Vinyl Release

Ever heard of bibliomancy? No? Read on… Once upon a time, long, long ago, there was this chap. Let's call him Jerome. Jerome is travelling down a country road when he comes upon a crowd of blokes kicking a corpse and creating a hullabaloo. Our hero stops and he's told the deceased had snuffed it without paying a number of debts he owed to some in the assembled crowd, so there's no way they're going to stump up for a grave-digger to bury him.

Back in the late 1960s there was a band hailing from San Francisco called Moby Grape. They had five talented members who could all sing, play and compose to an incredibly high standard incorporating pop, rock, country and blues styles. They looked pretty cool too, with a perfectly contemporary anti-authoritarian attitude that saw one of their number flipping a middle finger against the American flag on the cover of their self-titled debut LP in 1967 – naughtiness that was airbrushed out by their spooked record company.

Let us not concern ourselves with debating the greatest album ever made. Or the greatest single, for that matter. Because, let's face it, chances are we won't reach any kind of consensus and most likely we'll be here all day arguing about it.

Two men walk into a bar… Ouch! No, not that one. Start again. OK, two men walk into a pub and head straight to the bar. The taller of the two smiles and says to the barmaid, 'We'd like to see the landlord'. She calls her boss over and he looks the pair up and down. They're dishevelled, a bit rough-looking, like they haven't slept or washed in a while, but hey, he's seen worse.

I'm reading a book at the moment called Seasons They Change: The Story Of Acid And Psychedelic Folk by Jeanette Leech. Pretty much on every page there's reference to an artist or band that I've never heard of, which is some going as I like to think I know a thing or two about music. Anyway, with Spotify or YouTube at the ready, over the past few weeks I've sampled the wares of such artists as The Habibiyya, Jan Dukes De Grey, Malicorne and many more.

She looks a bit lost, standing alone backstage leaning against the wall, watching all the celebrities mingle, clink glasses, air kiss and gossip. Lost and a little bored. Same as me, to be honest. So I cross the room and say 'hi'. She says 'hi' back. To break the ice, I point to the pinball machine, unoccupied, just over there, and ask if she fancies a game. She smiles again. 'Sure.' And away we go at it. As I remember, I won, although I'm sure – if she recalled it at all – she'd disagree.