You may remember that a few weeks ago, I got given a huge bag of records, some of which were in a bad state. On flickr, there was a small discussion on the best way to clean records. Below is my response. I thought it was too long-winded to leave it rotting in the middle of a flickr discussion, so here it is. Hopefully, someone might make use out of it.

I recently got given a huge pile of records, and these were in absolute states. No covers, records dating from 1962, in a smokers house. I discarded a selection where the owners dog had chewed through the pile. You get the type of condition.

I found a few in the collection I particularly wanted to play.

I had tried a number of things, to help clean my records, with very little success. I tried the quality handwash as mentioned previously, sadly it left too much residue, and actually broke my needle.

I don’t remember what made me try this particular substance, but it worked a treat. Technically, I’ve probably broken every law when it comes to record cleaning, but hell, if it worked for me, it might work for someone else…

My miracle fluid? Washing up liquid.

Currently at home, I use a particular example which is very, very concentrated, bought in bulk, in a big 5-litre bottle. The tiniest squirt fills the sink full of foam. Costs £9 ($18ish) a bottle, but lasts a year.

I experimented, and squirted a big gloop of this stuff onto the record surface, and used a combination of forefinger and thumb to rub the crap off. No water. That comes later.

The more I rubbed, the more came off. I’ve never seen anything like it. The orange syrup-like stuff turned dark brown as 40-odd years of crud escaped from the groove.

The muck coming out was clear to see. Holding the record against the side of the sink, I’d rub off the excess, again with my finger, resulting in dark brown streaks going down the sink to the drain, flipping the record over and doing the B side too.

I power-rinsed it, using the finger-over-the-tap technique, creating a tiny yet powerful little squirt, to clean the record, and remove as much soap as I could, and repeat the process until the excess going down the drain was clear.

Just for completeness, I’d repeat the process, and rinse it again. If the water stuck to the record, this meant there was still a trace of detergent on there, and I’d give it another blast. If the water ran straight off, I’d dry it using kitchen roll / paper towels.

The way to tell how successful the process has been (without playing it) is to hold the record up, at an angle to the light, so the light reflects off the inside of the groove. If it is shiny, there’s a good chance it will play, though the less scratches there are, the better it will play, naturally. If the reflection is dull, repeat the process. If it remains dull, there’s permanent damage to the record.

You don’t have to have the super-thick stuff. I bought some cheap store-own-brand stuff. Much runnier, but just as effective at removing the dirt.

I probably wouldn’t recommend this technique for only lightly soiled records, but when it comes to neglect + nicotine + dog, this procedure worked remarkably well.

Your mileage may vary with this one…

Technorati Tags: cleaning, cleansing, detergent, fingerprints, fix, groove, Music, record, tip, vinyl, washing up liquid

I don’t normally blog about adding individual items to my collection, but this time I find it necessary, as I now have a UK promo copy of “Downtown” in my possession. Wooo!

I’ve been collecting as many different versions of this song, and I think now I’m coming to the end of my search…

This one has the catalogue number of AMY 476, the same as the released version, but the label is different. As with most promos, instead of being printed on the company standard labels, it’s printed on a plain white logo, with black text…

The tracklisting, however is exactly the same. The A side is the Adam Moseley mix, and the B side is the instrumental version, coupled with “Welcome To My City”, the only original track released by them which isn’t on the album “Mirror”. It’s a pretty weak track if I’m honest.

The best thing about it is the misprinted label on the cover itself…

One Two Many, eh? Wrong.

Cor. It seems that all I’m talking about in here is records, plus my long walks, complete with taking hundreds of photos of said pointless journey. This post is no exception, as I shall now blabber on about the walk I took the other night.

It had been a beautiful late-spring day. It started off with a trip tyo the flea market. As usual, I spent far too much on records, but I did pick up a Billy Joel double CD for 50p. 36 tracks. That’s less than a penny a song! I’d also received a parcel of 30+ LPs from ebay earlier in the morning. That means, throughout the day I’d been collecting a lot of music. In fact, my purchases for the week looked something like this…

I’d got back from the flea market, itching for stuff to do while the weather was nice. The answer came in the form of record cleaning. Not the ones I’d just received, but some of the ones I’d been given a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t in a blogging mood when they arrived, so I don’t think I mentioned their arrival.

Anyway, most of the day was spent in the back garden, sploding big gloops of lemon washing up liquid on them, and gasping in awe as 50 years of dust, grime and nicotine were lifted off. It also allowed me to sort the really damaged ones (they weren’t in good nick) from the ones just about playable.

