another book bought this afternoon...
"ace records - labels unlimited" blackdog publishing ISBN13: 978 1 906155 03 2i've communicated with ace records in the past as a music fanzine editor, and they were very accommodating to me... as i'm a fan of the label and spent an awful lot of money on their albums (the mod jazz series is still a staple on the stereo...), buying ace albums always means you're buying quality - which is rare thing these days.
all killer no filler...
i even had the opportunity to take a very bad photograph of
dean rudland once(see picture below), much to his (much deserved) ridicule.
i was using the famous "crap cam" my first ever digital camera... and a justified piece of shit it is too - he said i made him look like a corpse...
(sums it all up really - i was in a london club with the opportunity to take photos of some of the formative heads in my musical history(the acid jazz man eddie pillar was there too...), men from the music industry who have shook hands with some of the legends of soul and r+b and rockabilly... and i have the shittiest camera in the world instead of my olympus om10 or the myriad compact film cameras that we had lying around the house doing nothing...)my life is in this book, everything from
whirlwind to
booker T thru punk to blues.
if you don't know
ace records - they are a re-issue catalogue label, who put out only the best and most original music from the last 40 odd years, no cheesey re-runs - just gritty soulful, jazzy, bluesy, punky rock and roll tracks from some of the best and mostly under-rated artists you may have never heard of, but will wish you had.
i'm going to enjoy this book a lot for a good few weeks of dipping in and just being there... reading about all the trials and tribulations of setting up a record stall, then a record company... meeting all the legends and lesser known musicians of some damn fine music... plus there are loads of photos of memorabilia, albums, people, places.
for a music geek like me, this is heaven.
still on a retro tip for today, i went down to the bullring market in the city, to my favourite hair-product stall in the foodhall... they sell mostly afro-caribean hair stuff, which means of course they do these beauties:
on the left is
blue magic... for the ladies, to use with hair-curling styles, so that's for the missus who's obsessed with the hair books she's got in the shop(and why not.. they are very good...), i might convince her to buy up a load of this and put it in the shop.
and on the right is the awesome
royal crown... i use this stuff every day(if i "do" my hair... not if i'm wearing a hat!), basically just petroleum hair oil and olive oil...
smells like gumbo to me!
big handfuls of it on your head... feels healthy and much better than
brylcreem, which has to be said is a bit too slippery and smells of old men... even if it was and still is made in birmingham.
i have a back-up tub of teh
bryl for emergencies - as it's easy to get a hold of, but i'd sooner use the
fish hybrid wax as it has more hold(it's basically a modern version of the old pomades without the nice smell...), and because teh cream does make you smell like your grandad which sends you down a long road of psychology....
pluko black+white is still the mother of all pomades( i may even go to northfield to get some of the
pluko black+white orange lite - which they sell in a hairdresser's shop in the market there).
and if you do go for
pluko btw... search out these little stalls in markets where you can buy the big ol' tub for less money than what high street chains will charge for the stingy little tub that's half the size with the false bottom (where they pack in some good ol' southern air, but no product
grrrrr....)
elvis wore
pluko black+white.
i also got these other pomades when i was at the stall.
on the left is
murrays pomade which i haven't used yet but it smells of toffee, and then there's
sweet georgia brown... always a favourite - the red one smells of butterscotch-toffee and the purple on smells like raspberry/blackcurrant... just feels great on the hair.
why use these old products... well they have bugger all chemicals in them, so won't strip the goodness and life out of your hair... they have a lot of "give" in them, as in they don't set like glue and will keep nice and flexible - if you're in a hot club or sunny weather.
and of course another reason for wearing them is the aroma... i used to be addicted to using
bodyshop coconut pomade(they called it "
hairshine"....) for years as it had a cheery smell of coconut about it( the coconut smell is used in aroma therapy to make you happy btw), great little metal tins of the stuff that had the same texture as
pluko(which has it's own unique
play-doh smell), until they discontinued it (along with the
ice blue shampoo and
banana condition...).
i have heard rockabilly betties admit they they go around the rooms at a do, sniffing the air for nice pomades... sounds good to me!
today i shall be mostly listening to excellent rare buddy holly tracks...
