Further to a recent tweet…
First pay day in over a year – yippee! – coincided with popping through to Leeds for a bit of a shop, where I was to be found reining myself in, as one might an enthusiastic hound, in the mighty Jumbo Records.
I was partially inspired by the singular event of being followed on Twitter by The Frank and Walters – yes! And you can expect a little flurry of backwards musical glances in the next few posts… but I was keen also to procure more driving music. I found myself seeking out hits from me youth and other more contemporary treats (I promise Jumbo Records I’ll be back for Fabric 60), nosing through the bargain shelves to avoid splurging all my dough in one go, but drawn to the bewildering array around the shop throughout…
Annoyingly, not that I was going to buy them, but still, and evidently a subject that rankles the shopkeeper I chatted with as I purchased, some bands’ labels insist on charging industry-collapsing prices for CDs. Like, a preposterous £16.99 each for Queen’s back catalogue, The Beatles’ collected works continuing to fund the estate of Michael Jackson’s debt mountain, and so forth.
One CD I was seeking, ‘The Stone Roses’, was available only in a ’20th Anniversary reissue’ version, with Fool’s Gold stuck on the end of the album, and an extra CD, for £19.99, but I took offence at this. I was perhaps retro-fitting the offence of burglary that deprived me of my original copy about 16 years hence, but it just seemed… not in keeping.
I got into The Stone Roses late, through a compilation tape from a pal in the USA, circuitously, in 1990-ish. I was converted shortly after Fool’s Gold came out, as I continued a long shore drift from a mainly rocky beach to liking just about anything again. The Stone Roses album remains an era-defining record for quite a few people of my age, I would venture faultless and perfect for all kinds of soundtracks to your life.
Anyway, the inauthenticity and cash-in-aroola nostalgia ruination flick through the racks at Jumbo led me on, I sensed, a potentially frustrating mission to find a proper copy of the original CD, preferably at a proper, inexpensive CD price. As luck would have it, however, down the escalators from Jumbo in the St John’s Centre, there is one of those “3 for £5” (and various permutations of CDs for small amounts of cash) stores, which I regret not noting the name of. Very dry staff, and an amazing selection of original CDs from the last thirty years. Got some TLC, Cypress Hill, T.Rex and… oh lordy… The Stone Roses, for £2.50 each. Incredible scenes.
Saturday had record-breaking temperatures for October in the UK, and bliss was it in that afternoon to be alive, slinking out of Leeds with I Wanna Be Adored as ever being the ultimate city landscape music (and for foggy mornings on commuter rail networks)… driving back from West Yorkshire along the A64 singing wonky harmonies, fetching up back in York pretty much as the jangles faded for I Am The Resurrection.
Turning off on to the A19, This Is The One was surging and we almost wept at the wonder. Here you are: