given somewhat short shrift? Well, it turns out to be a lot better than I thought. Due to the afformentioned Feline fiasco, I'd always thought that La Folie had a bit of a crummy plastic sound to it, but in reality it sounds like vintage Stranglers. Quite a few stormers on there - 'Let Me Introduce You to the Family' & 'The Man They Love to Hate' stick out, as does 'How to Find True Love and Happiness in the Present Day'. 'Golden Brown' sticks out in a different way - a true classic that everyone knows (though only a minority seem to realise it's by the Stranglers!). Only one dud to my mind - 'Pin-Up'.

 

Anyway, while this certainly points to the softer direction the band was (temporarily) headed in, it's definitely one to be included as part of their first incarnation, when they were firing on all cylinders.

 

#1 Roger Miller - No Man is Hurting Me LP

So, the first LP picked at random from my collection. I say random, but my records are arranged by musical style, and this first record comes from the section where many of my favourite records lie, so I knew it was bound to be a decent start. Roger Miller plays guitar, sings, and writes songs for the unbelievably awesome Mission of Burma, but this LP was made near the start of their long hiatus, between 1984-86. As a fan of Burma, this album leapt at me when I spied it in a record shop just off Portobello Road. "US Mission of Burma Man £8" says the little sticker on the front, and I snapped it up, not even being aware of the albums existence before I happened upon it in this little shop. This was in a time before the internet, and discographies were the sort of thing you might happen upon in a fanzine if you were lucky. £8 was a little expensive for a second-hand record at the time, but still it was a no-brainer for me.

Anyway, this record is one that's very familier to me and gets played quite a lot. The new-wave look to the album cover is very of its time, but what's inside bears no relation to anything with a skinny tie & pleated chinos. Roger Miller seems to be bursting with ideas on this record, incorporating all manner of sounds and techniques to create an overall sound that really doesn't sound like anything else. His modified electric piano is at the core and blends dissonance and melody to great effect. You really get the impression that RM was having a great time making this record - the tinnitus which curtailed his playing with Burma was obviously no barrier to making music with oomph.

 

 

Reviews of 500 vinyl records selected relatively randomly from my record collection

I just moved all my records from one house to another. Not the most enjoyable tasks, as they weigh a lot and are easily damaged. It also meant taking down the IKEA Expedit shelves and putting them back together again (a factor in 6% of murders in Northern Europe). All in all, a ball-ache, but with a silver lining of actually getting to see some of my records for the first time in years.

The strange thing about having your records all stacked up nicely is that you hardly ever see the covers, just the spines. Those with a thin spine can go missing entirely. I realised that there were large numbers of records that I'd not played in years and got an overwhelmingly morbid thought that I'd probably never play a significant proportion of them again. It's far too easy just to play mp3's when using the computer or CDs when bobbing about the house.

Disturbed by my loved, but rarely used records languishing on the shelves, it struck me to make an effort to listen to a good proportion of them. In fact, not only that - to write out my thoughts on what they sound like, and what they meant to me when I bought them. Whether they ever got a fair hearing, or were they just a mistake, listened to the once and forever consigned to my shelves. Anyway, I randomly decided to try to check out 500 as that should keep me going for a couple of years and this blog will be the result.