City Road
D'Vinyl Records - Records from floor to ceiling. Closed today though.
The Record Shop - Behind D'Vinyl. These roads are horrendous to park by. 😱
Near St Davids Shopping Centre
Kelly's Records - Inside the market with a square clock. Upstairs, there are LOADS of rows of records covering the whole floor.
Head Records - A generous record shop that supplies sleeves for all sizes and materials. (A first-hand)
I'm not fussed on Spillers (Oldest record shop in the world). The records are too hippyish ☮ for me.
So
Shop: Kelly's Records1
Album: Voulez-Vous
Country: France
Condition: Good + (Top seam open and inside sleeve is creased.😞)
Why I bought it: Colour is lovely and I wanted Vogue for a change!!!
2
Single: Under Attack
Country: UK
Condition: Excellent +
Why I bought it: It's in a much better condition than the previous one I've bought.
3
Single: Wrap Your Arms Around Me
Country: UK
Condition: Very Good + (Has some small rips at the top)
Why I bought it: Haven't got it.
Earlier today I 'liked' your 'Fonts In Use' font use contribution for the pre-ABBA ABBA releases, since I thought it was an excellent 'smørgåsbord' of fonts to put away in the memory banks, to use a fittingly Swedish expression! I thought I'd click on your profile and I spotted this post referring to Kelly's Records, plus the very clear description of it, which brought back some memories of having been there while in Cardiff for a European careers event. I actually live quite well away in Derbyshire and I have quite a soft spot for these market halls, since there is quite a notable example in my home city of Derby, so that place was a bit of a magnet for me, on the one-and-only occasion I've ever been in the city, now more than a decade ago.
ReplyDeleteOne of the records I purchased there shows that this must have been during my 'Latin trip', which was one of those interests that quite comfortably pre-dated my subsequent stumbling across, in wonderful Cyberspace, the female Pop scene of east of the former Iron Curtain - the album 'Tamla Meets Tijuana' by The Tequila Brass, actually half-a-century old as I write. The other was the 1976 single by Jimmy James & The Vagabonds, 'Now Is The Time', which I'd have probably bought because of the connection, via their 'I'll Go Where Your Music Takes Me', to the French star who, indirectly, set me off in the direction of the former Soviet Bloc, Carene Cheryl, who covered that as 'Ne raccroche pas, je t'aime' ('Don't Hang Up, I Love You') also in that year.
As an ABBA fan you may well be interested to learn that Carene Cheryl's immediately preceding single, 'Samedi, dimanche et fêtes' ('Saturday, Sunday And Holidays') had as its B-Side 'Oh! Mam(m)a mia' - it's spelt differently on the sleeve and label! - which, I'm sure you will guess, is a (French-language) cover of ABBA's big hit of that year. You may like to check it out sometime! Incidentally, to make that journey over to the former Soviet Bloc, that was also covered by Czechoslovakia's Alena Tichá as ‘Mámo, zle je’ (‘Mother, He’s Wrong’).
Strangely, on the same day (12th June 1976) as Carene Cheryl performed 'Samedi, dimanche et fêtes' on television in France, Valérie Čižmárová, for whom I run the Fan Blog, 'Bananas For Breakfast', performed her cover of ABBA's possibly somewhat overlooked 'So Long' as 'Jeho laskominy' ('His Treats') in present-day Slovakia. Although she originated in the far east of the Slovak portion of the former Czechoslovakia, (Michalovce), Valérie Čižmárová spent the vast majority of her career in the Czech portion, recording in Czech, which - not to quite the same marked extent - Helena Blehárová also did, despite coming from Žilina, in present-day Slovakia, but she recorded a full studio album in Bratislava in 1976, singing in Slovak, in the course of which she also covered 'So Long', as 'So slnkom choď' ('Go With The Sun').
You may like to 'Czech' (or 'Slovak'!) those out, too!
What are your opinions on 'So Long'? Do you think it should have been a more high-profile ABBA song? I must admit that I'd never heard of it until I'd heard of 'Jeho laskominy'!
Finally, I've also got a bit of pre-ABBA ABBA in my collection - 'Ring Ring', by 'Björn & Benny, Anna & Frida' on '20 Original Top Hits' (1973), which I got primarily because it had the original on which Valérie Čižmárová's friend, Jitka Zelenková's 'Ve stínu na pláži' ('In The Shade On The Beach') was based, Donna Hightower's 'This World Today Is A Mess', which I'd also not heard of until I'd heard of 'Ve stínu na pláži'!
I look forward to hearing from you and greetings to Wales from Belper - a sort of bit of 'The Valleys', along with Milford - in the middle of England!