The Christmas Issue, December 1989 or so. Full issue linked at the bottom of the post.
Is that a Frank Quitely cover? Can’t say for sure, I don’t see any signature but it sure does look like it. Back cover by Somme depicts the Saracen Head (Sarry Heid), one of Glasgow’s oldest pubs and supposedly host to Scotland’s Poet, Robert Burns at one point in it’s past. Only open at weekends according to Trip Advisor, so don’t make any plans on my account.
I’ve been wanting to scan this for a while, but various things just left me unable or unwilling to do so but for reasons today I’ve decided to sit down and work on it.
In reading back through some of this, it’s very much a product of 1989; traces of sexism & racism, but a unique sense of humour that was very much Glasgow. Maybe mostly to be remembered for launching Frank Quitely on the world stage. Anyway, I kind of feel a lot of this makes very little sense outside of a Glaswegian mindset, very much so at the beginning. I’m going to assume there’s no-one still too attached to this and any chances at making any money are passed, and some of the people are dead and or pretending to be dead so they don’t have to deal with John Brown Press anymore. The full mag is linked below, but for now let’s get annotating.
I’ve scanned it as A3 so covers are presented as a pair, if you want to split them and reupload be my guest. I just ask you don’t claim credit for scanning.
So, as mentioned before February is a bit different in that I’m skipping forward a year so as to introduce some variety in the selections. However, RadioWorldHistory doesn’t have any of February 1990’s Record Mirror and my collection is missing some issues so the first one is from February 10th. I thought I had a complete collection of RM for this year but I’ve either misplaced a box or misremembered.
End of the month, going to do something a bit different with February but until then it’s ten from the Club Chart leaning into rarer / more obscure tracks and maybe some anthems, as much comment as I can muster (not much) and with hatred in my heart for Spotify.
And to explain myself on this point, Spotify is a company that has contentised art, stolen from musicians and treated them with contempt while profiting massively from their works. Fuck them. Buy some music from Bandcamp instead.
I am writing this on January 7th to keep ahead and as of today Mark Zuckerberg is enabling the apocalypse so maybe Spotify has been destroyed by a missile as he declares war on Europe and European Internet companies.
Annual post time again, for this year I’ve scanned the Record Mirror Club Chart from 36 years ago.
And if you can’t read my scans, the lovely folk over at World Radio History have the full issue here in PDF.
So, on to the chart, I’m going to pick a few things out and we’ll see if they’re available on youtube. Not ideal, but fuck Spotify. I hope everyone in leadership at that company dies horribly.
Back when I started this, the Internet was a lot more promising. You could assume that your words would be indelibly etched forever into the conciousness of humanity.
This doesn’t need much of an introduction, I’ve written about it before but to get up to speed this was a comic strip appearing in issues of DC Thomson’s (TV) Tops comics in 1982. A full colour series featuring the pop star alias of Stuart Goddard, Adam Ant. Adam travels through time, adventuring in various personas inspired by his glamourous stage presence. I’ve been trying to piece together the various strips for a while, which is not an easy task considering the scarcity of the source material.
A little over forty one years since the last strip appeared, I’ve believe I’ve managed to find every page.
I’m partial to buying what some what call junk from Aliexpress, so recently I had a need for some cheap coasters and figured I’d have a look there for something suitable. There’s little point in my buying those in Switzerland, they’ll be 10 times the price.
There’s the danger of buying something from Aliexpress that turns out to be a photo or a poster of the item if I’m not careful, especially it seems in the area of toolsets, but that’s part of the thrill I guess. And I realise I’m probably subjecting myself to the whims of big Algorithm feeding into big data for the Chinese Government, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. And I really needed a Do Not Disturb sign for my office door.
Anyway, I found some vinyl coasters that were a couple of bucks and that’s kind of my thing, so I bought a pack and it’s arrived today.
