Book of the Week: In Search Of Captain Beefheart – Pt. 19 – Further losses were sustained

Further losses were sustained

On going to college and becoming old, wise and mature as I surely was at the distinguished age of eighteen, not only had my tastes become more refined but the current Underground scene was also a tad different to what it had been when I was a tender fresh-faced lad. Alright, I’ll admit to never being fresh-faced! What was hip in the playground at fourteen did not look quite so cool four years later.

This necessitated a certain refinement of the collection. The last thing I wanted was to have a cultured friend rifle through my treasured records and produce a frown on the discovery of my Billy J and Freddie and the Dreamers albums. They would probably have had a field day with the rest of my Merseybeat collection, not to mention Cliff, the Shadows and Adam Faith as well.

 Opher & Liz 1968 – complete with patches & Kaftan

What was needed was a culling.

I went through and selected the stuff I was currently into and stashed the rest up in the loft.

This meant that my Folk, Blues, Acid Rock and Progressive/Psychedelic stuff all accompanied me to my digs while the bulk of my Rock ‘n’ Roll, Mersey and Beat stuff kept the spiders company.

Life was too full to dwell on things much. It was only much later when I had got over the pretentiousness of being hip that I decided to dig them all out. That was when it became apparent that things were not right.

To start with my Mum had done a Spring-clean of my old bedroom and chucked all my old magazines and stuff away. These included all the Beatles magazines that I had collected as well as my autographed Them postcard.

When I went to retrieve the albums from the loft there were hardly any there. One of our neighbour’s sons had liked Rock ‘n’ Roll so she’d given him a heap on the basis that I was no longer interested in them. Another load had gone to the jumble sale to clear a bit of space in the loft. This apparently included all my first edition Merseybeat stuff including my two Oriole ‘This is Merseybeat’ albums, my Kinks, Who, Yardbirds and others. She’d dumped a good couple of hundred priceless albums! It was a catastrophe!