Welcome to VinylSeconds
Hi guys, thought it might be useful to start a blog explaining what VinylSeconds is all about, I’ll also do an article on my RCM (Record Cleaning Machine) followed by further articles to give you a taste of some of the fabulous albums VinylSeconds has to offer.
VinylSeconds has been set up to promote quality vinyl albums focusing primarily on the Rock, Folk Rock and Folk music genres. These albums, in general, come from the late sixties, to the late seventies. This came about because I guess I grew up in that era and have several of albums by these bands in my own private collection. But when you’re young, you only have so much money and your purchases are significantly influenced by your peers. Now older and hopefully wiser, I have been able to purchase a huge bunch of albums by artists I had never even heard of, or artists I had heard of, but hadn’t been able to buy as a kid. This has been a real eye opener, as this was such a prolific era for musicians. Music was moving in so many different directions, with the English guitarists ‘getting’ the blues, recreating it in their rock image and then moving it onto different levels.
The influence of drugs and the flower scene, also introduced us to the psychedelic rock scene – some bands got stuck in this genre, while other dabbled with the fashion and then re=emerged on the other side with more mainstream, but still innovative rock material (eg Traffic). But the real thing here, is that record companies allowed the artists to experiment, and as such, there were some incredible music produced and some really dreadful failures as well. However, even the failures have an important place in our music history and the albums themselves are often highly collectible due to low sales volumes and hence rarity value.
Musicians in the UK and Ireland also re-discovered a love for folk music in this era and iconic labels such as ‘Trailer’, ‘Argo’, ‘Topic’ and ‘Leader’ heavily promoted and supported grass roots, traditional folk music from all corners of the British Isles. Add to this the brilliant ‘Sain’ label from Wales and the Irish ‘Gael-Linn’ and you discover some amazing artists, again producing albums in relatively low volumes, but with high quality music. I have had the pleasure of purchasing albums from all these labels (and more besides) and listened to some incredible talent, who were fixated with reviving ancient traditional folk songs and recording them for posterity. Some artists actually started writing their own songs in the traditional style, achieving a remarkably high standard. Again, America and the summer of love had its influence on the British folk scene and many artists moved away gradually from their traditional roots, with singer songwriters proliferating and bands being formed to write and perform the new genre – folk rock. Some rock bands even moved from pure rock to folk rock eg Fairport Convention or at least dabbled with it during their careers eg Traffic and Led Zepellin.
I hope that VinylSeconds shows an eclectic mix of music, with a selection of albums/bands that are recognisable to most music lovers, with an interesting mix of artists that are completely new to most (eg Strange Affair – folk rock, Ginhouse - rock or Triona – folk). All the albums available have been cleaned on a VPI Cyclone Record Cleaning Machine and the cover and vinyl photographed, with music and condition reviews there to aid potential purchasers. I must than my friend Richard Barley for doing many brilliant reviews for me to speed up the process of making albums available on the Vinylseconds.com web site – again a massive thanks to Tamsin Carey for building the site for me.
Next time I’ll give a brief review of my album cleaning technique. Hope you found this interesting/helpful. Please let me know either way.
