Records Going Back
From the mid '80s I eagerly record-shopped in Birmingham’s Same Beat and Tempest, Magpie on Worcester’s Foregate Street, and further afield at Manchester’s Fat City and the Sheffield label/shop FON
Of all those shops above I think only Fat City exists these days, now under the stewardship of Jazzman Records. I’m not entirely sure how many shops there were across the whole country in my time of hunting new and old hop-hop, funk, soul and jazz records, but this number has surely tumbled down the charts, even with the relatively recent revival of store fronts selling physical records.
I imagine many towns, dare I imagine cities too, are now entirely void of record shops of all persuasions which is why I’m extremely blessed to have one in the tiny Shropshire market town I call home. It’s run by a gentleman by the name of Paul Bradshaw, and it goes by the name of Mod Lang.
My first encounter with both shop and owner (found off the top of Corve Street in Wood Yard near the town library) was one Sunday morning 13 or 14 years ago, where I found it landscaped like all good record shops I’d known prior, with avenues of convenient-height box sections of records, all neatly labelled – in some cases alphabetically, others by genre or decade – with the owner (who you’ll find preceding over the room from a big desk or high counter at one end by the door) playing something special over a more than half-decent sound system that you either can’t afford or they won’t sell to you. It certainly wasn’t as intimidating as some of the places I stumbled into as a teenager in search of UK hip-hop back in the 1990s, yet Paul still cast a suspicious look over the top of his Discogs listings to bluntly ask if he could help me with anything. No matter what the shop I always say no to anyone trying to give me guidance even if I actually mean yes: strange behaviour on my behalf I know.
Admittedly I’m quite skeptical of record shops these days and indeed those that run them, thinking in most case they’re recent businesses capitalising on the new wave of interest in vinyl which are sold at triple the price they really should be by people who couldn’t care less about them. Of course that’s not always the case. And it soon transpired that this was certainly not the case with Paul and his carefully choreographed Mod Lang. Ok there wasn’t any hip-hop in his racks on my finding, but what helped create it was aplenty.
To the right of the rustic medieval-like doorway, accessed by a very steep self-policing brick-construct run of stairs, that clings to the outside the building, was a small sideboard with a Rega turntable, a smart cartridge and a tube-amp. I asked if I could play a few records on it that I’d picked out, to which he jumped up and insisted on quickly skipping through by his own fair hand, worried no doubt that I may mishandle and/or damage his produce. Later I asked if he happened to have Johnnie Taylor’s Jodies Got Your Girl and Gone on 7, to which he shook his head. Minutes later I asked again if he could play another record for me, to which he replied “If you know who Johnnie Taylor is you can put your own records on.”
In the years to come we became friends, even interviewing him for the hyper-local newspaper Ludlow Ledger, which was when I first encountered the mythical sanctuary of the two back rooms – floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, with mint records devoid of price tags that are too special to be dismissively mauled by the casual ‘No I’m just-looking’ or ‘Oooh I’ve got this: how much is it worth’ crowd. In fact, when I created the Dog Hangs Well pub on Corve Street (talked about in my last musing) I created an apartment above it, which Paul would come to call home.
I’ve since bought my fair share of records from Paul’s Mod Lang (though possibly not as much as he would like) where you might find him basking in Neil Young or Joni Mitchell. Spend long enough here though and you’ll soon find that the music playing over the house system is somehow following your path around the shop in a bid to get you buy something extra you weren’t planning to shell out for. I don’t know a record shop, oldschool ones at least, where this doesn’t happen. Paul will deny this of course. The first time I encountered this practice ended up with me buying a crisp sealed copy of the self-titled Steady B long player from Magpie Records in 1987. In the case of Mod Lang I unexpectedly ended up with a ‘best of’ album by the James Gang, the live 1967 Is Alive And Well At The Whisky by Hugh Muskella and Weather Report’s Black Market. All three worth every penny.
In time I would invite Paul to add a record of his suggestion to my haul which has always proved rewarding. Thanks to this service I’m now a firm fan of Malo, an American Latin rock band from San Francisco. Ironically I played their 1972 self-title to my brother Dominic who immediately announced them as a polished version of Macondo by the band of the very same name, which again came out in 1972. I later learned that Macondo’s LP (their one and only) was recorded as a quick demo (which makes sense of the quality) with little to no work done on production, with most of the tracks recorded in one take. This album was also forced upon me by a dealer in Hamilton Ontario by the name of Bill. “You’ll really like this: interesting story; quite rare.”
It actually happens more often than you think.
