Not long ago I wrote about an unscheduled month in the UK in the late 90s. A side trip to Wales was mentioned and that is where our story begins today.
Every music tragic knows that it is not civic architecture or religious edifices that get the music hunter-gatherer’s pulse a-quickening; it’s record shops. We can smell ‘em. We can hear their siren call through the most confusing urban cacophony. We can see them with an acuity of peripheral vision that would make Jackie Chan stand open-mouthed.
“Perhaps I’ll wander down this nondescript lane,” we think to ourselves or casually comment to a long-suffering partner… when in fact we’ve glimpsed a bearded gent scuttling past clutching a plastic bag of well-known dimensions or spied a telltale black disc on a weather-worn sign.
No surprises, then, that in Bangor’s High Street I found the almost famous Cob Records. Did I enter with excitement and trepidation? Silly question. (Though there wasn’t a sale on).
Cob Records, Bangor. Photo by Gruff Rhys
At the time I was in a phase of accumulating CDs and shedding LPs, a foolish decade-long purge that is now costing a bundle in the vinyl buy-back program. There was a rule operating back then: if the CD is purchased, the vinyl goes. Unbelievable foolishness; I’m paying for my stupidity now. So I did not buy vinyl at Cob Records*…
It was fun to browse and restraint was exercised. An hour later I exited with a little plastic bag containing one CD: Pentateuch of the Cosmogony: The Birth and Death of a World.
Dave Greenslade played in Colosseum before forming his own band in the 70s called, er, Greenslade. Their 1973 debut is a beaut. Lashings of organ and synths (that’s what Dave does) and amongst the well-wrought instrumentals, some engaging songs delivered in the unique whiney (in a good way) voice of Dave Lawson. Dave L’s take on the prog lyric is refreshingly devoid of Yes-like philosophical conceits. Try this from “What are you doin’ to me?”
You led me a dance that my feet didn’t see
That wasn’t the vicar that you had to tea
I’m a one woman man but you’re faithful to three
I subsequently sought out and enjoyed all the Greenslade albums and, as you do, thirsted for more. Dave’s solo albums were the logical extension and 1976’s Cactus Choir was more than acceptable.
His next outing was a 1979 collaboration with artist/writer Patrick Woodroffe, the preposterously named Pentateuch of the Cosmogony. A double album on a single CD with a fat full-colour booklet. I knew about the CD release but had never seen it.
So I bought it in Bangor on that Wednesday afternoon in July.
It was expensive, but I bought it. I was low on funds, but I bought it. The exchange rate to sterling was usurious but I bought it. The strange hybrid plastic-digipak box was rather scuffed, but I bought that CD. If you are sensing a set-up here, you are correct.
I already owned it on vinyl.
“So what?” you cry, “You have just been blathering on about purging vinyl.”
Well, I was not being entirely honest. There was a get-out clause to the purge policy. The small print stated that an album could be retained under certain conditions:
(a) Some powerful sentimental attachment (Eg: Atomic Rooster’s Death Walks Behind You, the first LP I owned)
(b) There was something special about the packaging or cover (Eg: Jethro Tull’s Stand Up with the cutout in the gatefold that stands up)
Pentateuch did not meet the first criterion but it sure as hell blitzed the second. The album came in a 12” square book containing an entire short story and a lavish collection of fantasy illustrations. It is a magnificent folly and a vinyl artifact to be treasured.
So why carry on about buying the CD? Because, pretty though the package is, the music is not very good. In fact it’s crap. Crap like the cheap synth soundtrack to a B-grade porn movie; crap like lounge music played in an old-age home on music day; crap like anodyne, passionless, pedestrian piss-awful middle-of-the-road keyboard dross. Harsh? Certainly. There are a couple of pleasant tunes but the overall experience is deeply underwhelming and very very long. Sure, the 21st track is a rather good Klaus Schulze pastiche but by then the listener has lost the will to live.
As I re-read the above tirade, I wonder about the venom. The flatness attending a disappointing album is known to all music fans. But the frustration is massively magnified when you know that THERE IS NO MORE. This is it. The final catalogue item by this artist you venerate, whose work has transported and delighted. It is almost rage. “How dare you leave me this way! How very dare you!”. Such personalization is, of course, a big part of the reason why musicians desperately avoid ever meeting fans. What sane person wants to hear such bile? Or deserves to?
Back to Cosmogony. (It is a real word, you know). When I first listened to the vinyl I was crestfallen. But forgiveness came via the breathtaking excess of the package and because Mr. Greenslade is a fine musician whose records have brought considerable pleasure. But I never listened to any of its four sides again.
And after I carted the CD back across the world I only listened to that once too, hoping against hope I’d discover a terrible misjudgment. Nope. It is playing again as I type and though I’d love to provide a happy ending by revealing that I’ve seen the light and Pentateuch of the Cosmogony is a lost classic, that ain’t gonna happen. Time has not softened the disappointment. But neither have I sold either version of the album.
