Chapter 15 – Jim’s albums
Big Jim was every bit as big as big Alan but with a lot less flab. He had a main of long curly ginger hair and a ginger tash and always dressed well with a well-tailored tweed jacket, pressed open-neck shirt and cords with desert boots. Jim worked in the advertising business. Everything about him was stylish and precise.
Her loved music. Big Jim had a large collection of albums. He treated them with the same degree of care that he took with his appearance. His job provided him with the means.
It was Alan and Sally who introduced Danny to Jim. He lived in the basement flat behind them facing out into the garden adjacent to Pete. Danny instantly connected. They liked the same sounds. Jim was big, jovial and friendly ……. Except when it came to his record collection. Danny soon found that out.
He wasn’t allowed to rummage through; nobody was allowed to touch Jim’s albums. Music was sacred.
He sat Danny down in a chair equidistant between the speakers and at the exact optimal point for perfect balance. Jim had the best tower speakers. They were Advents. Jim swore by them. He talked technical which went over Danny’s head – all tweeters and bass with dynamic mid-range. They were wired up with gold leads to a Thorens belt-drive turntable. Jim waxed lyrical about the need for a decent sound system to appreciate the full impact of the music while he extracted the inner sleeve from the chosen disc.
Danny could see that he had chosen Piper at the Gates of Dawn. That was good because he was familiar with that.
Jim carefully extracted the vinyl disc taking care not to touch the grooves and carefully wiped both sides with an antistatic cloth before positioning it on the turntable. He then carefully aligned the stylus and allowed the machine to manage its slow descent on to the record.
‘Listen to this,’ he urged Danny.
The music cut in and not a word was spoken. Jim stood by the deck and watched Danny closely with a little smile on his face. He was watching for the reaction.
Danny was transfixed. Floyd were one of his favourites and he thought he knew the album inside out. Seemingly not. There were not of the crackles and surface noise. But he’d been expecting that. It was crystal clear. What he was not prepared for was the separation and warmth. He could hear every single instrument clearly. There was loads more than he had imagined. In his experience they all melded together into one lump of sound. This teased them out so that he could listen to each one singly. The effect was a revelation.
Jim could see it reflected in Danny’s face and that gave him pleasure.
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I think somebody needs to sort big Jim’s sartorial faux pas out. Nobody ever looked stylish in a tweedy jacket and corduroy strides, with the desert boots as icing on the cake. He must have voted Liberal!
Normally I would agree with you. But sometimes there are people who can make the most ridiculous style choices work. Big Jim (not his real name) was one of those people. The person I based this character on was a very charismatic man with a strange dress sense. But he carried it off.