Let's think of less complicated times.
I was moved to remember the bargain box, after reading an article in this month's issue of The Word.
In said piece, the author harks back to the golden days of picking up single after single that you wouldn't have spent your hard-earned pocket money on until it was at a rock bottom price and in a wire basket.
I used to trawl the bargain bins of Britain until about 1991, when the likes of Smiths and Woolworths stopped selling vinyl singles. This came as a huge blow to me and really I see that time as a bit of a cut off point where i no longer paid much attention to the charts as I couldn't buy the records. I didn't get a CD player until 1994, so I had nothing to play CD singles on.
So, in your basket was usually stuff that missed the Top 40. Off the top of my head the bargains that spring to mind include Duck For The Oyster by Malcolm McLaren, Mantra For A State Of Mind by S-Express, Don't Stop by The Mood, Flaming Sword by Care, River by King Trigger, Right Now by the Creatures, Beatles And The Stones by the House Of Love, and my personal all-time bargain basement buy Hold It! by (Stephen) Tin Tin (Duffy).
And let's not forget the box of ex-jukebox singles you'd get in newsagents. There was one quite near my school that was pillaged every Tuesday lunchtime when the new ones came in. No middles of course, just holes, but again, songs you may have missed because you considered the new single by the Fun Boy Three a priority, rather than shelling out for The Lion Sleeps Tonight. But if it's only 20p, then what the hey!
Oh those salad days. What does your music-loving teenager do now? There can be little fun to be had these days.
2 comments:
Cor, what I wouldn't give for a copy of Flaming Sword now. One of THE great ones that gottaway. I used to buy those 'five singles for a quid' but you didn't know what you were getting. Most of them were, of course, shite, but the excitement of finding a Long Hot Summer amidst the dross was huge.
I still own the ACTUAL, centre-less copy of E=MC2 by Big Audio Dynamite that I deliberately put on the juke box in the Orange Grove pub, Camberwell in 1986, to impress a lad. I'm still with him, so it worked. Getting a downloaded track played just wouldn't have been the same.
Vinyl is lovely. A pile of it is always worth a rummage.
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