Heathen Chemistry / Record Fair

Growing up in a reasonably sized village, well served by greengrocers and butchers but lacking record shops, meant an excursion into the market town nearby if I wanted to feed my burgeoning vinyl habit. Back in the Eighties the sleepy borough of Fareham was well served with vinyl peddlers; both Woolies and WHSmiths had racks of chart music and, though compact, the local branch of Our Price still managed to cram its shelves with enough delights to empty my wallet. 

However it was the dark yet welcoming confines of Venus Records, the only independent record shop in town, where most of my allowance was spent; one of my earliest record buying memories is of foraging through its 99p 12" singles rack, trying to find a gem amongst the generic, fuelled by whatever new music Mike Read et al had debuted on that week's Saturday Superstore. 

Despite my weekly purchases, which increased considerably once I'd left school and secured regular employment of sorts (does YTS count?), times became hard for record shops. Eventually the shutters came down on Venus, though the faces behind its counter were soon enough serving me in newcomer MVC (which would would also falter, rebrand as Music Zone, before disappearing). 

American chain Sam Goody made a fleeting appearance, well-stocked but expensive it soon closed, its place in the shopping centre soon taken by an opticians. Our Price battled on before it too threw in the towel, leaving only Woolworths and WHSmiths as the town's go-to record shops. Woolies famously folded, taking its supply chain with it, and that (as they say) was that; good luck buying anything that wasn't charting.

After some years with no record shop to speak of, with only the appearance of a pop-up HMV store at Christmastime, flogging DVD boxsets and novelty items to the harried and indiscriminate shopper, I had voted with my wallet and moved on to buying online or sampling the wares in Portsmouth's larger music emporia. With vinyl's resurgence however independent stores began to reappear on high streets across the land; Southsea's Pie & Vinyl led the way locally, then came Elephant Records in Winchester and, most recently, Heathen Chemistry in Fareham. 

This labour of love, with its framed Oasis posters and OSB racking, has been open for a couple of years now and has easily become a focal point for the town's vinylheads. Selling both new and pre-loved records and CDs it boasts, as many record shops do, a friendly atmosphere; I popped in a few months after opening, intending only to check the place out, and ended up spending a good half an hour or so talking to its affable owner about all things round and shiny.

Building upon its place in the local vinyl scene Heathen Chemistry has now branched into organising record fairs; following the success of its first event last November the shop has announced its next fair for Saturday 16th March, at a venue just a short stroll from the shop itself.

If you're interested in hosting a table to sell your wares then contact the shop, if you're more of a buyer than a seller you can rock up at Harmony Hall (yes, like the current Vampire Weekend single) and add to your ever-growing collection of musical platters; doors open at 1030 and the trading continues until 1600.

An Eighties Challenge, Day Six

It's the sixth day of my Eighties Challenge, a seven day stroll down a memory lane that's in dire need of better street lamps, foraging through the overgrown musical shrubbery.

In many ways the Eighties were a simpler time, with less distractions and smaller supermarkets. Fewer television channels, no Internet, no mobile phones. To be honest I wonder what we did with ourselves without Facebook or Wikipedia to keep us occupied. Surely we can't have spent the whole time drinking tea and making polite conversation about the weather? Thank heavens that nice Tim Berners-Lee bloke invented the World Wide Web so I could stay home and look at vinyl online, not spend a lot of my time in record shops ogling their merchandise.

Back then my home town of Fareham was blessed with several of places to buy vinyl, consequently many of my Saturdays were spent ricocheting from shop to shop in pursuit of some 12" or other. The record sections of WHSmith and Woolies, the bijou shininess of Our Price and, of course, the slightly dog-eared delights of Venus Records. I spent hours in all of them, but the most time in Venus, flicking through the racks, admiring the posters on the walls, paying attention to the tunes that got played by the staff (that scene in High Fidelity, where Rob states that he will sell five copies of The Three EPs by The Beta Band, is embarrassingly close to the mark; I bought the 7" of Perfect by Fairground Attraction from there after hearing to it played over and over; the Scottish guy behind the counter was adamant it would be a hit, and he was right).