I tried to stay in and watch the telly. I just couldn’t do it. It was at that point I decided that I was going to make use of this weather, and go out to Hart Village and photograph the sunset.

It was a walk that would consist of 114 photos, 5.41 miles, and another visit to Sainsbury’s.

I tried to time it nicely so I wasn’t waiting too long for the sun to go down. Therefore, I set off at about 7:30 I decided to go the long way round, through the new estate and along the Hart Road. Basically, the reverse of the journey I took the other week.

It gave me the chance to photograph the construction of the carehome which is STILL being built. It must have been at least 18 months now…

After a power-walk (or rather, it looked like I was having a strop), I made it out of the estate, and continued along the Hart road…

At this point, somebody ran past me. It was either Coatesy, or someone who looks the exact spitting image of him.Nothing was said, it either wasn’t him, or he’s forgotten what I look like. After all, it’s been nearly six months since the last contact with him. I also noticed he’s deleted me from his MSN Messenger list.

Anyway, I arrived at Hart Village, and the sun was just reaching the point where it was starting to get low enough to make everything look orange.

After a road called “Nine Acres”, the footpath ends. After all, there are no more houses. This didn’t stop me, however, and I kept walking for another few hundred yards when I came to an opening in the hedgerow, leading to a field.

By this point, I was steaming, literally. The power-strop and the full walk uphill caused me to have the appearance of a racehorse after a particularly gruelling steeplechase. I decided to have a sit down in this field for a bit to recover, cool down, and watch the sun going down.

Er, that was the field. It;’s quite interesting the fact that I’ve managed to type all of this about going to see the sunset, yet I’ve not actually managed to post one image of it yet…

There, that’s better. Now, I was listening to music this entire journey. You’d think I’d be listening to something “sunsetty” at this point. You know, something chilled out. Something mood-setting. Mike oldfield, maybe? Enya? Both good choices, and both artists I had on my MP3 player at the time.

Ladies and gentlemen, I was listening to Jive Bunny. I found this rather amusing, and a reflection of my awful (to everyone else) taste in music.

Eventually, the sun disappeared behind the cloud in the above picture, and there was no more to see. I began to walk home. The sunset pictures kept disappearing, and although the sun was no longer visible, the sky was still dramatic enough to allow for possibly my favourite photo of the evening.

There were still photo opportunities to be had despite the fact that the sun had long gone. Something Hartlepool (or rather, Hart) is famous for, is its disused windmill, and the wind turbine near it. I noticed two runners on the path behind me. For a bit of an experiment, I wanted to see if they’d say anything to me if I obviously stopped off to take a photo. The result was this…

The female runner was passing me just as I turned around to rejoin the path. She looked at me as if I was mad. I just smiled and nodded politely. After all, I have something to show for it. And what do YOU have, missus? Aching muscles and worn out trainers. I win that one. The walk home was slightly diverted by a visit to Sainsbury’s, where I picked up a kitkat, carton of orange juice, packet of own-brand chicken curry noodles, and a jumbo sausage roll. Bugger, the amount of calories I’d burned off on this walk were about to be instantly put back on.

Saying that, I haven’t eaten the noodles yet and have only partially drank the orange juice.

Technorati Tags: flickr, hart village, hartlepool, Music, one 2 many, orange, photographs, record, sainsburys, springtime, sunset, walk

Oh, okay then, I WILL update, just because it’s more fun that sitting here doing nothing.

I can’t tell you what I’ve been doing, or where I’ve been, but during my absence, I have been busy. In fact, over the past week or so, I’ve actually took the time out and catalogued the majority of my 7″ single collection.

At the time of typing, it’s up to 570 records. You can view a PDF file of them all here…

Record_Main.pdf

Over the coming days, I might completely rewrite the music section, as I think it needs it.

Technorati Tags: database, Music, pdf, records, singles, vinyl

Well, it starts off with the trip home from Newcastle. Carrying a bag full of singles around the place wasn’t really that entertaining.

After taking more photos of broken lamp posts, we headed off to Fenwicks. There was a reason for this. Chris wanted to check out the price of new tellies, and I desperately needed the toilet. I had spent most of the previous post so desperate for the loo that my back teeth were floating. I’d cinsidered taking a leak behind one of the abandoned buildings I’d photographed, but with the onslaught of CCTV and the like, I thought it was probably for the best that I’d hold it.

We arrived in Fenwicks, and as we rode the escalators through the random flooras until we reached the televeision section. As we passed the third floor, I cried out “Oooh! Toilets!”

