“So, let’s go back to Mexico City in the 1990s—I remember the piece of quiet simple furniture, that turned into a loud creature!! At the sides there were 2 doors, one full of vinyl and the other with a couple of CDs. I can recall my dad taking me to the market where he bought me a couple of second-hand records by a Spanish children’s group called Parchis and the Mexican children’s songwriter called Cricri…”
“I remember being fascinated with the fact that there was music coming out of the actual record—this thing must have a SOUL! It’s like the record’s soul talking, whispering all the truth—and it’s always there, you know it’s there, even if the volume’s on 0. You could spin the records either way—bendable sound!—and they would still sound good. I remember doing it more often on Saturday mornings while my parents were still at work. I got into real trouble for breaking a couple of them needles or scratching the vinyl.
Then we moved. I remember the previous owner leaving his record stereo player, and there was this one record—green, see-through… no lyrics, no letters. For years, in fact all my teenage years, it was the only vinyl I had—I mean the things were just so rare. I remember taking my green vinyl along with a tie iron to the school fair of antiques to exhibit them.
Often I was at my Grandma’s at big parties where people would dig into her collection to play things like Elvis and Richie Valens, Pedro Infante, and Agustin Lara. I remember also a record where my Uncle Luis was on the cover, I was like wow!
After that it’s a long story… we sold everything for tickets to come over to Scotland. So, for a couple of years I had no vinyl. Then when we were recording our first bunch of demos up at Exile Aberdeen. Mark Nicol gifted me a copy of Josephine’s and a copy of The Kates, Invisible Hands Music, then I got a record player.
Once you’ve spent time with your records, they become part of you, even more so than tattoos. It’s weird but accurate! You hear all the stories of Sun Ra’s original hand-drawn artwork. I mean it is so important—especially with CD art becoming a little disposable with music now online in most cases. There’s a real thin line between who cares and who doesn’t. Art is so important to an album’s identity and some people will never even care, though I guess they are the ones that have never cared anyway.
I know that my records are there when I need them. I like playing them about 3am when the whole world around me is quiet. You can’t buy that shit—just watch the needle slide while the record spins, and there’s something really satisfying when it finishes, and the needle goes back into its little seat saying that was good, wasn’t it ?!!”
—Hooligan Sadikson, drums
The Fire And I’s Double Kamikaze is on store shelves now via CarCrash Records.
