Today was Notting Hill Record & Tape Exchange day for any odd vinyl records and to stock up on some classic CDs at ridiculously cheap prices. This is close to where I used to live in London when I lived in Ladbroke Grove, my old hood, when I lived in my friend writer/musician Vivien Goldman’s house. At the shop they had a nice looking original copy of King Crimson’s In The Court Of The Crimson King for a kool £169, a little pricey for my ‘Wall of Crimson Faces’, a project for The Archive where I collect this album for a whole wall display, I have quite a few but need quite a few more – but not at that price.

I found some odd vinyl, Tim Hodgkinson from Henry Cow’s band The Work (2018), a compilation on Jelodanti Records, France, probably not the easiest of albums to find – or hear. Then, Tarka (1988) by Anthony Phillips and Harry Williamson. It’s a strange one, the story of Tarka the Otter was written by Williamson’s father Henry Williamson in 1928. This from Wikipedia: “The album’s cover featured a picture of a woman and did not credit Phillips or Williamson, which led to it often being filed under “female vocalist” in record shops”. Then a Hawklords 12-inch 25 years, from 1979. That was it on vinyl, but I also bought a big bag of ridiculously priced CDs from Sigur Rós to Led Zep and everything in between in the indie and rock genres.

From there we took the train from Notting Hill to meet young budding songwriter Kadeem Graham. Where would you go with a budding songwriter, Fopp of course in Cambridge Circus. We met outside Harry Potter & the Cursed Child at the Palace Theatre (Fopp is across the road). Inside I bought the album of the day and browsed records with Olivia and Kadeem whilst discussing songwriting (they had brand new £25 copies of In The Court Of The Crimson King). Kadeem told me he hadn’t been in a record shop before, that’s a first, but then I thought why would he have? We said goodbye after we had figured out the secret formula and we all three got on the train to Waterloo where we said our goodbyes. Off to Biggles and Colleen’s for Linda McCartney’s country pies.

Music today has been an album released in the last 24 hours, it’s The Lathums‘ (pronounced La-Thums) second album, From Nothing To A Little Bit More, allegedly, the greatest thing out of Wigan since The Verve.

Music Of The Daze