Return of the weekend finds Post!!

[llmod1]

A guy I work with is a boot sale freak. He goes every single weekend to 2 or 3 boots mainly looking for comics. He does however pick up tons of vinyl which goes into his lock up and stays there until I get to look at it. Managed to get 30 mins in ther today and found for £1-£3 each the following:

Boo Yaa Tribe 7" - RAID

Georgie Fame - Seventh Son - This is all about Somebody Stole my Thunder, fantastic funky fuzz mod organ.

Odyssey - UK original copy of this amazing LP. At least three great tracks, Our Lives are Shaped by What we Love, Battened Ships and Broken Road - Spare

Astrud Gilberto - Once Upon a Summertime - Not seen this one before, probably a bit early to be really interesting.

Jerry Goldsmith - The Omen - Incredibly haunting soundtrack, great stuff.

Parliament, Funkadelic & The P Funk Allstars - Follow the Leader - Promo only double pack 12" release.

The Enid - Aerie Faerie Nonsense

Kinks - Well Respected Kinks

Grover washington JR - Live at the Bijou - Double LP includes the much sampled Mr Magic

YMO - BGM + Service - Bought these because I've read loads of articles where Bam cites them as a major influence on him.

Jethro Tull - Stand UP

KIng Crimson - In the Court of

Malcolm McLaren - Swamp Thing - Not seen this LP before,seems to be from the same era as the Duck Rock LP.

[wayne]

The Enid - Aerie Faerie Nonsense

.

What's this like? I saw about 6 of their LPs (including that one) in a Derby Charity a few weeks back, but left them because at £3 each I wasn't convinced they'd have anything good on them...I'm assuming you'll now tell me it's a £50 LP packed with fantastic prog-folk grooves...

Ah well. Wrote up a list of finds from the past couple of weeks awhile back, so here's what I DID buy instead...will update if I find anything decent tomorrow - though the rain out there will no doubt mean scant stalls to look over tomorrow morning even if it clears up!

Ananda Shankar – S/T (Reprise) [nice UK original for 50p, out of a box of Cilla Black and assorted uninteresting easy & MOR LPs…good to supplement the much-played CD version after all these years]

Paul Jones/George Bean Group/Mike Leander – Privilege OST (EMI) [only a week or two ago got a copy of the Peter Watkins film from a fellow Vulture and kept thinking ‘I wonder if this is on vinyl…’. MVE’s soundtrack shop in Notting Hill came up trumps while I had a fistful of trade vouchers, and it’s superb stuff, ranging from orchestral beat on the title cut to organ heavy mod-psych on ‘Free Me’ and ‘It’s Overotherness Time’…]

John & Beverley Martyn – Stormbringer (Island) [I've waited and waited...and it's been well worth the wait. A shame Beverley’s songwriting didn’t continue being committed to vinyl, given that some of the best cuts on here are hers...]

Shusha – Persian Love Songs & Mystic Chants (Lyrichord) [fairly sparse drum/voice/flute arrangements of trad. Arabic songs, with none other than Duncan Lamont involved…no Devil’s Anvil, but a very beautiful LP on its own terms]

The Living Tradition: Ragas From Benares (Argo) [collection of 1954 recordings of Indian traditional music involving sitars, tabla, vina, sahnai and the rest. The tabla track might interest a few beat-samplers, but otherwise it’s zero funk, just beautiful trad stuff all the way…]

Blowzabella – Vanilla (Special Delivery) [1989 set from folk outfit playing hurdy gurdy, accordeon, cello, percussion, bagpipes, melodeons and the like in improvised folk-jazzy style. Surprisingly good LP, well worth picking up if you like a bit of folk/jazz/medieval gear occasionally]

War – The World Is A Ghetto (UA) [Cisco Kid is the standout on a solid latin-inflected soul-jazz set…]

Gordon Parks – Shaft’s Big Score (MGM) [I know it’s not a patch on Isaac Hayes’ Stax double, but this is very enjoyable stuff nonetheless...blax-by-numbers in places, to be sure, but hard to dislike…]

Quincy Jones - $ (Reprise) [Never seen the movie of this, but the OST hints it’d be well worth a viewing. Did Little Richard get this funky elsewhere?]

