Listen, seek, read and wait - in no particular order

This is something that could never have been planned. Last Thursday it was my birthday and I didn't have much idea of a present that I might buy for myself.  Yesterday, as I was taking a day off work, I walked into town in the summer sunshine with the main reason that I wanted to purchase tickets for King King live in November.
I was in no particular hurry to get home and decided to poke about in the various charity shops on my way back. Just sometimes interesting railway books are to be found languishing on the shelves, but not on this occasion.
It turned out however to be a decision that gave me a birthday present to myself for next to nothing. I have been collecting such things for a while. I remember being introduced to the music of Bob Dylan by Radio Caroline in the early 1980s when I was a student at UKC. It may have taken me the better part of thirty years to catch up with this release, the much reviled electric-one, but better late than never.
Then there was a problem - how much would it cost. I didn't want to look too excited or draw attention to the particular one that I had found in a newly-arrived box of fifteen vinyl records.
I enquired and some vacillation followed. In the end I offered £20 for the lot as an opening gambit. It was accepted immediately and I headed home with a box that was heavy to carry even with handles made of parcel tape by the staff in the shop.

It is Columbia CS 9189 - the original US release from August 1965. There have been many other releases of it subsequently, even on vinyl. The first song on it is 'Like A Rolling Stone' and it was recorded for the album on 15 June 1965 (so fifty years to the day). Columbia doubted its viability as a single as it is over six minutes long; it remains Dylan's best selling single.

At the other end of the time scale is this: Flo Morrissey is an artist who, at just twenty, seems to have wandered out of Laurel Canyon without ageing in the intervening decades to release her début album Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful on Glassnote.

Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful is not the perfect album but in a way it would be worrisome if it were. It's title might indeed allude to that. There is far too much pressure on new artists now.
This is 'Sleeplessly Dreaming', live.


It is however a thing of rare vision. Few realised the importance of Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell at first. Flo Morrissey played Green Man Festival last year but I didn't see her play. This was a big mistake but then again I can't be in more than one place at a time. She plays End of The Road 2015 and I shall be there watching and listening.

Record Store Day 2014 - old favourites

I thought I'd go back to the future with my thoughts on the forthcoming Record Store Day 2014. What are your thoughts, perhaps from RSD past, and what you would like to see in 2014?
To take it all back a step, what are the possibly unusual records from years ago that you own and treasure? There is no need for these to be rare or valuable... I own 5 copies of Thin Lizzy's - Black Rose (A Rock Legend) on vinyl but the one I am listening to right now is Vertigo 60 63 169. It sounds just the same as any other but is, in fact, the original Spanish release (1979).
To own a few curiosities, even if they have no particular pecuniary value, is appealing for some of us.
Rather soon after I went away to university, in the autumn of 1983, I was exposed to much new music some of which I liked and some not. Some of both still always reminds me of that time. Another factor is that time more or less coincided with the renaissance of Radio Caroline. As I was in North Kent and MV Ross Revenge was not that far away the station was almost receivable with the radio turned off! 
It also had, and still does, the tendency to play albums. It is arguably, along with my decision to go to festivals from 2007, one of the defining moments of my music-listening life. I credit it with, amongst others some of which I did not appreciate at the time, introducing me to the work of Bob Dylan.

I don't recall this album from that time, maybe it was deemed old even then, but I doubt that was the reason as I certainly remember the station playing Free, which was again largely new to me but just as old.
I actually have some rather strange memory-evidence for this assertion. Another artist that Radio Caroline introduced me to was Jimi Hendrix and while I well remember hearing his version of 'All Along The Watchtower' back then it was probably twenty-five years before I actually realized that it was a Dylan cover, from the aforementioned album of course. How naïve was I?
You could reasonably pin a great deal of my musical taste on that which I heard in my time at University. I still hate Phil Collins' music, for example.

This is becoming rather more "Thoughts On Music" than I planned (because I didn't actually do any planning for this post) but I'm rather enjoying it. None of this endeavour was planned anyway, and I did say that in the event that I reached 100 posts I would retire.
I'm sorry. I changed my mind: this is the 838th.