Forays Into Forgotten Vinyl - Vinyl Tidings

YOURZ

Mine and YourZ truly were weaned on a diet of flat black plastic growing up.  As we moved from teen petulance to young adult… well, erm, petulance, our vinyl collections were suddenly usurped by digital interlopers called CDs.  Because we (and yes, I have the courage, in this instance, to speak for both of us) are attracted by bright shiny things, our poor vinyl collections were superseded.  

Also out were the good old reliable turntables, replaced first by CD players then by DVD players.  We loved the new technology because we could pogo, mosh and/or bump'n'grind in front of the stereo without any fear of a causing a skip, jump or scratch.

Unlike most, however, we couldn’t let go of our albums.  When we combined households years ago, we both dragged two crates of records into the mix as well.  We used the full as speaker stands but found the more we looked at them, the more we longed for a record player.

Then late last year, Mine purchased, for a modest price, a Technics SL-D2 direct drive turntable (which apparently was considered quite good in its day).  Soon after, she also got a great preamp as a Christmas present. And this is where the music part of this post starts.

Christmas Day, instead of traditional carols, we played every single Midnight Oil album and the one single we owned.  It was like listening to a time machine, a powerful reminder of days gone by.  We listened to lots of other music too - The Flowers, Divinyls, John Kennedy, Paul Kelly, The Hollowmen and INXS, to name just the Australian acts (or at least those we could remember - we had a very jolly Christmas).  But it was Midnight Oil who ruled the day.  

We started with Place Without A Postcard, followed by Head Injuries, then 10, 9, 8..., Red Sails In The Sunset and the Power And The Passion single with a dub version on the B side - not necessarily in the right chronological order, but close.  As I listened, I felt connected with a time when life was stretched way out in front of me, brimming with all sorts of possibilities.  It teased me with the exuberance of youth I no longer have while reminding me of how good I have it now.  It was also the perfect way to spend a Christmas Day with the one I love.

VERDICT: Vital

MINE

While many of my friends and acquaintances have chosen to throw away their vinyl collection, I've never been able to my records go.  While more and more old music is re-released on CD and for download, many of the albums I loved in my youth miss out.  So for some time now, I've trawled the pages of eBay looking for my holy grail - a Direct Drive turntable in good condition at a reasonable price.

I have to confess that I bought this particular model because it was one I'd used before.  In fact, when my first husband bought it sometime in the late 70s it was very expensive and state-of-the-art.  I love the fact that it has a series of black lines on the side of the platen - so you can adjust the speed for pin-point 33 and 45 rpm speeds.

When I first bought it, we went in search of a phono preamp and picked one up for a very small sum.  Be warned, cheap preamps aren't worth the cash, and we abandoned our first vinyl session pretty quickly after finding a bass hum - probably because it wasn't earthed.  But Christmas Day dawned and the first crisp, clear notes rang out.  As did the hisses and crackles from long-ago times, and the odd jump as we re-learned to tip-toe past the turntable. (Do you have the same song in your head that I do?)

What I thought was remarkable about the rest of that day wasn't that we chose to play all our Midnight Oil (come on, Peter Garrett is our federal MP!) but that there were very few arguments about what we were going to play.  We pulled out lots of albums, scattered them all around the room and had a hoot of a time.  We danced (well, I danced), sang and generally carried on as if we were 20 years younger.

More please.

VERDICT: Vital

INXS - The Swing

MINE

There's possibly no other band that reflects my young adulthood better.  I loved INXS - from the moment I first saw them on Countdown, performing their third single, their cover of The Loved One. For some reason I missed the first two singles, but I made up for that shortly afterwards by buying their first album and playing it to death.  

Then, just before they hit worldwide, I took a trip overseas and caught up with a friend who was living in Paris.  I bought her Shabooh Shoobah as a gift - some real Aussie music she wouldn't get in France.  And then they first began to get some UK heat with that album and the next - the one we're reviewing right now.  Of course they didn't make it big in the US till Listen Like Thieves, but their back catalogue in a lot of ways I find more full of life, more entertaining, than anything they did for the stadium crowd.  

I've seen them play in a small pub in Canberra, when all my girlfriends thought Michael Hutchence was ugly, because he was rather a spotty-faced youth back then.  Having suffered badly from acne myself, I just looked at the charisma.  I met my first husband at an INXS gig at the Uni bar in Canberra.  One of my friends was working at a Sydney bar where Michael got into a lot of strife by turning up wasted and pulling the "Don't you know who I am?" deal with the bouncer who wasn't about to let him in.  And I was working on radio the day he was found dead in his Sydney hotel room.  That hurt.

Although YourZ and I watched the TV show the band put on to "find their new lead singer" and thoroughly enjoyed it, INXS without Michael just isn't INXS.  Sorry, guys.

VERDICT: TURN IT UP

YOURZ

In the 70s, I lived on the northern beaches of Sydney, the same area where bands like Midnight Oil and INXS first started.  I remember sneaking into the Royal Antler hotel at Narrabeen to see the Oils perform a blistering set.  I don't recall if INXS supported them at this gig but to be honest, I wasn't really interested in any one else other than the Oils.  But INXS got there start doing lots of supports with them, so it is feasible they were on the same bill that night.  It wasn't until some years later that I 'discovered' them for myself.

Like Mine, this discovery started when I heard The Loved One.  Not too long after, I got a copy of their first compilation, INXSIVE, featuring their first singles as well as highlights from their first two albums.  Listening to this compilation and their third album, Shaboo Shoobah, sold me completely on the band.  The follow up, The Swing, was every bit as good as their previous but even more so.  By now, the band had developed a sound and style completely their own and, as it usually goes, spawned a whole bunch of imitators.  But none of those could hold a candle to INXS.

The Swing was the first album the band recorded overseas, enlisting the production skills of Nile Rodgers for the first single, Original Sin, and Nick Launay for the rest of the album.  It became their first major hit album, both in Australia and overseas and produced some of their most enduring hits with tracks like Dancing On The Jetty, I Send A Message and the title track.  And while the follow-up, Listen Like Thieves, is considered the album that broke them world wide, for me, it is the raw energy of both Shaboo Shoobah and The Swing that I still find unbeatable.

VERDICT: TURN IT UP

For more information: http://www.inxs.com/

In our collection, we also have Shaboo Shoobah