6.1.22 Your Private Life Drama, Baby Leave Me Out

 Right. We're doing this on my third ever listen to this album and on the joy of buying second hand vinyl.

I didn't buy the first Pretenders album at the time. Obviously I knew - and loved - Kid, Stop Your Sobbing and Brass In Pocket, though possibly not in the order they were released; I came to The Pretenders in the way that most did - through Brass In Pocket hitting number one out of seemingly nowhere. I had no idea of Chrissie Hynde's former life as an NME writer or as a brief bandmate of Sid Vicious (Just googled that to check - she wasn't in a band with Sid, though she did attempt to start one with Mick Jones and was in a short lived act with Steve Strange).

Ste Beb had this, we listened to it once - he may have listened to it more often. I didn't get it, it didn't work for me. So I watched The Pretenders from afar as they released a string of brilliant singles - I Go To Sleep, Message Of Love, Talk Of The Town: pure pop brilliance that I didn't bother buying. 

I started in revolver Records (later subsumed into HMV) in July 86. That Christmas, my first ever retail Christmas if you don't count the part time job in Kwik Save which was manic but held literally no responsibility to be any good at anything, saw two high profile Greatest Hits sets released. The Police and The Pretenders. Pop brilliance all the way through but played back to back for a month? I had no need to buy either, no desire to ever listen to either again at any point in my life. 

Add to that the fact that The Pretenders' offering included a truly woeful version of I Got You Babe aided by what was then late period, moved over to cover versions verging on karaoke UB40 (I'll talk about the brilliance of their debut at some point) and we're talking about a record that I was happy to leave in 1986.

This is where we talk about the joy of second hand records. 

I spent years maintaining my stance that CD was an infinitely superior format to vinyl (quick aside, the plural of vinyl is vinyl, if you use the term 'vinyls' we can't be friends, sorry, there have to be standards in life). I dismissed John Peel's maxim that vinyl has surface noise but life has surface noise - the only thing Peel ever said that I'd dismiss in any way - I didn't want surface noise, I knew for a fact, through very limited studio experience, that studios quite definitely don't have surface noise. I wanted purity.

Then, a couple of years ago, I finally upgraded my turntable. Second hand via eBay admittedly, but still an upgrade. A nice Technics. Which I didn't realise needed a pre-amp in order to be able to hear the bloody thing. So I went to a decent audio shop in Crosby (which isn't there any longer) just before the first lockdown and I bought a pre-amp that cost more than I intended. And a new head shell for the deck, and the most expensive cables I'd ever bought. 

Bloody hell, vinyl seriously sounds good, doesn't it? 

Suddenly there's a warmth, a presence, to every vocal I'd ever listened to. There were moments on records that I hadn't spotted on the CD version. I could compare these because I bought most of the records I loved again when they appeared on CD but never let go of the original vinyl. Because I'm very much a hoarder. I'd loved the pristine sound of the little silver discs but didn't realise that I was missing so many small moments.

And once you've had that revelation? Yeah, you start buying more. There are albums I bought on CD that I'm now buying on vinyl, there are gaps that I'm filling. Forty years of buying music and there's so much more that I need; little corners I missed on release, artists I just never got round to.

So shops become vital again. Charity shops. Though most of those have realised that most vinyl is now worth more than 99p. And second hand shops. My shops of choice? Good Time Records on County Road and 81 Renshaw in town

This was a Good Time purchase. A £5, why the hell not decision. It was only after buying it, along with a couple of other items that I'll get to in time that Jeff informed me that you just can't sell Pretenders records. Nobody wants them.

They're a band that have apparently dropped from fashion. Which is a shame because this is a decent record. Not a 10/10 album as some of the reviews of the rerelease have had it but still a fine piece of work. It's got Chrissie Hynde's expected energy and attitude, a great rhythm section and bloody gorgeous guitars. It's slightly of its time and slightly ahead. It's 1979 but sounds like 1982. Which doesn't sound like much but back then was an eternity.

It's a solid body of work. A 7/10, a 4 star album. Which is probably the most that most of us want fro0m a review. There are lovely moments and there are guitars that chime and roll and twang.

The whole thing kind of stands on how bloody great the singles are. 'Kid' has my favourite guitar part of all time. One I finally learned the intro to last year. I learn lots of things, very few of them actually stick. This stuck. It's a Duane Eddy/surf band twang and it's bloody lovely. 

I've no idea yet how often I'll return to the whole album but in closing side one with Stop Your Sobbing and then heading into side two with the three shot of Kid, Private Lives (whose reggae slink manages to actually better Grace Jones' imperious cover, which is some feat) and Brass In Pocket, Chrissie and her mates create something eternal. 

Which is all you can ever hope for. Forty three years on, it's still here, still sounds like it's happening now. There's achievement in that.