The Miseducation of
otis.youth Part 4
By the time I graduated from University, I had accumulated a
basic record collection including a handful of items on pre-recorded cassettes
and an even smaller number that I’d taped myself. In a gap between finishing
studies and commencing full time employment, I assembled my first catalogue
which I still have today. Originally, it
was a single sheet of paper in which all 114 items in my collection were listed
in alphabetical order by artist. A gap
at the bottom of the reverse side is headed “subsequent additions” and lists every
item added to my collection since in the order in which I had obtained
them. I’m reasonably sure librarians and
archivists describe this form of document as an “accession register” but to me,
this has always been my “subsequent additions” list and I’ve maintained it, in
an increasingly indecipherable handwritten scrawl, to the present day.
Anyone reading this initial list today might form the view
that my taste was fairly conservative compared to what I’d been hearing at
University. The first four Dire Straits
albums are there, so are two albums by (grossly) underrated Atlanta Rhythm
Section, three by each of the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, two by The Little River
Band, four by Pink Floyd, two by 10CC and even Toto’s self titled debut. This reflects nothing more than my ability to
find and purchase albums at a very cheap price or via tape trades. I didn’t really know anyone who collected the
material I loved hearing at University. The number of shops selling such music
at the time was rather limited and the items were priced well outside my
reach.
This is also a fairly reliable indicator that I was still
listening to a lot of music on the radio and watching it on TV at that
time. Television’s influence was to die
once I started full time employment and I could obtain precisely what I wanted
to hear. Countdown became increasingly
irrelevant, especially when it started using gimmicks to attach viewers such as
dance contests, and Nightmoves eventually ceased production. Radio, and in particular 3RRR, led my ears to
strange new destinations.
Looking over my first record catalogue I can well remember the
circumstances of some of the early purchases.
I obtained one of Atlanta Rhythm Section albums, the rather fine A Rock
And Roll Alternative, on cassette from a Brashs sale one of my walks from
Flinders Street Station to Uni. My
introduction to the recorded works of Randy Newman began when I bought a cassette
copy of his Born Again album for 99 cents at a Coles Variety Store on a suburban
Friday night shopping excursion. My
vinyl copy of Pablo Cruise’s Part Of The Game was purloined for about two
dollars from a Coles store in the City, my having remembered a great review it
had received in the paper a few months earlier.
Mulder taped my first Neil Young studio album, Hawks And Doves in return
for my taping Live Rust for him. That
turned out to be a good deal as I had to rely on that tape whenever I wanted to
listen to that album right up until Neil finally sanctioned its release on CD a
few years ago.
All of this was happening against the background of the very
gradual introduction of the compact disc. I managed to resist this for an
incredibly long time initially due to the need to save money to obtain a CD
player and then the discs. Later on, I
was opposed to them for the very simple reason that I couldn’t understand what
the fuss was about. A friend of mine,
who I shall call Andy, was an early and, for me, only convert to the cause. He would play me CD versions of the early
Dire Straits albums pointing out spots where there was a marked improvement in
the sound quality. I’d nod my head in
approval, but in reality, I couldn’t hear a better sound. I still don’t; if you haven’t played your
vinyls for a number of years now trying doing do. You’ll find that the vinyl
sound has a depth and warmth to it that’s not apparent in many CDs. In any case, I couldn’t see the benefits of
buying a CD player without having assembled a library of discs first. Even then I didn’t start really gathering CD’s
until the late 1980’s when it became apparent that vinyls were being phased
out.
Finally, I got a full time job and with it the need to get a
car. Fortunately a sibling was upgrading
and so I obtained her, already used car.
The combination of steady job (plus income) and car had a major effect
on my habits. Almost immediately, I
started to buy the items I wanted for the collection. My first real target were the albums released
by the members of the so called US West Coast Paisley Underground – acts such
as The Dream Syndicate, The Long Ryders, Rain Parade, etc and other acts loosely
attached to the scene such as Jason And The Scorchers. A strange act from Athens Georgia called R.E.M.
also caught my attention and I started to add albums from Blues giants
including Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Bo
Diddley, young guns Robert Cray and Stevie Ray Vaughn and many others. In fact it was an awesome Stevie Ray
performance I saw in Melbourne on 26 October 1984 on his first Australian tour that
set off this bout of blues exploration.
The car gave me the freedom to do a lot of things. For starters it meant that I could go to
great many my shops in sourcing additions to the Collection. This was a godsend. In my student and unemployed era, I was a
slave to public transport and I was able to devise these mental maps where I
could criss cross my part of Melbourne’s suburbs to visit the stores I knew
would hold cheap product for purchase. It also enabled me to visit BJ who lived
on the other side of the Melbourne metropolitan area and he introduced me to
the places in his area where he obtained his music and it put me within reach
of this new yellow shop in East Keilor which sold albums incredibly
cheaply.
Finally, a car and a wage meant I could start gigging on a
regular basis. By the end of 1986 my gig
rate had started to accelerate that I started to compile a list of all the gigs
I’ve attended. In that year alone, I saw
the same number of gigs as I had over the previous three. Fortunately, I had retained the ticket stubs
from these gigs and so my gig list starts with a Festival Hall gin on 19 March
1983 by Dire Straits. The support act
that night was The Church and it was that performance that made me a fan of
theirs.
And so with money, mobility and no long term marriage
prospects, the gates to Nirvana had been opened and I was ready to participate in an orgy of consumerism. The next 10-15 years were effectively
to see me married to my passion.
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