I’d been after this record for ages and couldn’t track it down anywhere – nothing on eBay, nothing from any mail-order outlets, nothing in any second-hand record shops – and then who would have thought it, I came across a copy in one of the many fine charity shops in the Headington area of Oxford. It’s for the possibility of this kind of amazing happenstance that I still browse charity shop record bins very regularly. But they’re all getting a bit wise to the value of their goods these days. I’m an ardent charity supporter as much as the next humanity-minded citizen, but I’m still not quite sure of the logic behind pricing the shops out of the ‘pick up ten items for a quid each’ market and into the ‘just pick one item for a fiver and balk at the price’ market. Who knows. Maybe the figures stack up, but dammit, I just want to find rare and valuable records and pay fifty pence for them!
Look at that cover – magnificent. Truly the work of a deranged outsider artist genius, I’d say. Some choice phrases to be found on there: ‘Total Scuzz Out’, ‘Turgid!’, ‘2 In Tents To Die!’. Utter marvellous gibberish. Moonshake were, of course, named after the Can song, and did, of course, feature Dave Callahan of C86 darlings The Wolfhounds. As you might expect, they combined jangly indie noise and Krautrock, and were either way ahead of their time, way behind the times, or operating in a separate dimension. Weird and brilliant.