10 February 2013

england, part 3: records, records, and more records; or, how i spent all of my money in camden

i honestly kind of hate thinking about how much money i spent on records while i was in england because it was a lot. i've never quite caught up financially since that trip. don't get me wrong, it was one hundred percent worth it, but there is no way i can afford to do that again any time soon.

really i just want to talk about the cool shit i found there. and i would have bought a ton more records but i was able to reign it in at least a little bit. not only could i not afford to buy all the records i wanted, but we weren't staying at one place the whole time; we were sort of flying by the seats of our pants for the entire trip which meant carrying our stuff pretty much everywhere all the time.

the first record store we went to was in stoke newington, which i wrote about already; all the other ones we shopped in were in camden. there was one that was outside, set up next to a bunch of other outdoor shops. we must have been there on the right day for all that outdoor stuff. that guy had so many, SO MANY, t.rex albums. i wanted to buy like ten things but instead i bought tanx (so there is a record store near where i live that has a copy of tanx for sale; they have it priced at like $85 dollars which is absolutely preposterous. the only thing is that it has the poster which i'm probably going to steal from them sometime because i've spent so much money on their overpriced bullshit over the years) for ten pounds, without the poster, but fuck it. and also you scare me to death which i have never seen before. i think that was all i bought from that guy.

another place we went to had disguise in love by john cooper clarke and since we had just seen him and i've never seen any of his records anywhere before, i had to buy it. i also got nobody's heroes by the stiff little fingers. it appears i've never written about them in my blog before, which is pretty sad since i've seen them a bunch of times. i'll catch up someday... anyway, that was really great for me because i love that album. i also got never mind the bollocks which is something that i've seen over here in the states, but not this version; this one is the 2nd uk pressing. then i got the rich kids album, ghosts of princes in towers. i almost didn't buy it but i literally couldn't bring myself to leave it behind because it's so fucking good and i've never seen it before. that ended up being my excuse for buying pretty much everything; "i've never seen this before! i'm buying it." so i also got a couple of t.rex/marc bolan seven inch singles at this place. it was hard to decide, because there were so many of them but again with trying not to spend all of my money... i ended up with a picture disc of "you scare me to death"; "ride a white swan"/"is it love," "summertime blues"; and "sing me a song"/"endless sleep," "the lilac hand of menthol dan." pretty awesome.

there was one other store that we went in, where i got the damned's black album. i think that was the only thing i got there. i know i saved all my receipts but i have no idea where they are or if they even say exactly what i bought, but i just rifled through my records and i'm pretty sure this is everything i bought while i was over there.

i will leave you with the one...ok, two...the two records i bitterly regret leaving behind. one was machine gun etiquette by the damned; uk pressing; i think it was kind of expensive and i let chris talk me out of it, saying that he had seen copies of it back at home. BUT NOT THE UK PRESSING. ah well. then there was a copy of tyrannosaurus rex my people were fair and had sky in their hair but now they're content to wear stars on their brows / prophets seers & sages: the angels of the ages, the double album. so, i already have this but with the weird outer sleeve that isn't the actual album cover; it's this ugly colorful shit. this one was the real deal. i wanted to come back for it and the guy said he would be there the day we said we would be coming back. this was in the one record store where i got a bunch of other stuff, but it was split into floors. upstairs was where i got the sex pistols, rich kids, jcc, and slf records; the next floor down, i got all my t.rex 7" singles. below that was the tyrannosaurus rex album and wouldn't you know it, the guy didn't show up the day we came back, which was also the day we were leaving. and the guys in charge of the other floors weren't allowed to open it up for me to buy it. i was really sad. but there was a cat hanging out so i got to pet the cat and felt a little bit better. cuz i'm a crazy cat lady y'all.

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