A large corner of my bedroom was taken up with an ever growing collection of vinyl, most of it brought home in the familiar white carrier bags that sported the Venus Records logo, a ridiculous haul of 12" singles. As I near the end of this seven day challenge, and the memory banks of my brain warm up, I'm remembering too many of these songs that I could post. Do I pick The Big Dish's Christina's World, a nice slice of Scottish pop rock? How about Horse's mighty You Could Be Forgiven? Danny Wilson's evergreen Mary's Prayer (the 12" of which features a country-flavoured take, Mary's Prairie, on the flip side) perhaps? Am I swayed by the choice vocals of Do-Re-Mi's Deborah Conway on Adultery or do I take the opportunity to choose something by the Pet Shop Boys? Nope, none of those (though I may do a follow post of 'bonus tracks' later).

Today's band, Fire Next Time, were a four piece from Leicester; strange then that I only heard of them thanks to spending way too much time loitering among the racks in a record shop in Fareham. They never broke it big, only releasing a handful of singles and the one album before disbanding but, thanks to them scoring a support slot for a tour with The Icicle Works, I got to see them live. To be honest my memory is a bit hazy about the gig itself; I remember them being rather good, I'm fairly certain that at least one of them was wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt, I'm definite that neither my brother or I were all that bothered about watching Icicle Works' set after. The other thing I'm sure of is that we bumped into the aforementioned Scottish chap from Venus Records, he who sold me Perfect, as he turned out to be chums with Fire Next Time too (well, stranger things have happened I suppose). After a brief and, yes, probably fanboy-esque chat with the band we turned down the offer of going for a curry with them (no, really) and headed off to Scott's Bar for a few pints. I know, what might have happened if I'd gone for the curry? Sometimes my life really is like a Gwyneth Paltrow movie.. err.. anyway, here then from 1988 is Fire Next Time..

An Eighties Challenge, Day Three

It's the third day of my Eighties Challenge, a seven day foray into the neon palace of memory, plucking songs and related gibberish from the ether as I go.

The Sony Walkman might have been around since 1979 but it came into its own in the 80s; a portable music player it finally provided relief for the millions of people that want to left alone on the bus (though, in turn, it created an arguably larger portion of society sat behind them wondering what song that tinny noise was supposed to be). In a nod to this growing market of sullen folk sat on trains and buses, and perhaps in a not so subtle move from The Man to try and stop The Kids from killing music (and his profit margins) with home taping, the music industry introduced the 'cassette single'.

On paper it might have appeared, to a bean counter at least, to be a grand idea; the same form factor as the cassette but, as it only had to hold a limited number of tracks, it contained less tape and was cheaper to produce. There was no A or B side as the tracks were repeated on both sides and, as it edged nearer to a 12" single than a 7", they could bump up the cost accordingly. All the people who listened to music on their Walkman, an ever increasing number, would buy one. The money would print itself. The trouble was that most everyone with a Walkman would either buy the album the single was from on cassette or, more likely, buy their tunes on vinyl and collate them into mix tapes. Who wanted to carry around a bag of 'Cassingles' (no really, I looked it up) when a couple of C90s would do the job nicely? And so the 'cassette single' went the way of all flesh.

That's not to say, of course, that I wasn't suckered into the shininess of this new item on the shelf. Today's offering came in a shiny gold cardboard flip-top box, looking vaguely like a slightly trim packet of Benson & Hedges, that caught my eye on a visit to Venus Records one day (and, contrary to what I wrote above, I'd already bought the album it came from). From 1985 then I give you Scritti Politti's Perfect Way...

An Eighties Challenge, Day Two

Day two of the Eighties Challenge where, of course, I've been tasked to choose seven songs in seven days from that decade of excess. Songs to delight, or songs to confuse. Maybe both.

Thinking about it now, despite the tricks memory plays, Saturdays had a regular routine about them (or at least they did until I discovered alcohol); mornings spent festering in front of the telly, flicking between BBC and ITV, followed by a walk into Fareham to waste a not inconsiderable amount of time in Venus Records perusing the 12" singles piled up in their 99p sales rack. Sometimes this exercise would offer up gems, a promo white label perhaps or a new release that had been slipped in to make things interesting, but more often than not I'd end up punting my pounds on something peculiar. All too often I'd be tempted by odd vinyl from bands I'd not heard of, risking my money on the cover alone, and have to wait until I got home to discover if I'd bought a classic or a new novelty place mat.

Today's offering is one from the 99p sales rack, it's not really a gem but it's not something I'd sit my plate of fish and chips on either, that I must have had some reason to buy unheard. A song by a band some might remember but most won't know, to be honest I was amazed to find the audio clip on YouTube (more so that it's on Spotify too), English Evenings released a handful of singles before disappearing back from whence they came. Set your controls for 1985 and, for the next six and a bit minutes, enjoy the slightly overblown 12" remix of I Will Return...