A record oversight!

There's this bloke called Luke. He lives in Birmingham and is in a punk band called" The Nerks". Before that he lived in Ollerton (And then Birmingham) and was in a (quite well known) punk band called "Riot Squad". Before that he lived in Ollerton and was in my punk rock covers band "The Chavs". Before that he lived in Mansfield and was in it's premier rock band, "Diver". He clearly only likes to be in bands with duo-syllabic names.

Actually, this isn't strictly true - My band changed our name for each gig (We did seven) with the only remit being that we had to keep the word "Chav" in it somewhere. Hence we took on names including "Chav Sabbath", "Chav & Dave" (When a bloke called Dave guested on bass) and my particular favourite, "Chavril Lavigne". I realise everyone in Britain knows what a chav is, but for those of you from overseas...

...That's right - they're a work-dodging, benefit-scrounging, mouth-breathing underclass of delinquents that are better at reproducing than spelling and are spawning a new generation of petty criminals even as you read this (They won't read it - they can't).

When my wife and I split up, I moved out of the marital home, moved into my mate's spare room and entrusted my record collection to Luke who was keen to borrow it anyway as there was a lot of 80s punk and psychobilly vinyl amongst it that he was interested on getting his mitts on. This was over three and a half years ago. Since then I've been trying to get it back. The problem was that shortly after my relationship ended, so did Luke's and he moved to Birmingham, leaving my records in his brother's loft in Ollerton. We have been liaising in vain for over forty months to try and be in the same place at the same time so I could pick them up. We have failed.

Then a few weeks ago I got a call out of the blue to say that his brother would be driving pretty much past my flat and had agreed to drop them off. We agreed on the Tuesday. I said to Luke that he was lucky he'd caught me as if it had been the Wednesday I wouldn't be around as I would be flying to Sardinia (See previous blogs for that trip). He then said

"Oh -that's what I meant - sorry - he's coming down on Wednesday".

I asked my mum if she would wait in and receive my hundreds of black plastic babies (She doesn't live far from me) and she kindly said yes. Then Luke texted me to say his brother would now not be down until Friday. This was turning into another one of those all-too-familiar scenarios when I nearly got my records back, but didn't. I gave Luke's brother my mother's number and asked them to sort things out themselves.

They did.

If only we'd thought of this before! Clearly the only way Luke and I were going to be able to sort this thing out was to take Luke and I entirely out of the equation.As long as we were involved in the process it was doomed to failure. He went back to tending to his lovely new baby in the West Midlands, I flew to the Italian island of alcoholic near-suicide and his brother dropped my records off at my mother's on the Friday afternoon. He told Luke my mum had a nice house. She told me that he was very nice. It had all been very straightforward.

So now I finally have my records back. The first thing I did was take them all out of the cases and go through them in my office. Oh I've missed them! Classic vinyl from (mostly) the eighties, much of which has never been re-released in CD form - oh and lots of rarities as well: The Cult's "Electric" on gold vinyl, King Kurt's seminal "Big Cock" on "Throbbing Red" vinyl, all of Torment's albums in near mint condition. Adam & The Ants original 7" of "Antmusic" (The first single I ever bought) and The Police's "Regatta de Blanc" (The first album). A mint-condition 10" of Stray Cats "Choo Choo Hot Fish", picture discs from Grace Jones, Howard Jones - anyone called "Jones"!

Free singles, EPs and flexidiscs from now-defunct magazines like "Sounds" and "Melody Maker" with tracks from Orange Juice, The Fall, Zodiac Mindwarp, Magazine and Husker Du. 12" singles. 12" SINGLES! Depeche Mode's "Master & Servant", Demented Are Go's "Holy Hack Jack" (I saw that go for forty quid on ebay!), Alien Sex Fiend's "The Impossible Mission" (It was NME single of the week in (I think) 1987). Every single grooved thin slice another memory of days gone by, fondly bringing back images of more innocent times (for me, anyway - the decade itself was appalling and anyone who tells you otherwise is the equivalent of a holocaust denier).

Anyway - it being me, they are still all laid out in the office, sprawled all over the floor, the spare bed and the desk. Some in their sleeves, some out of their sleeves. I have begun to catalogue them and sort them into order by genre etc. (As you would expect) but it will undoubtedly take as long to sort out as they were away from me. Oh there is one other problem as well:

I haven't got a record player.