The other day, in a
moment of supreme weakness, I made the mistake of answering my phone without
checking that the caller had WITHHELD their number. This can only mean one thing; a cold call and
if there’s one thing I hate it’s a cold caller.
I usually ignore such intrusions but this time I was caught and had to
go through the rigmarole of politely telling them to bugger off. This time it was from an on-line wine seller
that I use regularly and whilst it started promisingly with the ‘only available
off line to you, mate’ patter, it ended with a price that was no better than
their normal on-line prices. What was
the point?
The trouble is,
everyone wants something for nothing these days, including me, so ringing me up
to offer the same price I could expect to spend elsewhere was never going to
hold my interest and what goes for wine goes for music too. Having said that, I am of a generation that
at least expects to pay something for music, unlike many of today’s kids who
seem to think it is their birthright to download everything for free, so cheap
rather than free is always on the menu.
The old marketing
hook of offering stuff at low prices can be a bit hit and miss. For reasons that I don’t really understand to
this day, back in 1973 I declined Virgin Records’s offer of ‘The Faust Tapes’
by Krautrockers, Faust for the miniscule price of 49p – an LP for the price of
a vinyl single at the time. Perhaps it
was TOO cheap? See how difficult it is? In retrospect this was probably the correct
decision as it is a jumble of live off-cuts but nevertheless, at that price who
cares?
Yet some years
before, in 1971, I had snapped up ‘Relics’ by Pink Floyd, a band I didn’t
really know much about, but when it appeared on the cut-price Starline label, I
couldn’t resist. ‘Relics’ is a peculiar
mixture of 1967-1969 period Floyd material bringing together the brilliant
early Syd Barrett singles, atmospheric tracks from the soundtrack album,
‘More’, a collection of B sides and odd album cuts from their first two albums. It was my introduction to The Pink Floyd and
remains one of my favourite albums of theirs to this day. As I have mused before, the late sixties was
a strange period and the music created against the backdrop of social unrest
and end of the Hippy dream still has a slightly haunted quality to it. Certainly, this has an ambience that no other
record I know of has.
So in the case of
the budget label release, ‘Relics’ scored a hit and set me on the trail of
proper grown-up Pink Floyd LPs. Just let
someone ring me up today and try and sell it to me…grrr.
