Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1999 20:35:52 -0500
From: Paul Badger <pbadger@compuserve.com>
Subject: Giles Smith
Message-ID: <199903282037_MC2-6FC2-D553@compuserve.com>

Hi All

Just thought I'd recommend a book which some people might not know about already: "Lost In Music" by Giles Smith (one of the blokes from The Cleaners From Venus, and thus colleague of Martin Newell). It's a funny collection of memories about what it's like to be in love with pop music - buying records, being a fan, starting a band, being involved with dodgy characters, failing to be a big chart success. People here will be able to relate to a lot of what he says, particularly those currently in their mid-thirties, the same age as Smith. He's not afraid to poke fun at himself for his obsessive interest in pop music, and as a bonus, he mentions XTC once or twice, so here's a quote:

I go into record shops a lot - any record shop, anywhere, sometimes to buy records, sometimes just to browse, but frequently to indulge in other, less readily comprehensible activities, which have nothing to do with buying, or seeking things to buy, at all.

Very often I go into a record shop and look at records I already own. I actively seek out in the browser bins copies of albums which I already have and which I have no intention of buying again, and look at them. Normally I won't trouble to remove them from the rack or bin; I'll just flick to where they sit, open up a little viewing space and then pause, not really to think or anything, but as if seeking some kind of pointless confirmation: 'Yep, here's Scritti Politti's Cupid and Psyche 85. In front of the board saying Scritti Politti. In the S section.'

I don't find this behaviour easy to explain, though clearly there is wishfulness involved, that if only you didn't already have this record you would be able to buy it. Chiefly, though, I suspect it is descended from a piece of primary-school playground business wherein someone would skim through their bubblegum cards/football stickers or similar collectables while someone else stood at their shoulder announcing the relation of this collection to their own: "Goddit. Goddit. Goddit. Haven't goddit. Goddit", etc. But in the playground, this performance at least served a practical purpose, as a prelude to swapping or some other form of trading, whereas any pop-fuelled adult version feels much more like the conduct of an addict, standing there in isolation at the browsers, reciting to himself a numb mantra: "Goddit. Goddit. Goddit..."

Still more frequently, I go into record shops and look for records which I know do not exist. I comb the sections of the display devoted to favoured artists, with whose works I am completely familiar and from whom I well know there is nothing new due, as if, by an amazing warp of luck, I will turn up something of which I wasn't already aware - some extraordinary Norwegian import, some Chinese pressing of studio out-takes unwritten about in this country. This indulgence arises, I think, because however much music you have by the artists you like it is never quite enough, and the prospect of cheating the release schedules or history and opening whole new avenues of exploration is an enticing one. So it is that I will find myself, in say, the cubicle-sized branch of Our Price on Victoria Station in London, which doesn't stock all that many records that exist, let alone records which don't, trying to will into being a third album by the Bible, or some mysteriously unmentioned Take 6 recording.

Record fairs represent an alternative shopping experience and yet are as uniform as any branch of Our Price: the same trestle tables, the same preponderance of Bruce Springsteen bootlegs, the same poorly written section-dividers, the same people in anoraks sifting round-eyed through box after box of other people's junk. I used them most concertedly to expand on all my fronts my collection of XTC records, which had fast become my central preoccupation. My committment to this band had fast created an appetite which would not be content with straightforward albums and singles alone.

I picked up a copy of "Guillotine", a Virgin label sampler on 10-inch vinyl which included the otherwise unavailable XTC track "Traffic Light Rock", one minute and forty seconds long. I found an American radio copy of "Generals and Majors" on 7 inch which had "Generals and Majors" on both sides so that even the most cack-handed DJ could never accidentally play the wrong side. It joined the other copies of "Generals and Majors" I already had, on the "Black Sea" album and on the British 7-inch double pack. I purchased an Australian pressing of "Making Plans for Nigel". I rooted out a bright red flexidisc, originally given away with "Smash Hits", with "The Olympian" by the Skids on one side and XTC's "Ten Feet Tall" on the other - not the original album version but a different one, rerecorded for the American market and featured on the B-side of the single "Wait Till Your Boat Goes Down", which I already had. I jumped at lightening at a copy of "Five Senses", a 12-inch EP released in Canada, featuring five fairly hard-to-find tracks, all of which I already owned but, importantly, not in this form. And with a gasp, which had to do with both delight and incipient bankruptcy, I spent eight pounds on a 7-inch version of "Statue of Liberty" in original picture sleeve and signed by all four members of the band.

Record fairs plunged me into the grubby waters of the bootlegged live recording. Early on in my time as Lord of the Fairs, I happened on a cassette of Stevie Wonder in concert in Brighton - not the whole concert, just as much of it as would fit haphazardly on a C90. Unfortunately, as I discovered when I got the tape home, the bootlegger had been seated close to one of those people who would release a loud, sentimental groan of recognition ("Naaah!") at the beginning of each number. "Lately I have had the strangest feeling," sings Stevie. "Naaah!" says the man in the audience, and so on, for an hour and a half.

But I was undeterred. Needless to say, my bootleg-buying also took on a sizeable XTC dimension. At four pounds a throw I picked up various unlistenable-to-cassettes of them in concert: at Marconi Youth Club in Swindon, at the Hammersmith Odeon, at somewhere unspecified in Holland. And I bought a vinyl double album featuring a recording made at a club called Hurrahs in New York in 1980 but manufactured in Watford. It came in an ugly thick cardboard sleeve, set me back twelve pounds and responded poorly to playing. Somewhere at the heart of its storm of hiss was a barely audible throb, as if the concert had been recorded by someone pressing a cheap dictaphone up against the venue's outside wall. I'm not sure I ever made it as far as disc two. I was, needless to say, delighted with it. Possession was the point, not listening to the thing.

Giles Smith, "Lost in Music", published Picador, 1995, should be available at amazon.com and amazon.co.uk for the equivalent of about 6 UK pounds plus postage. (John Peel: "If you have ever watched a band play or bought a pop record, you should read "Lost in Music"... I have read few books as funny and none that caused me to recognise the roots of my own enthusiasms as clearly or as frequently.")

Paul, UK