Now, I’m not a big public toilet user. In fact, I’d normally rather use a drain than a public toilet, but considering these were on the third floor of a large department store, I assumed they’d be clean. Thankfully, they were. They even had motion sensors to detect when you moved away from the urinal so it would flush. The only other place I’ve seen those was Germany. Actually, it didn’t really matter, as I was so desperate, I caused the sensor to “time out”, and it flushed while I was still in mid flow.

Not that you needed to know anything of the previous paragraph, but I thought I’d share anyway.

After pricing up new TVs, and being amazed how much they’d came down in price, we moved to the peripherals section. I laughed like a drain at the sight of one single HD DVD player placed on top of a pile of Blu-Ray players. I wish I’d got a photo of it, as it was so ironically placed. I laughed at the prices of said equipment, and we left the store.

It was getting towards the time that the “big match”, between Newcastle (at home, naturally) and Manchester United was taking place, therefore, most of the city was filled with black and white shirts. And goths.

Actually, this reminds me of something that happened earlier in the day, which I should have documented.

I had a good laugh at the cashpoint. There were two cashpoints, near where we were at the time. Chris joined the queue to use one, and I sort of loitered in the middle. Half way through the loitering, I decided that I also needed money, mainly thanks to my vinyl buying exploits… but which queue to join?

Answer… I didn’t. I sort of slid my way to the right, and “joined the queue”. Technically, I was in both queues. That was my opinion anyway. This was to the dissatisfaction of the (really quite attractive) boilers who happened to have their cashpoint raided by myself. To be honest, I knew I was in the wrong, but they’d let their mouths go before I had chance to have any compassion for them… “Eeee, Yeeeza shudda been in the queue, like?”, the ‘blonde’ one said, as I shuffled towards the hole-in-the-wall. I think there was more to it. Either way, they said stuff between themselves which made me remember I needed to do unnecessary things such as check my balance, and get a receipt.

Right, anyway, after Fenwicks, we looked in a few shops such as HMV. It was truly a pointless excersise. Something has happened to me in the last year or so. I no longer need the new record shops. Yes, I shall still trawl the old ones, like the one I mentioned before, but the likes of HMV just don’t do it for me any more.

After that, we headed back to the station. I continued my 28-year tradition of not-getting-anything-from-a-fast-food-place-except-fries by ordering fries, while Chris knocked back three cheeseburgers.

It was then time to head towards the platform and the train home. I was gobsmacked by the addition of another photo to my “broken things” collection, namely the destination board…

What’s even worse is that I can understand most of what it’s displaying, apart from the random mess in the bottom corner.

Either way, we got the train home, despite the destination board being broken (not that it would have made a difference anyway).

As we boarded, someone at random, asked me if I liked coke. He appeared to have a bottle of Diet Coke going spare. I refused, and so did everyone else on the train. He, and his bottle of coke, left a station or two later.

This is one of the things that gets me about society nowadays, one of my bug-bears, and I must admit to being as guilty as everyone else… nobody can be generous without suspicion. This guy could have bought a bottle of coke, and decided he didn’t want it. Instead of it going to waste, he decides to ask if anyone nearby wants it. Instead of his generiousity, he’s left with me leaving this paragraph, and a bottle of coke he didn’t really want. Take it home, put it in the fridge, etc. That’s what he should have done.

Er.

That was Newcastle over with. Chris came back to mine, and we worked our way through a box of Carlsberg cans.

That was the end of the excitement until… THE EARTHQUAKE!!!

I cannot believe that it’s still getting talked about, and still a small percentage of press coverage.

Let me, once and for all, document my earthquake experience.

I was at work. It was 00:57. Not a lot was going on. There were three of us talking together. Suddenly, the building shook. It’s hard to describe, as it was nothing special. It felt a bit like someone jumping up and down on the floor. I was the first to notice, or at least comment…

“Right, I might be going mad, but did anyone else just feel that?”

We looked at each other. Apparently, I turned white when the other two people agreed with me.

Within seconds, we were all googling “earthquake”. As we all know, it did turn out to be an earthquake. It was weak, no-one died. Chimneys fell down. Some glasses of water may have resembled *that* scene from Jurassic Park. It will be forgotten eventually, but I can claim I felt an earthquake.

OK, so that was pretty amazing. My morning was about to get a whole lot more interesting. Now, I was lying in bed, and I’m sure that I felt the bed shake. A similar side-to-side motion like I felt during TEH MAJ0R QUAKE! There is no report of an aftershock,so I reckon I was just imagining it.

