Sales are particularly dangerous for me. The chance to aquire something new and not pay the full price is almost irresistible, so I frequently left HMV and Virgin with goods I didn't particularly want throughout the 80s and 90s.
Around ten years ago I looked at the sale CDs from one end of a row, hundreds and hundreds of them, all sitting there in cardboard boxes. Why cardboard boxes? Then it dawned on me. This wasn't stock. This was cheap product bought in especially to create an event: the sale. Looking closer, the bargains were few and far between. This stuff was garbage. I found myself able to hold onto my hard-earned cash more easily after this.
None of which has anything to do with The Good Son by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, which I did acquire from a sale, but not from a chainstore.
In 1990, I attended my sixth Greenbelt Festival. It had become a regular thing among my friends, signalling the end of summer and a return to either school or university.
This year was different. I'd just left university and would be returning to a job in the music industry, working for a plugging company in Ladbroke Grove.
A Christian festival, Greenbelt had a relaxed, family-friendly atmosphere. You were never worried about losing your belongings, people were very friendly and the only ones drinking tended to be us. The festival gained greatere exposure through Radio One in the years I attended, thanks to support from Simon Mayo, who in 1990 donated all the CDs he'd been sent by pluggers.
I bought this and Goo by Sonic Youth.
I listened to Sonic Youth a lot more.
Sorry Nick.
No comments:
Post a Comment