“When I was about 12 my parents had a hi-fi area in the house, complete with an abundance of records stacked together around a small table. I used to sit there making cassette tapes for my Walkman from all the vinyl.”
“Often I would choose the bands to feature in my mix just based on the cover, sometimes I would listen before making the all important decision, and sometimes I would copy the same song every 4 tracks if I liked it enough!
Once I recorded a 15 minute version of a Kate Bush track because it took me 12 minutes to notice that the record was skipping—it was skipping in time—and of course it stayed that way on the tape. When I listen to the track now I’m always surprised when it doesn’t skip.
At around the age of 19 I inherited the very same vinyl record collection from my childhood. My Dad upgraded everything to CD and decided he was finished with vinyl. At that time my housemate had a pair of Technics 12/10s—they were of very high quality with decent needles. The sound of the vinyl through a pair of headphones was outstanding. It sounded thick like you could reach out and cut it like musical fudge.
It also sounded very emotional to me. Recordings that were built on performances with little editing. It was very informative to listen closely to these pieces of music. The way they mixed records when stereo was new was unbelievably bold/mad—drums in one ear, lead vocals in the other.
I have very happy memories of albums such as Kate Bush, Hounds of Love, Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, Elton John, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Neil Young, After the Gold Rush, Leonard Cohen, Songs of Love and Hate, David Bowie, Hunky Dory, and Joni Mitchell, Clouds.
It’s probably the reason I still like to print a short run of vinyl on Unkle Bob releases. And, I still have a small refined vinyl collection with me to this day.”
—Rick Webster, Unkle Bob
Unkle Bob’s “Songs for Other” EP lands on store shelves on 19th August 2013 via JustMe.