Unfortunately, by going to bed as soon as I got in, this denied me the chance of being a media whore again, as I’d missed works attempts to contact me and appear on the ITV news. Instead, this chance was given to other employees. Never mind.

Technorati Tags: earthquake, flickr, Music, newcastle, Photos, records, toilet, train

Well, it’s almost 11AM when I started typing this. I really should be sat at work, obeying the new rules of not allowing drinks of water at our desk, but thanks to a hasty shift swap, I don’t have to visit that place for another number of hours. And, that number is 3.

Soooo. By the title, you can guess I’ve spent the last few days taking photos. You’d be right.

On Wednesday, I went to the flea market. IT was a lovely day, yet desperately cold. I wrapped up warm, and headed into the land where CDs are cheap, and second hand underwear are aplenty. I didn’t bother getting any photos, as I already have one. Still I came back with a pile of CDs. One particualr stall were selling albums for 50p each. I had some of that, and I walked away with a handful. Total cost: £4.50. Beauty.

I bought another couple of CDs from another stall, for £2, meaning that I had £6.50 worth of music. Wooo.

It was then, and only then, that I realised, I didn’t actually have my bank card with me, therefore I’d spent what I really couldn’t afford. This cut the day short, naturally, and I headed home, clutching my Netto bag full of music.

Later on in the afternoon, Chris turned up. The day was still bright, if just a little bit chilly. I looked at my camera, looked at the sky outside, and thought “Bugger it, I’m off to take some photos” I donned my coat, and off we went, without any idea of where we were going to go.

Before long, we were heading towards Steetley.

We didn’t go there, however, and instead walked along Old Cemetary Road, and then the beach

Somthing which I wasn’t aware of, is that last year, in July, there was a new gun put in place on the seafront. Now, by “gun” I mean an ornamental gun, not a real one Amazingly, it’s been up for 6 months, and there’s not one sign on vandalism or damage.

Despite the biting wind and freezing cold temperature, I thought it would be a good idea to walk along the Heugh. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the layout and landmarks of this wonderful town, the Heugh is a breakwater, built over 200 years ago to stop the tidal surges from flooding the bay. Without it, the town would be a very different place.

IT was at this point, however, that the sun was beginning to go down, and the temperature to dip even lower, and the wind, coming directly off the sea didn’t help much. It did, however, make for a very nice photo opportunity.

Hartlepool’s very own working class hero “Andy Capp” also had a statue dedicated to him last year. I took photos back in June showing exactly where the statue was going to be, but he wasn’t there. Instead, there was simply just the paving around it, and some orange netting. Thankfully, this time he was there.

Apparently, you have to rub his head for good luck. I didn’t bother. So, we were at the furthest point away from Mercuryvapour Towers. The photo opportunities kept coming, and I kept taking them. After taking some photos of the fish sands, we were both starving. This meant two words. Verrill’s Chippy. I scraped together £2, and bought myself and Chris a bag of chips each, and we sat, in sub-zero temperatures, watching the sun go down. I was OK, but Chris was freezing. Therefore, we headed back to his house. Of course,a photo trip done by me cannot be complete without…

… a photo of a streetlight, or two.

Chris picked up his big jacket, and off we headed, back to Mercuryvapour Towers. in order to sort through and upload the photos. During that process Andrew D appeared, with another disk full of 400 photos, which have now been added to the gallery This takes the total to over 1,900…!

While he was here, I’d learned that Jeremy Beadle had died. I must have been one of the first sites to report this, seconds after posting, I had an influx of visitors, all searching for “Jeremy Beadle dead”…

Anyway, I added the pics, Andrew left, and me and Chris sat there for the rest of the night, deciding that many songs sound a lot better when you play them on a turntable at the wrong speed. If you want to view all of the photos, you can do so here

Chris left, and I fell asleep on the couch in front of what was on TV at the time.

Thursday was a staff night out. After the company “made a slight miscalculation” on the day we were meant to be getting paid, we thought that when we eventually did get paid, that it would be a good idea to go for a few drinks and an indian. Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.

8 of us turned up, which is a pretty good turnout. Of course, I had my camera with me, though there’s no point posting the pics from that, as flickr’s been blocked from work. Oops!

EIther way, that brings me up to date. It’s now just after 12PM, the snow is falling outside, though it doesn’t appear to be laying. Just in case it does, I have my camera recharged, and ready for some “soft white stuff action”. Ahem.

Technorati Tags: cds, flea market, flickr, gun, hartlepool, headland, indian, jeremy beadle, Music, photo, steetley, web stats