Saturday Deluxe / 22 October 2016

SDE has just drunk five litres of undiluted ‘blackcurrant squash’ and isn’t in the mood for any monkey business.

Let’s get the show on the road and deluxe the ‘heck’ out of this Saturday morning. Coming up…. an irate, Macca-hating Phil Collins, why Sainsbury’s mistake a bit of cardboard for a ‘record shop’, and Kate Bush’s live version of King of the Mountain in full…

“He’s little and he likes The Beatles!”. McCartney insults Collins. “He’s not worth it!” says peacemaker Townshend. 

Phil Collins revealed this week that he is sick and tired of sitting back and listening to McCartney’s clap-trap.

With a book to promote Phil Collins has revealed that he fell out with Paul McCartney back in 2002 when both men were performing at the Buckingham Palace party.

According to Collins, “McCartney came up with [his then-wife] Heather Mills and I had a first edition of ‘The Beatles,’ by Hunter Davies, and I said, ‘Hey, Paul, do you mind signing this for me?'”

“And he said, ‘Oh, Heather, our little Phil’s a bit of a Beatles fan.’ And I thought, ‘You f–k, you f–k.’ Never forgot it.”

“But he has this thing when he’s talking to you, where he makes you feel [like], ‘I know this must be hard for you because I’m a Beatle. I’m Paul McCartney and it must be very hard for you to actually be holding a conversation with me.'”

The tabloids have been gleefully reporting this 14 year feud with the ex-Beatle although whether Paul is even aware of this ‘feud’ is not known. Of course, Phil was famously in the audience watching The Beatles play in their 1964 film A Hard Day’s Night and at that time he was just 13. So technically he was ‘little’ and clearly a Beatles fan, so the accuracy of Paul’s statement cannot  be faulted…

None of the journalists reporting this story mentioned that Collins’ played on Paul McCartney’s 1986 album Press To Play on a track called…. wait for it…. Angry. Phil can probably relate to the lyrics: “I’m sick and tired of sitting back and listening to all of your clap-trap…. I’m just angry looking at you”. Here’s the song

First play of King of the Mountain from Kate Bush’s Before The Dawn

After the 40-second clip was teased on Ken Bruce’s BBC Radio 2 show on Thursday, BBC 6 Music was given the exclusive and played the whole version of Kate Bush‘s King of the Mountain as played live in 2014 for Before The Dawn. The internet, being the internet, the clip is now easily available to listen to online, so here’s a soundcloud link, below (I’d advise skipping the wordy and gushing 2 minute intro!)

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/289270434″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]

Read more about the 3CD and 4LP vinyl release of Before The Dawn.

A record shop in 2016

There used to be an HMV in Islington, London just across the road from Sainsbury’s but that was closed down years ago. I was never particularly impressed with the stock they carried or how they marginalised music for DVDs and blu-rays, but that was HEAVEN compared to Sainsbury’s idea of a ‘record store’.

I should have known better, but I ‘popped in’ again on Thursday morning on the off-chance that the Liverpool Road branch would have any copies of the Frankie Goes To Hollywood Welcome To The Pleasuredome, white vinyl limited editions. Predictably they didn’t and the image above shows the totality of their stock at that time. It’s not so much a ‘record store’ as a fire hazard. Sainsbury’s CARE so much about vinyl records that they aren’t willing to find them any proper shelf space and just stack them in this hideous cardboard rack which sits protruding into an isle and gets in everyone’s way.

The music selection is fairly safe with selections from David Bowie, Mike Oldfield, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. I asked a staff member why the store hadn’t received any of the limited editions (Jethro Tull Aqualung on green vinyl, Frankie on white vinyl, and a couple of Madonna coloured vinyl pressings) and I was told that they get what they are given. Despite being an enormous shop, she suggested that because Liverpool Road was one of the ‘smaller stores’ (!) that’s why they perhaps haven’t got the other stock, adding that they may well be ‘losing’ the vinyl soon anyway, due to space issues.

I had previously entered into a twitter dialogue with Sainsbury’s about the lack of these coloured vinyl pressings in a store that stocked vinyl. The staff member promised to put a ‘product request’ in for me, for Frankie. Yesterday I got an email which read as follows:

“Thanks for getting in touch to ask if we could stock Fleetwood Mac – Rumours Vinyl at your nearby Sainsbury’s store.

After considering your request we aren’t able to add this to our range at the moment.”

So the request was for completely the wrong title AND as you can see from the image they DO have Fleetwood Mac‘s Rumours anyway, so even if I had been after that, this is incorrect information. A combo-pack of a cock-up.

On Friday evening – after over a week of having no luck getting hold of this Frankie Goes To Hollywood – I received a salt-in-the-wound email from Salvo/BMG promoting the very product I’ve been trying hard to buy. Something is wrong when you are spending time and money marketing to people who want to buy your product but cannot, thanks to inept distribution.

Note the ‘selected stores only’! It’s not just ‘selected stores’, it’s selected stores within selected stores, because even if your local store sells vinyl (already a small percentage of the 1200 UK stores) it still doesn’t mean they will stock it.

It’s a mystery! Literally, no one in Sainsbury’s – not even the music buyer who emailed me about this a week and a half ago – can tell you exactly which stores are stocking it. THEY DON’T KNOW (and I’m not joking). Head office don’t know, individual store managers don’t know if they will get it, Salvo/BMG don’t know where you can find it. BUT Sainsbury’s think their customers can somehow find out. I don’t mind them jumping on the vinyl bandwagon, but if you are going to do something, then at least think it through and do it properly. Supermarkets need to just GO AWAY and concentrate on baked beans and stop playing around with stuff that we have a passion for in such a half-hearted manner and incompetent manner.