This on Should It Stay or Should It Go? comments on a lack of quality control when you get stuff for nothing and it got me thinking about my own past and similar quality issues…
I didn’t do “college radio” mostly because I didn’t get to college but also because I don’t suppose it exists in quite the same way over here. And yet I understand the quality control issue.-There was a record shop, “Lullaby of Broadway”, tucked away in a side-street in West Ealing which was, I’d guess, a chart return store and so all the record companies would dump their second rate products there and the place would be full of boxes and boxes of 7″ and 12″ singles with poorly handwritten signs declaring that the contents were available at “20p each or 6 for a £1″ or some equivalent ridiculous “bargain”.
I’d guess I bought hundreds of singles in that place for any number of half-baked reasons: cool name; cool sleeve; might have heard of them in the MM or NME; needed to make up numbers to get the discount…
Most were played just once, if at all and most are an absolute embarrassment. When it comes to sorting through my past I will do it alone so that no-one will ever find some of the crap that I bought in “Lullaby”…
Flipping through the “crap” in bargain bins is like playing a slot machine: you’ll lose most of the time, but when it does pay off it pays off BIG. A few of my fave records have come out of the bins!
think you may be referring to the time of its “death-throes”…it was in Chignell Place, by the way…it was a very good record shop in the ’70′s and prob into the ’80′s, by which time John Radbone, the owner was gettin on a bit. it was a genuine “vinyl” shop…not sure if it ever really moved with the times. must’ve bin gone a while now. that guy was connected with the local greengrocers and “general dealers” in West Ealing/Hanwell…but that’s another story!!
Thanks DaveH for that. It never really came across in the post but I had real affection for Lullaby – spent a lot of lunchtimes ploughing through the phenomenal amount of stuff there and rarely walked out empty-handed – I still look up Chignell Place every time I walk past with a pang of nostalgia, and wishing it was still there!