I remember popping into a second-hand clothes/record shop called The Dinosaur Market in Hereford whilst the owner was there replenishing the crates. He quietly slid a copy of Mirror by Graham Central Station over the boxes to me: “You have to buy this. If you don’t like it just return it and I’ll give you your money back.” The following day I went back in and asked if they had a second copy, which I also ended up buying. This 1976 album featured The Jam, which was sampled by (well) everyone – from LL Cool J, Soul II Soul, and Jungle Brothers to Madonna, M.A.R.R.S, and Prince. For me it’s all about Chill Rob G’s The Court is Now In Session, 93 'Til Infinity by Souls of Mischief and Biz Markie’s 1988 classic Pickin’ Boogers, which I heard on his exceptional album Goin Off (picked up from Magpie Records in its year of release).
As a slight digress: I was trying on a 1970s three-piece suit in The Dinosaur Market in Bastion Mews late 2004 when the most incredible sound I’d heard in a long while abruptly filled the shop. I immediately rushed out of the changing room to the counter half dressed in multiple decades where a young girl was sat price tagging some trinkets: “It’s my personal CD. Great isn’t it!?” – “Bottle Rocket off The Go! Team’s album” she went on to say as she nudged the volume up a bit more. I ended up with Thunder, Lightning, Strike on vinyl for my birthday some months later. The person who bought it for me said: “I’d never normally dream of buying you vinyl, but as you kept calling it Team Go! I was confident you didn’t already have it. Brilliant album.
The same Biz Markie album from Magpie also featured Make the Music with Your Mouth Biz, which sampled Isaac Haye’s Ike’s Mood (a slow track which silly people like I play on 45rpm rather than the intended 33rpm to achieve the drum break that has become a hip-hop mainstay: also sampled by Shy D for his Yes Yes Y'all, Marley Marls’ He Cuts So Fresh, by UK artists Massive Attack for their One Love and London Posse’s Original London Style (both sampled on normal speed unlike most), and (Holy Matrimony) Letter To The Firm – ala 45rpm – off Foxy Brown’s debut album – plus many many more. I actually hunted down a copy of ...To Be Continued in the mid-Nineties (which features said sample) in a record shop above a meat market in Worcester. I remember hastily asking if he had another copy for sale (which is my usual question when finding a tasty nano second of drums that I know someone somewhere has sampled). “Yes I do. I must say, I never thought I’d sell this copy, never mind the one I have at home: it’s an awful record.” The next day I was back to buy my second copy so I too could double up the piano section like DJ Fingers had in the BBC UK hip-hop documentary Bad Meaning Good.
Back at Mod Lang, many years later, I bought Ike Turner and The Kings of Rhythm’s 1969 album A Black Man’s Soul from Paul for an almost giveaway price, which I got very excited about. Only after I’d exchanged cash for the goods I expressed how good it was by inviting him to play it. As soon as he heard Getting Nasty he tried to buy it back. It was most famously sampled by Jurassic 5, Main Source and Common, from 1991, 1997 and 2012, Concrete Schoolyard, Snakes Eyes and No Sell Out respectively.
Off the top of my head there have been four further sample-orientated records from Paul’s crates:
The first was the title track off Grover Washington Jr.’s Mister Magic, which I first heard on A Touch of Jazz by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince in 1987 and Black Rock and Ron’s Tired of all This from 1989. This was followed by an original pressing of Rhetta Hughes Re-Light My Fire which features Light My Fire, Hip Old Lady on a Honda and You’re Doing it With Her. The latter was sampled by Action Bronson for his Dance Song.
Then there was Unreal on London Records from Bloodstone – which contains The Traffic Cop (Dance) track – from my birth-year of 1973, which Steady B sampled for his Let The Hustlers Play on Jive.
And, finally, a relatively crap record, if not for the big-number title-track 7-6-5-4-3-2-1 (Blow Your Whistle) on side 1 by Gary Toms Empire. It is almost exclusively known in hip-hop circles for its repeated use in the whopper of a track, Hey! Hey! Can U Relate? by DJ Mink from 1989 though also features briefly on Young MC’s equally iconic Know How. This came out on Sheffield’s FON records which is where I bought my copy of Divine Force’s Holy War (Live). The DJ Mink track also samples, amongst others, KC & The Sunshine Band’s Let it Go (Part 2). The album it hails from is their self-titled 1975 funk-disco offering, which I found in a Canadian dollar-bin at the Hamilton record shop of King Street West owned by Bill (of Macondo fame) and his cohort Ray. Similar to the chap in Worcester who surprisingly sold me both his copies of his least favourite Isaac Hayes record, I remember jumping with joy on finding the KC LP in their shop and after enquiring walked off that day with two copies for two-Canadian-dollars-total. Ray handed me my change shaking his head: “All these amazing records I have here and you go and buy two of that.”