Ventures – Let’s Go/$1,000,000 Weekend/Knock Me Out/Go! (Liberty) [all these have several of those go-go/twang-funk tracks that make Ventures LPs always worth a listen…everything from El Watusi, Ode To Billie Joe, She’s Not There, Respect, Uptight and Eight Miles High get a good going over, but the best cuts are the originals and Love Potion Number Nine on ‘Knock Me Out’]

Ted Heath Orchestra – Plays Beatles, Bach & Bacharach (Phase 4) [John Keating produced set of classy lounge arrangements of Norwegian Wood, Hey Jude, Minuet In G, Never Fall In Love Again etc. Very EZ, but packed with lovely 60s baroque gear]

Francoise Hardy – Francoise Mon Amour (Marble Arch) [I guess you either like FH or you don’t…I do, so this set of her spare songs with orchestral backing slips down a treat]

Nancy Sinatra – Nancy In London/Nancy/Country My Way (Reprise) [can’t knock Frank’s girl, can you? Possibly the most blatant example of nepotism in pop history, but dammit she had Lee Hazlewood on board, and as a consequence made some unassailably good swinging 60s sets like ‘In London’, which doesn’t put a boot out of place, the patchier ‘Nancy’ (which delivers a great Son Of A Preacher Man, among other things), and ‘Country My Way’, which is the most MOR of the three, but is still very listenable amid all the slick Hazlewood-Nashville stylings]

Beth Orton – Best Bit EP (Heavenly) [4 track 12” with Terry Callier, and possibly her best set to date? Having said that, ‘Trailer Park’ still sounds pretty much perfect to me…and didn't she sing on Red Snapper’s underrated ‘In Deep’ too?]

Christine McVie – Legendary Christine Perfect Album (Sire) [70s reissue of classic folk-funk set…was expecting a bit of a one-tracker, but it’s a solid LP: ‘That’s Saying A Lot’ is the highlight, as expected, but not by anything like the margin I'd been led to believe…]

Joan Baez – Baptism (Vanguard) [set of recitations with effects & backing, and songs, all built on poems by the likes of John Donne, Garcia-Lorca, Arthur Rimbaud, Wilfred Owen and the like. Her setting of Henry Treece’s ‘The Magic Wood’ is amazing, and ‘Song In The Blood’, ‘Minister Of War’ and ‘London’ are the highest peaks on what amounts to a solid, severely underrated folk-prog concept LP]

Hubler/Schwab – Vampyros Lesbos: Sexadelic Dance Party (Crippled Dick) [the much spun CD gets a blue vinyl substitute - possibly one of my favourite LPs...Ever!]

5678s – Bomb The Rocks: Early Days Singles 1989 – 1996 (Time Bomb Records) [double LP of Japanese girl-garage gear as seen in Kill Bill Part One…very much tutored at the Medway school of garage]

David Holmes – Presents The Free Association (13 Amp) [2xLP version of patchy set, but when the highlights are as high as ‘Wish I Had A Wooden Heart’ I’m not sure even the Holmes naysayers can really argue…]

Hopefully more to follow after tomorrow's boot!

[Ian Townsend]

Odyssey - UK original copy of this amazing LP. At least three great tracks, Our Lives are Shaped by What we Love, Battened Ships and Broken Road - Spare
.

PM for you on that one Mark
( Edit:....or pass until I get better spares!)

[mech1]

David Holmes – Presents The Free Association (13 Amp) [2xLP version of patchy set, but when the highlights are as high as ‘Wish I Had A Wooden Heart’ I’m not sure even the Holmes naysayers can really argue…]

I scored this on vinyl too last week

[Parkz]

Larry Robbins/Dynamic Drums Plus

Nice library consisting drum and bass/guitar driven tracks, a hp hop producers dream!

Shawn Phillips/Spaced
A record that I’ve been meaning to pick up of ages now, and glad I eventually did.
I remembered this as being a one track but now find that the whole of side B is dope.

Einu Sinni Var/Visur ur visnabokinni

Wow my first record from Iceland!!!
Think this is a children’s record (but I’m not sure) and it’s complete rubbish apart from the rather nice drum break on ‘Fyrr var oft I knot Katt’

That’s the lot this week.
I’m skint.

