Waxing lyrical

A few days back one of my daily gratitudes was for producing a son who contributed to other people’s pleasure through his various sorts of music making and included a link to him showing some of his circuit bending skills on Youtube. Well, a blog reader of mature years who had never ventured into Youtube land then became an ardent fan and was waxing lyrical about all the random vintage things he had searched for and found to great delight. And I thought...hmm...what would I search for from a long time ago? What have I not heard for so long that I’ve forgotten I might like to hear again? And then I remembered!

In my mid to late teens I knew several people who worked at a vinyl record pressing factory near where I lived in Mid-Wales. They’d come home with all sorts of things from their production line in plain white inner sleeves. I remember some comedy...though I don’t remember who it was by or whether it was funny - and a variety of music but one stood out from the rest and I managed to get someone to blag for me the real cardboard album cover. I had it for years and carried on loving it. It was called Ship to Shore and it was by Nigel Mazlyn Jones and it was quite folky but had layered and bent sounds that I occasionally tried to copy with a borrowed pick up, amp and phaser. I didn’t know anything about the chap who made it and in those far off internet free days of you didn’t know something like that it stayed unknown. Then one day when I was six months pregnant I spotted a little poster somewhere saying someone with this very name was playing a gig in a town not far away. I can’t remember the exact details of getting there but I know it involved snow, a broken down van and having to borrowing some men’s trousers to fit over my bump! There were a bunch of us went and none of us could imagine how he would sound the same live as he had in the studio as no backing band was mentioned and there were so many noises he had to make.

Well, it was an eye opened for the small town folk scene of the late seventies as, as well as a selection of guitars he had lots of boxes and boards with knobs and switches on which he somehow managed to operate with a twitch of the hand or foot. Basically he could take pretty much all the funny sound making around where ever he went! That doesn’t seem so strange now but the time it was jaw dropping I can tell you...
So the years have gone by, and my bump turned into a person who makes interesting noises with knobs and switches and plays gigs himself. My record collection and turntable and the people I knew from my youth went in a separate direction at some point so I kind of forgot about Ship to Shore. But this morning I looked and of course found that Nigel Mazlyn Jones has kept right on doing his utterly brilliant stuff but also, here and there, amongst all these videos of mature versions of the skinny dude with the beard from the original album singing mature versions of the songs...were some of the original ones. They made me cry mostly in a good way...it felt like I was rediscovering an old friend and made me want to hear some more and I found there’s a CD available from his website with all of them and some previously unheard material. Guess what I’m having as an early Christmas present? Oh poo, I used the C word. I’m sorry!

Anyway, I’ve not listed a minimum of five things for which I’m truly grateful today because I’m grateful for tons and I’m tired and need my tea. It can be a little Saturday evening puzzle for you...guessing what I might have said!