June 26, 2009


Terry thought of something that Ray Davies had said recently . . .

. . . about how he felt like sobbing his heart out whenever he looked at anyone’s record collection, because it was just so moving to see that personal soundtrack laid out before you, naked and open and fading with the years, because if you cared about this kind of thing then it was all there among the scratched vinyl and the cracked gatefold sleeves, as plain as could be, all the hopes and yearnings of someone’s private universe, and everything that a young heart could possibly want or need or yearn for.

Tony Parsons – Stories We Could Tell

posted by Phil Bebbington in books, humans, music, observations 

comments

4 Responses to “Terry thought of something that Ray Davies had said recently . . .”

  1. Lucy Foley on June 26th, 2009 at 5:19 pm

    I said you wanna be startin somethin
    you gotta be startin somethin
    you wanna be startin somethin
    you got to be startin somethin

  2. Daryl Scroggins on June 26th, 2009 at 7:58 pm

    I used to work with a guy who had an insanely large record collection. He lived alone, but was not a loner, and his favorite weekend activity was going to yard sales and estate sales to look for records. He would sometimes bring great finds to work to show people, and always seemed to expect people to be as impressed as he was about the absence of the slightest scratch and the pristine condition of the sleeves. I admired the man: he was one who truely went his own way, always ready to help others and quick to laugh while also never letting himself be seen as silently agreeing with bigoted bullshit. He showed me his collection once. It was housed in wooden crates stacked the width of a large apartment room and rising to the ceiling. Several thousand records. He quit working at the printing company I worked at and I didn’t see him for a long time. Then I ran into him and he said a fire had taken the collection. The first thing he said, though, was that he was glad he was the only one living in the quadraplex at the time. He smiled then, and said he had to go. Had to check out some sales before heading to his night job at an injection molding company. Wherever you are, Michael–I remember you and wish you the best. You were always a fine example of the way a human being should try to live.

  3. Phil Bebbington on June 27th, 2009 at 1:43 am

    Daryl, thank you for this – it really made my morning reading it.

  4. Collecting : clusterflock on June 27th, 2009 at 8:25 am

    [...] Daryl’s remembery, sparked by Phil’s post, really got me. It really got me. Now. [...]

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