Ode To Vinyl On The Eve Of The Launch Of Our Online Music Store

The Jazz Repertory Company Goes Digital:  Our Online Store & MP3 Downloads

For most people over the age of 35 one of life’s sorely missed pleasures is flipping through racks of vinyl.  I know there are still record shops out there but it’s not the same knowing that back home or in your pocket is access to pretty much everything ever recorded.  I suppose it’s similar to giving up the joys of hunting and foraging because Tesco is just round the corner.   However it was surprising to learn that over a million slices of vinyl were sold this year.  Is this oldies like me missing the pleasure of buying the stuff or is this young’uns discovering the pleasure of owning a chunk of music in a cardboard cover over a downloaded freebie?

Elvis Presley 

I did buy a vinyl record this year.  We’ve got a covered market a few miles away which has quite a few second hand record dealers – I used to go and re-buy records that I had as a kid – it was purely an exercise in nostalgia – I never played the damn things – or when I did I used to think “Bloody hell, I used to like this” – e.g. On The Threshold Of A Dream – The Moody Blues (1969)  - I shudder just writing the title down.

On The Threshold Of A Dream

The Moody Blues

So I restrict myself to one purchase a visit (at any record shop anywhere) and this year’s gem was “God Bless Tiny Tim” by Tiny Tim (1968).  I’ve had the platter now for about 9 months and I’ve just got to the end of side 1 – I’ve looked in my diary for next year and have scheduled playing side 2 in two sittings in April and July.

God Bless Tiny Tim

Tiny Tim

I have a photograph of Tiny Tim and me together taken at Mickey Gilley’s Rodeo in Houston Texas in 1982.  It was for the annual 4^th July picnic and I’d been playing with an English country rock band – the audience was a mix of Good Ol’ Boys, Urban Cowboys and Hells Angels.  Tiny Tim came on and did a 30 minute medley of traditional American patriotic songs – he’d left his ukulele at home and abandoned his trade mark wobbly falsetto but it was still one of the most bizarre musical turns I’d ever seen.

Tiny Tim

So that’s a remarkably rambling irrelevant pre-amble to declaring the Jazz Repertory Company On- Line Store open.  Currently we’re just selling CDs and downloadable MP3s (so I'm told) and there’s no chance of happy hours spent fumbling through the racks of goodies as currently I only have a catalogue of seventeen or so recordings.  They are all, need I say (hem hem) absolute corkers and we here at the JRC are confident that in less than 20 years we will, no doubt, have got rid of the mountain of cardboard boxes containing our complete stock which is currently clogging up every spare inch of space in our modest world headquarters.   Walk your finger tips this way to start browsing.

James Dean