[jakartajive]

Geez, you guys should count your blessings, being in areas where Ananda Shankar in any shape or form pops up at boots. The junk shops and boots of north London tend to yield far more meagre hauls. This weekend it was simply these three for me:

CCS - Hang it on me
Top-notch funky rock business, with some wicked breakdowns and beats. From '72, I think. B-side a bit more lacklustre.

GEORGIE FAME - Hall of Fame
A pretty battered copy with a warp so bad the first three cuts on either side skip like mad. Still get to groove to 'In the meantime', 'Get on the right track, baby' and my personla fave - the Hammond goes ever-so-slightly ska skit of 'Outrage' - perfect tune to have on whilst the Sunday cleaning gets done, sunshine streaming through the window, coffee on the go.

MELANIE - Garden in the city
A speculative punt, really. I know this one is oft hyped as "folk funk classis" on the bay, and it's always nice to hear Harold McNair, but surely I can't be the only oen to find her voice just ever-so slightly grating?

There you go. That's all for now, folks.

[wayne]

Well, rain stopped, and boot was busier than expected, with a few nice bits dotted around, but mostly concentrated in the cheap boxes of one particular seller. Also - on a completely unrelated note - picked up a 40p copy of the fake travel guide to Molvania book, which has had me chortling all afternoon.

LP:

Ritchie Havens – The Great Blind Degree (Stormy Forest) [typical soulful fare from 1971 or thereabouts, mainly songs on eco themes…sort of like his own version of What’s Goin On, or Terry Callier’s stuff at the time, lush orchestral arrangements, state of the world lyrics and covers of Tommy, Fire & Rain etc. Not Marvin or Terry, then, but a pretty good all round listen anyway]

George Martin Orchestra – Help! (Studio Two) [Martin covers some key ’65 era Beatles songs like Ticket To Ride, Help, etc, many not so well known ones, like I Need You, Another Girl, It’s Only Love, Tell Me What You See, then bungs on his own Bahama Sound for a slice of the publishing royalty. Inventive, breezy latin/bossa and Swinging London big-band feel overall, and well worth a couple of quid if you’re prepared to go early and forego the funk…]

V/A – Wattstax (Stax) & V/A – Wattstax 2 (Stax) [4 LPs of prime Stax roster, live. Just bunged on side 1 with The Staple Singers and practically converted halfway through the set. Luckily Eddie Floyd turned up with Knock On Wood afterwards, so my traditional Godless Sunday was quickly restored…]

Bongwater – Double Bummer (Shimmy Disc) [lo-fi eclecticism gone mad, but oddly compelling on a track through this morning, with everything from Garage rock, throwaway nonsense, blasts of samples/tape cut up, off-kilter country and 60s girl-group sounds…and that’s just one of the four sides]

Vivian Stanshall – Sir Henry At Rawlinson End (Charisma) [bit crackly in places, but this must be one of the few LPs a bit of surface noise adds to rather than detracts from…makes me think I’m hearing it on a wind-up gramophone on a 78 shellac disc which is quite appropriate, really…]

Nina Simone – Sings Ellington (Pye) [fairly straight early big-band jazz singing – by her standards anyway – but something in her voice makes even that sound earth-shaking…and Hey Buddy Bolden is brilliant]

Brian Eno/David Byrne – My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts (EG) [be interesting to see how this stands up to my largely favourable memories of it… EDIT: answer - it stands up very well, actually...]

45s, all 20p each from the same seller’s boxes. Hidden among the endless Wham, Junior, Jive Bunny, Tight Fit & St Winifred’s School Choir were, bizarrely:

Barnes & Adams - Rhythm & Crunch (Smiths Crisps flexi) [no sleeve, but nice nick and great Carnaby Street go-go/funk track]

Patrick Allen – Elusive: A Fragrance Ballad (Avon) [another promo flexi – lovely spooked harmony-folk song, interrupted by some hard sell aimed at Avon reps…worth looking out for]

Godiego – Monkey Magic c/w Gandhara/Thank You Baby (BBC) [spare of classic funky Japanese TV theme w/pic sleeve…]

David McWilliams – By The Lights Of Cyrian c/w Toby (EMI) [1977 track, first listen to a-side sounds better than anticipated, nice proggy pop-folk type business, catchy as you like…]