Have a listen to “What are you doin’ to me?” by Greenslade. It’s terrific.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxhRUiA1Pj8
* Nor, sadly, can anyone now because Cob Records closed in May 2012. Another fine store bites the dust.
SOURCES
Greenslade “Greenslade” [Warner Brothers 1973]
Dave Greenslade “Pentateuch of the Cosmogony” [EMI 1979]
Gruff Rhys website: www.gruffrhys.com
vinylconnection.com.au 
I’ve been there!
Shedding vinyl ?! Shedding !!!!
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Guessed you might have known the store. Did you weep when it closed? There is actually a youtube film of the last day at Cob. The existence of which is both amusing and sad.
Re the vinyl, this site is part of the restitution.
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I’m only about an hour away, we spend a lot of time walking in North Wales and so I’d pop in from time to time, year to year.
I didn’t know it had shut actually. Too many have now.
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“Perhaps I’ll wander down this nondescript lane,” we think to ourselves or casually comment to a long-suffering partner… Another literal laugh out loud! Thank you for continuing to open new doors into the ever-expanding world of ear joy!
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My pleasure, PG.Thank you for your kind comments.
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I hope the buy back program is going well. You will re-build your musical empire, I am sure of it. Hang in there. 😉
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I thank you for your concern and encouragement, Marie. The vinyl-buy-back programme is progressing well, this weekend being quite productive. I must report that Ms Connection does not necessarily always embrace the practicalities of the process, though she is firmly behind the concept.
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I guess it’s only right that someone tempers our musical enthusiasms. I talked about getting a turntable for Christmas and starting my own buy-back program, but Mr. Surmise thought it best that we not open that Pandora’s box at this point. I’m sure he’s right, darn it. 😉
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Via a couple of Facebook groups i follow, I hear regular stories from US vinyl fans of amazing hauls found in yard sales and thrift shops at give-away prices. Talk about dirty deeds done dirt cheap! Almost makes me want to move across. (Almost). So keep up the negotiations and be sure not to tell Mr S that it’s actually getting the box lid closed again that is the real problem.
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I shed my entire collection of over 200 cassettes on one day in 1999. Three years later I shed four-fifths of my entire vinyl holdings, again all on one day. In both cases, it was a somewhat manic reaction to a need to minimize weight for pending overseas moves. I deeply regret both actions to this day. The vinyl losses hurt the most. That said, I have not succumbed to the siren call of the buy-back. Little silver discs have given me back a version of the physical collection, even though most of my listening nowadays is burned digital copies. I fantasize a geographically-stable future with dedicated space for shelving and listening, but admit to doubt in its coming.
I’m not sure I’m actually a “collector.” Beyond the above evidence, I offer that I do not believe I would buy a second copy of crap, veneration be damned.
Always a treat, VC.
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Surely the old warhorse deserves a quiet pasture eventually?
From the stories I’ve read, I do suspect you have side-stepped the craziness of collecting, but would you really walk past a clutch of mint Robin Trower LPs calling out from the loneliness of a thrift shop for a musically-stable home? …Yes, I thought so.
(My gratitude, as ever, for the visit to the back pages)
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[…] by Dave Greenslade and Patrick Woodroffe. The package is amazing, not the music. The music sucks. Taste the disappointment, if you […]
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Do you happen to know a strange record store in London not far from the Elephant & Castle tube stop that was called “Thieves?” It had no name stated on the front, and specialised in ambient music, but gosh, I had a once-in-a-lifetime odd experience there in ’98.
So I can relate to that awful disappointment in a beautifully packaged follow-up album. One of my favorite ‘secret’ bands you probably know is Felt, from Cherry Red records…and I think their singer Lawrence organized some comeback band called (can’t remember, have actually blocked it out) and I couldn’t actually listen to it all I was so disappointed, had to remove it from my house like it was charged with negativity or something. Similar with the band Ikara Colt. They had this killer debut album (Sonic Youth inspired) and then a lot of expense and packaging with the follow-up that fell flat. Sigh…it’s not easy is it, all this pressure. And these wanker critics like you and me, who are nobodies really by comparison. More fandom than ekphrasis. What a great line is that. Thanks…
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Spot on. My Welsh blogging mate, Joe (aka 1537), when he can’t find much positive to say about a work, often makes a point of stating how much better it still is than anything he could produce. The disappointment theme is actually really interesting, isn’t it? Bands, records, people, jobs, life…
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Oh, no. Don’t know that record shop though I did pass through that area of London a few times when I was staying in Camberwell, way back. Possibly when it was 78s only.
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The disappointment theme maps to expectations and assumptions and both are a royal fuck, and not in a good way.
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Absolutely. That is very neatly put indeed.
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[…] Despite loving the jazz-fusion era of Gong (from which Shamal comes) the only one of these albums I’ve written about is the Greenslade/Woodroffe, a rare example of a VC panning. You can read the post here. […]
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