It’s amazing how dealing with just a couple of work emails can send me heading towards the chocolate jar and thinking fondly of getting marooned on a tropical island with absolutely ZERO internet connectivity.

I needed to relax.

What better way than dig out a bit of vinyl and listen to music. I love music BUT not enough to carefully categorise and sort the LPs into any meaningful order. Preferring the random, hotchpotch approach. So this afternoon I opened one of the storage cases and grabbed 3 records. Let’s see what musical treats came my way.

First off a definite blast from my long hair, rocker past. I think most teenage rocking males of my generation would claim to have at least one Pat Benatar album somewhere in the bedroom.

Then an odd LP. Sometimes you buy because you love the band. Sometimes you buy because of the music. Then other times you buy because it’s a cool looking picture disc.

Then finally arguably my most random records. When I was 12 I jumped on a plane for the first time. Headed for my only trip so far to the Southern Hemisphere. To visit my big sister who had emigrated to South Africa. A month in Pretoria and Johannesburg. A staggeringly beautiful yet scary and incomprehensible Apartheid dominated land. My sister lived in an area which was still to have a functioning television service. So they listened to the radio, played records and at weekends either went to the cinema drive-in or hired a movie reel and played it on the noisy home super 8 projector.

My sister always seemed to play one record back then. IPI TOMBI. A show featuring traditional indigenous South African music. Fast forward many years and I was at a car boot sale in deepest Yorkshire. Guess what I found. Brings back so many memories.

63 thoughts on “Let’s set the record straight”

      1. No, not really. Well, kind of. When I get a chance at the radio I turn on my audiobook. If I am with a kid I am listening to some rap atrocity or mega hit. Those trips I would prefer silence 🙂

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  9. Ahh… I have every vinyl I ever bought, plus a couple. VERY small collection, no picture discs, and no player… but I have them.

    Have you listened to Ladysmith Black Mombazo, the S African band on Paul Simon’s “Graceland”?? I loove them… seen them live a couple times and started looking into learning their language.

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  15. Just found the Pat Benatar album on YouTube and I’d forgotten how much I love her music. Thanks! I think one of my favorites (other than about every song on that album) is Hell is for Children. And my favorite Yes song is Owner of a Lonely Heart. Will have to give Ipi Tombi a listen.

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  19. The Ipi Tombi album, in vinyl: what a lucky find! Indeed television was not available to the South African population until 1976: in so many ways we were just in the dark! (my family emigrated to SA when I was very young and I grew up there). One of the things I remember from back in the day was the beautiful voice of Margaret Singana singing The Warrior, from that very same musical.

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  22. Good old vinyl! I have a huge collection of records and I am proud of it. Yesterday, my new CD-player/tape recorder arrived. I am still excited since I have so many tapes to listen to. Remember Shakin’ Stevens? I have lots of records and tapes. Looking forward to listening to them again.

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      1. I had soooo many (if not all) records. Right now, I am listenting to “It’s raining” from my tape. I saw him in concernt when I was 13. My first concert – I was totally out of myself for a whole week… lol

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      3. I know! He was a big star in the early to mid 80s in whole Europe. Listening to all of the old songs takes me back to a wonderful time. So many songs, I had forgotten about… cannot stop listening to all of them… lol

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