Walking down the corridor between the Counselling Service and Student Housing it was not uncommon to encounter a colleague. Greetings were exchanged and sometimes a brief chat ensued, before each continued on their journey. Over time you got to know each other a little better, making life easier when it came to the end-of-year lunch. But not in all the years I’d worked at the University had I met a fellow employee carrying an armful of vinyl records. “Er – Wha? Ah – Re… Where?” I enquired crisply. He grinned.

‘You know they closed the Music Department?’

Well, yes. The campus was divided into two camps on that decision, taken about a year ago. There were those who were disappointed and those who were angry. Cultural vandals and soulless bean-counters were two descriptions I’d heard bandied about. Some other departments, especially in the Arts domain, assumed a harried, glancing over the shoulder kind of haunted look. Much speculation was abroad about who would get the rooms. Real estate equals influence in a seat of higher learning.

‘They dumped a whole lot of stuff in a skip down there. It’s first in best dressed.’ He looked slightly smug as he said this, perhaps detecting the gleam in my eye as I visualised the headline: FREE RECORDS. Indeed, I was sizing up whether I could wrestle the LPs from him right there in the corridor. I’d seen a Savoy Brown cover peeking out and what was obviously Led Zeppelin III. Of course I had the latter and didn’t particularly care for the British blues-rockers, but that wasn’t the point. Free Records! 

After briefly weighing up the idea of a tussle—he was about a foot shorter than me, stocky of build, but I though I could take him and claim at least half the records—I opted instead for a curt ‘Thanks’ and headed off in the direction of the loading bay in the adjoining building. I could feel excitement climbing like a Jimmy Page solo and my stride lengthening with every notch my heart rate rose.

Nearing the huge industrial-sized waste tray, I veered around a lady staggering along with a small wooden desk and noted someone else emerging from the skip with what looked like an electric coffee maker. Luckily they weren’t holding vinyl, or I’d have needed to whack them with that mic stand leaning drunkenly against the curb. Panting, I climbed onto a wooden chair—circa 1968, condition Fair—and peered into the skip. It took approximately three seconds to ascertain that there were no LPs. Not speculation, but stomach deflating certainty. As a child I could spot a silver coin half-buried at the beach, or a brown dollar note snagged between stalks of summer-dried grass. That same finely tuned radar had later transmogrified into an uncanny ability to detect records anywhere within a range of half a kilometre, and I knew that the one’s I’d failed to liberate from my colleague were the only 12″ discs within cooee of this pile of discarded office equipment. 

Or were they? A battered cardboard box, one corner splitting, was angled away from my vantage point. It was roughly the right size for records—a cross-section twelve inches square and about a foot-and-a-half long. I lugged the chair around to the end of the container and climbed up to where I could see better. Ah. A mixed exhalation. Not albums, but vinyl. Singles. 45s. Little 7″ bastard offspring of long-playing parents. I sighed, but extracted the box anyway. There might be some worth having, I guessed. Maybe a gem or two amongst… oh, about a hundred singles.

As I lugged the tatty box upstairs and along the corridor, Mr Housing Service popped out. Clearly he’d been keeping an eye open to see what I’d scored. Showed some interest in my box of singles, he did. For the next few minutes we had a conversation that resembled a fencing match, eventually agreeing that after I’d made a quick assay of my haul, we could perhaps do some trades. He wasn’t much into records himself, and had grabbed the LPs for a friend. He was a bit interested in Australian singles though…

In the end, an exchange of prisoners left us both reasonably satisfied. At a negotiated rate of three singles per LP, I ended up with half a dozen albums and waved goodbye to a couple of dozen 45s. I suspect we both thought we’d got the better deal, which is what you want in these circumstances, isn’t it?

*

The only album still in my possession is one by German band Can. The others were sold on at Record Fairs over the years or replaced when I purchased upgraded copies. The latter was necessary as some of the records were in less than great condition. Records at radio stations, those used in classrooms, or Library collections, these gladiators lead a hard life. This lot came for the first of those arenas. With the closure of the Music Department came the concomitant shutting down of on-campus radio station 3LT. Like jetsam pitched over the side of a sinking ship, the record collection of the in-house radio broadcaster was unceremoniously dumped in a dumpster. Goths! Vandals! Huns! Yet looking at the covers of the LPs and the labels of the 45s, I couldn’t really endorse the sensibilities of the radio station either. Scrawled across each and every item was the legend, ‘Stolen from 3LT’ in fat felt pen. As a disincentive to theft it was probably effective, yet disfiguring the artwork of an LP never sat easily with me. If you visited and asked to hear that Can album, I’m certain I’d be giving you the backstory before half the first side had played, feeling a compulsion to explain its provenance else you reached the wrong conclusion. I might even divulge that several years later I got $40 for one of them.^#

Probably the main reason I keep the Can LP is because it reminds me of the days at 3PBS, the public radio station where I presented for several years. Their records had ‘Stolen from 3PBS’ scribbled across them too. I bet none of those ended up in a skip.

^# A UK pressing of the second Caravan album, If I Could Do It All Over Again, I’d Do It All Over You.

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A few words about Saw Delight by Can…

It’s clear from the outset that this version of Can sounds different. “Don’t say no” opens the album with an upbeat shuffle, a keyboard groove soon augmented by vocals (all six musicians receive a vocal credit) and a dirty guitar line. There’s a reggae undertone, not surprising when you scan the lineup. The foundation quartet of Jaki Liebezeit (drums), Michael Karoli (guitar), Irmin Schmidt (keyboards) and Holger Czukay (electronics) has been augmented by a pair whose names will be familiar to those who followed the arc of Traffic. Rosko Gee (bass) and Rebop Kwaku Baah (percussion) have most certainly changed the Can sound. Track 2, “Sunshine day and night” demonstrates this with an infectious rhythmic drive reminiscent of West African beats. European motorik has morphed into something almost tropical. Completing side one is “Call me”, a song powered by an infectious climbing bass riff from Rosko Gee, yet never quite achieving lift off.

The centrepiece of Saw Delight is the fifteen minute “Animal Waves”. Opening like a lost Tangerine Dream track, it soon develops into a percussion powered instrumental reminiscent of Gee/Baah era Traffic. Funny, that. While not “Bel Air” this is nevertheless a great rolling groove.

While a couple of the tracks are indeed uninspiring (closer “Fly by night” is so bland as to be almost featureless) Saw Delight is an enjoyable and worthwhile late-Can album that did not warrant the dismissive 1977 review offered by Sounds. “It’s a turkey,” they sneered. The LP is far from foul, though in the turbulence of that particular musical year it is easy to understand the magazine’s disdain. Listening now, Saw Delight may lack edge yet its blade is sharp enough.

*