“The first records I heard were mainly from my mother’s collection. She had a lot of Elvis 7” records—sometimes my brother and I would play them before we got the school bus. My parents didn’t own many albums on vinyl, so I grew up thinking it was definitely a luxury item, especially as my Dad’s friends at work would tape albums they’d bought, so we ended up with a huge library labelled C60s. We also had these huge Sinclair speakers in the lounge that hung on the wall like huge coffins. In the 1970s my first real/uncopied tape was Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside. I was 6 and the record was like a life changing epiphany to me—there and then I wanted to be like Kate Bush. I set my heart on the quest!”
“The 1970s were amazing for these first awakenings of music. I would sometimes go to a friend’s house across the road. She had 2 older brothers who had long hair and wore denim and they were into rock music. My friend and I would go through all their vinyl—I was so enamoured by some of the sleeve artwork at the time. I distinctly remember being wowed by Black Sabbath, ELO, and Pink Floyd records. I would look at them for hours.
I never visited a proper record shop until I was a teenager, mainly because you could buy music at the local WHSmith stationers or even Asda the supermarket. We’d go every Thursday evening after school and my brother and I would hang around the record counter. I bought a mixture of synth pop (as it’s now become known) and heavy metal 7-inch records at the time, probably because music programmes on TV were much more free-spirited then and popular music could mean anything, any genre, it didn’t matter.
Liverpool was full of bands and music. As a kid there seemed to be lots of “new romantics” in town—men and women wearing heavy makeup and angular hair! I forget how old I was when I first saw Probe Record shop, it was just by Matthew Street (near the Cavern Club) and there would always be loads of weird looking kids hanging around—punks, hippies etc. The legendary Pete Burns (from Dead or Alive) worked there and I’m sure I read that Courtney Love liked hanging around there too when she lived in Liverpool.
It wasn’t until some years later that I plucked up the courage to actually go into Probe. I reckon I was 15 or 16. The staff behind the counter was not approachable or overtly friendly—they didn’t really look up when you walked in or smile. By then the counter staff dressed in black, some had tight black jeans and Beatle boots and bowl haircuts, that beatnik psych look of early Primal Scream and The Jesus and Mary Chain. I was a nervous wreck! I probably didn’t buy anything until some years later. I think it was a Neil Young album. I was always in some kind of self conscious cold sweat in there. It kind of carried on for many years, but I still loved putting myself through the pain as the shop was really magical.
Once I got to college at 16 I formed a band. Some of my friends started listening to much, much heavier music—I went from Joni Mitchell to Slayer in a matter of months. We’d also listen to Gaye Bykers on Acid, Hawkwind, The Pink Fairies, Napalm Death—our new hippy and biker friends always had the good records. It was also the beginnings of rave, so you’d have these outdoor illegal rave sound systems, festivals, bands, different groups of everyone getting together because it was such a free-spirited time.
I eventually moved to Manchester. It was creatively very industrious in the 1990s—lots of new independent labels, records shops like Eastern Bloc, Piccadilly Records, and Vinyl Exchange. I also met Andy Votel who is a DJ and record collector. He kind of opened my world to foreign language music beyond French pop—stuff like Os Mutantes, Aguaturbia, South American psych. He had the knack of introducing you to new music—it was like a continuous chain. I had a penchant for soundtrack music but had only touched the surface of it—Morricone, Gainsbourg. I knew about stuff but didn’t know how deep the well was.
I started releasing music on Andy’s label, Twisted Nerve, and eventually started my own imprint, Bird, which went out through Finders Keepers records who otherwise focussed on foreign records and soundtracks. The combination of everything I was hearing coloured my writing and eventually led me into more experimental and electronic waters—listening to stuff from the Warp Records catalogue. Wendy and Bonnie, David Axelrod, and Can definitely led me away from thinking about writing a traditional song to exploring different production techniques and making bolder decisions. I’m currently with a new label, Fire Records, who again have a strong independent history. It’s important to me to continue to work with people who will allow you room to develop and grow as an artist.
My house is full of records, so sometimes they can feel oppressive because they invade every room. I stopped buying physical stuff for a time because of the lack of space, but the need to own the tangible, historic item made me want to buy records again. The past few years I have discovered an interest in Lebanese and Egyptian orchestral music and singers, most have which have never existed in the digital domain. I don’t have a huge collection and I want to savour it and take my time. I can’t speak Arabic but I love the intonation and inflection of the voice—Sabah, Fairouz, Warda El Jazairia—Eastern vocalists always capture my intrigue.
It’s like I’m discovering a new relationship with vinyl out of a creative necessity and discovering a new world of music which is very specific to this era and the format I grew up with.”
—Jane Weaver
Jane Weaver’s Modern Kosmology arrives in stores tomorrow, May 19, 2017 via Fire Records—on vinyl.