The Human League – Being Boiled c/w Circus Of Death (Fast) [funnily enough, this came up in conversation last weekend, as a friend wondered why the tracks on the pub jukebox were ‘Abracadabra’ rather than the likes of this…]

[wallace]

Joan Baez – Baptism (Vanguard) [set of recitations with effects & backing, and songs, all built on poems by the likes of John Donne, Garcia-Lorca, Arthur Rimbaud, Wilfred Owen and the like. Her setting of Henry Treece’s ‘The Magic Wood’ is amazing

Agree heartily.
Wallace dont usually care for Baez, but that "Magic Wood" track is as if she is on a different world.
Wallace wonders if this appears somewhere on 12 odd wyrdfolk sampler disks put out by The Unbroken Circle site.
If not, it most certainly should.

[emperor tomato ketchup]

Shawn Phillips/Spaced
A record that I’ve been meaning to pick up of ages now, and glad I eventually did.
I remembered this as being a one track but now find that the whole of side B is dope.
.

Doh - I passed on it recently.

[Sie Vulture]

Doh - I passed on it recently.

Yeah man, double d'oh I say... it's a great LP...

[emperor tomato ketchup]

Yeah man, double d'oh I say... it's a great LP...

It was a fiver and condition was not perfect. Thats my excuse. I'm sure with a naff cover like that it'll turn up again.

[Benicio Del Toffo]

Pickings slimmer than Karen Carpenter during a sponsored fast for me lately.

Managed to grab one or two bits on Saturday while out looking haberdashery-type items:

Roy Budd 'Lead On' - Not had chance to listen to this yet. From the track-listing and Roy's swinging hep-cat + Jag pose, I'm expecting some of his more straight-ahead 60s soundtrack jazz, but a bit short on the funkier grooves - a fair guess?

(These three were in Barnardos 3-for-£1 box)

Tony Back/Ad-Rhythm 'Dance Party 3' - High on the 'Oof!' factor for me. Some of the tunes have a bit of a groove to them, but the organ being peddled doesn't help, rendering the whole a bit too cheesy and forcing me to lob it towards my 'freebies' pile.

Cast 'The Black Mikado' - My hopes weren't high and it's actually not too bad. Some decent sub-AWB funkiness on here. The cast includes Floella Benjamin and the mighty Derek Griffiths, which leaves you wondering how many Black people actually had Equity cards in the 70s, we don't seem to be drawing from a huge talent pool here! What's great about this LP is that the bass player is a chap called Colin Vallance. It isn't my Uncle Colin though. My Uncle's a fair bit younger. And a twat.

Ella Fitzgerald 'Sunshine of Your Love' - Odd to find this in amongst all the classical and opera etc. I'd have picked it up to punt on anyway, but remembered this LP used to be on lists for £20 or so back in the early/mid 90s. Nicely recorded from live but with the traditional interference associated with live recordings (intros, applause, heckling etc) pared right back to leave the barest smattering of applause at the beginning and end of each track. The take on 'Hey Jude' is great and the title track is a slow-burning piece of sleazy jazz, well worth owning. But the rest of the album is just boring, jazz crooning as the old dear needs to sit down after exerting herself with contemporary tunes so early on. Shame, after those opening two tunes you'd think they'd have made a whole album in that vein - the band are clearly capable of it. Still, a couple of good tracks for 33.3p, that's fine with me.

and the best of the weekend:

Keith Mansfield/Steve Ellis/OST 'Loot' - Well known to VV regulars and still quite in-demand. Library / mod stylings with lots of hammond organ. Some cracking funky groovers on here (especially 'Loot's The Root'), breaks on 'Undertaker's Song', sampleable loops a-plenty. Some of the dialogue snippets are just plain weird though! Don't feel too jealous, it wasn't a charity shop find, but it wasn't too pricey either. Sleeve's in decent condition, vinyl's excellent and I managed to trade a load of chuff for it, so everybody's happy nowadays.


Now I'm just waiting for play.com to send my Black Keys DVD and I'll be a happy bunny.

[Rich Hero]

Roy Budd 'Lead On' - Not had chance to listen to this yet. From the track-listing and Roy's swinging hep-cat + Jag pose, I'm expecting some of his more straight-ahead 60s soundtrack jazz, but a bit short on the funkier grooves - a fair guess?

Yep, pretty straight but his take on 'Pavane' is nice.