my little girl......

it's all instant gratification nowadays, want music? click buy, back in the day it was just so different, i can't tell you the amount of times my best mate phil and me used to spend searching out rare vinyl in far away junk shops around the country, usually tagged onto following the mighty derby county on their travels around this sceptered island, we used to get the early train, especially when travelling south, to raid the second-hand emporiums for long forgotten records, night's spent in phil's bedroom, listening to tunes, scanning the half-page of 'black-echoe's' weekly paper for the forthcoming all-nighter's and adverts for rare soul records, no instant downloads back then, you had to go to the post office, buy a 'postal order' and send off a letter, if you were lucky, a week later, a jiffy bag would arrive with your record, phil shared a bedroom with his younger brother, steven, who was a die hard heavy metal fan, the brothers shared a dansette-style, mono, record deck and often fought toe to toe for the right to play their respective tunes, we just didn't get it, why would anyone want to look like a homeless person?, straggly beard, biker jacket, [festooned with band names and badges] a cut-off 'jean jacket' fuck that, i'm wearing sta-press, harrington's, ox-blood penny loafers, fred perry's, crombie overcoats, [complete with red, button -down handkerchief in the breast pocket], later on, i'm wearing a sheepskin jacket, 'norwegians', 'karman- gear' multi -pocket bags, prince of wales check's and i still haven't got a girlfriend, [meanwhile, phil's brother, steve, is shagging his way through half the female population of derby even though he look's and smell's like a vagrant, while me and phil continue our quest for cool, but, end up sitting in his bedroom still playing our rare soul, drinking tea and kidding ourselves that we don't need women in our lives!] anyhoo, my daughter jess has decided that her old dad need's to dig out his old vinyl collection and actually play it instead of just letting it sit in the numerous boxes that i've got stashed, i sold my hi-fi equipment a long time ago, nobody want's to play records now, too much hassle, just press 'buy now' so, jess, decides to buy me a proper, old-school record player, we don't need no stinking hi-fi, we are playing old vinyl, some of it fifty years old, why do i need hi-fi? i dig out a box of old records and it all comes flooding back, the crackles and pop's as the needle hits the groove, the scent of old shelack, a thousand wasted hours at all-nighter's, the great smell of brut, waiting for train's on deserted railway stations, spunking a week's wages on a record, 'fry's' chocolate and stealing bottles of milk, thrills, pills and belly aches, talcum powder, the sunday night comedown, work on a monday and counting the hour's until the weekend so you could do it all again, so, i get a parcel, it's an old school, record player, nothing fancy, just like it used to be, proper lo-fi sound,i dig out a random box of records and i'm instantly transported back to better day's and what's really interesting is that jess has turned into a vinyl snob, dismissing the download culture and seeking out real records, my little girl........