Vinyl Destination

I bought this album in around 1990 in, believe it or not, Birmingham’s HMV – this was back when record shops carried records and some of them carried records that went beyond the charts and into weirder territories. Back when living in Telford I would make many weekend trips to Birmingham, with one of two aims:

1. Buying records
2. Buying comics

My destinations would be very similar each time, as follows:

Records

• Swordfish: still there, I believe
• Tempest: also still in existence
• HMV/Virgin Megastore
• Second City Sounds: long gone, this was a great independent shop hidden away in a corner of town that shared a road with the strange combination of a School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (as far as I remember) and some seedy adult shops. They had a copy of the Sea Urchins’ ‘Pristine Christine’ on the wall which I coveted regularly
• A couple more shops whose name I forget – one down near a university building, outside which I saw Roy Wood walking past one day, and one way up past the square with that angled metal man sculpture
• Oasis: not the women’s clothes shop or the band, this was Birmingham’s answer to Affleck’s Palace, a multi-floor treasure trove of stalls and shops selling anything from clothes to organic food to records to junk

Comics

• Nostalgia and Comics: I loved this shop and spent countless hours diligently working my way through its shelves and storage boxes. Often I’d return with literally armfuls of comics
• A strange little second hand book/magazine shop that was in a semi-underground plaza in a location that I’ve entirely forgotten: their selection was hit and miss, not least because the comics often seemed to get mixed up with the more, er, adult titles

This is the original issue of The Whitey Album which has since been re-released. For a semi-joking side project it’s surprisingly good, and bears repeated listens, not least because of the endless cultural touchpoints that are dropped in throughout. In 1990 I didn’t get the reference to Neu!, or the subtle nod to John Cage’s ‘4’33″‘. Now I do. I don’t know if that makes me better informed or less receptive to learning new things. Maybe both?