Ash - 1977 (1996)

[Written from the perspective of 'Me']

Round Duggie's house, is a little room with an orange leather sofa. It's stuffed with old pasty wrappers, bits of scrap paper, notebooks, newspapers and music.

Me and Duggie Chop sit in there sometimes to listen to records. By records I mean LPs. One of the walls is filled with a white Ikea ['Expedit'] shelving unit containing 1,000s of LPs, stacked in alphabetical order.

He's got a nice set up, Duggie: Rega turntable and Roksan [Kandy LIII] amplifier through some tiny Dali speakers [Lektor 1] placed on a shelf. "You should always overdrive your speakers," says Duggie, "first principle of setting up a hifi."

We decide to do an A-Z thing, listen to whatever turns up scanning from left to right on the shelf. Duggie hands me a Ginsters and I settle down into the sofa.

"Ash," says Duggie, "Haven't played that for ages." And he selects the black cover of '1977' from the shelf.

It's a gatefold cover with the image of a street scene and an upturned bin on the front. The image is placed sideways and printed twice. It's repeated on the back. You can tell the thing is designed for CD, the tracks are listed 1 - 12, no 'side 1', 'side 2' (luckily this is sorted in the gatefold - still numbered 1-12, but at least 'side 1' and 'side 2' are split).

Inside are shots of the band having a laugh in the studio and on tour, photographed next to signs that say things like: 'Domination - Teenage - Bi-sexual'. The band are either sticking their tongues out or holding bottles of booze.

"The LP's called '1977' cos that's when they were born, they were all about 19 when they recorded it," says Duggie, "precocious gits!"

"Didn't know you were into them," I say.

"I liked that 'Girl From Mars' track and 'Kung Fu' was pretty cool at the time, you know," says Duggie, "also it was on vinyl and dead cheap. Couldn't resist it."

On vinyl in 1996. Right in the middle of the time that record companies, shops and 'The Man' were trying to scrap vinyl in favour of an alternative new(ish) format: The CD. Or the SACD or some other nonsensical platform. Am I being cynical by imagining that this was a way to encourage music lovers to replace their entire collections with a new format - to buy the whole lot all over again? Plus invest in some pricey new equipment?

"Yeah, on vinyl," says Duggie, "it was like jumping in bed with your mates Mum, to buy LPs back them. It's kinda cool now."

Duggie takes a big chomp out of his chilli pasty and stares at the wall, thinking, "If I'd bought this record on CD, it'd be on a shelf now gathering dust, there'd be no reason to play it. It'd also seem alot more dated."

"I know what you mean," I say, "CDs are like commodities aren't they. Some crap you buy from Tescos."

And Duggie's nodding his head, no doubt just like thousands of other people who care about music are doing this very moment, as they have this same conversation.

"Ash wrote some bloody good tunes," says Duggie, "I like the way the album starts with that heavy metal thing. Side 2 is cool as well, I forgot about 'Oh Yeah' - you know, 'Oh yeah, she was taking me over, Oh yeah, it was the start of the summer.' Gets you all nostalgic for school, doesn't it?"

"Yep," I say, "that moment when, in the heat of July, the bell rings and everyone runs across the school field, seeking new adventures duirng that long, six week break."

"You mean snogging, don't you?" says Duggie.

"Yep," I say.

Duggie opens his flask of tea and hands me a cup. It's weird the way he always uses a thermos, even at home. Says he can't be bothered to get up once he starts listening. What a pro!

"Reckon I'll be spinning this one again," says Duggie, "funny how that happens with music. I mean, '1977' has been sitting up there for years."

"It's a continual renewal," I say, "record collections. Something just sparks off an urge to play an obscure record and one thing leads to another."

"You gotta play the whole record though, haven't you?" says Duggie.

"Too right, none of this Mp3 skipping around," I say.

I mean, we've both got iPods, you know. It's just that's not proper listening. It's like when you had your tape on a Walkman. Something you'd recorded from an LP. You'd play it on the Walkman when you couldn't get to the family music centre to listen to it properly.

"Reckon we're becoming old farts?" says Duggie.

I take a bite of my pasty and chew, washing it down with a slurp of tea.

The Albion Band - Rise Up Like The Sun (1978)

Duggie's fallen asleep. So I'll address you directly, again. But with no 'stage directions' this time.

Gives me the chance to talk about folk rock. Duggie's not into it, hippy wot nots he calls it. Blimey, wait until we get onto The Incredible String Band, then.

The Albion Band. Rise Up Like The Sun. Got my copy from a car boot sale. £1. Lovely.

I can float away on this kind of thing. Opens with a nice trad sounding couple of folk-rock sing alongs, 'Ragged Heroes' and 'Poor Old Horse' then you're thrown into a raga-style instrumenal piece mixing jazz with folk and partly played on a synthesiser. Typical of The Albion Band, mixing it up.

In fact, Ashley Hutchings, Albion Band stalwart, always pushes the boundaries. On 'Rise Up Like The Sun' he's brought a few Fairport friends with him to push those boundaries further than the Convention would go and brought a Gryphon member - an experimental folk/prog rock outfit - with him.

I'm not going to overdo it. The whole thing sounds pretty standard folk rock by today's standards. But that's only because musicians like these pushed it.

I think I'm pushing it going on like this. But, hey, we live in an age of eclecticism. Wasn't the case in 1978. Punk was on its last legs. Prog had disintegrated. Synthesisers cost as much as a car. People like 'Streetband' (featuring Paul Young) were in the charts singing about 'Toast'.

The Albion Band. A breath of fresh air. The sun rising and breaking up the fog. Of course I'm going to push it. Of course. Wow...just then...I was taken by the wonderful fiddle line in 'House In The County' on side two and drifted for a moment. 'The Primrose' follows, with a jarring - yet addictive - oompah-oompah sound, blended with a kyboard. reminds me of the theme tune to one of the 'On The Buses' films...

...and from the ridiculous to the sublime. The LP rounds out with the lengthy, opinion splitting masterpiece 'Gresford Disaster', an epic song about the death, in 1934, of 265 miners in North Wales. Stretched and jammed out into a synthesised slab of wonderfulness - despite the harrowing subject matter.

[So, he wanders back to the river, the sun's losing it's warmth, time for sustenance. He nudges Duggie, unscrewing the lid of the thermos and offers his friend a sweet tea. Duggie nods and nudges back - his float's bobbing up and down, surely he's got a bite...]