And in return I was given hours of character-forming, taste-titillating fun.<\/p>\n
OK, I bought my first copy of Tubular Bells from Virgin Records (opposite Cardiff Castle), but from Buffalo Records I got my early addiction to Pink Floyd<\/strong> (Ummagumma, Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, and the disappointing Obscured By Clouds), my first vinyl taste of T. Rex<\/strong> (T. Rex, Slider), my first encounter with Mott The Hoople<\/strong> (All The Young Dudes, Mott), Lindisfarne<\/strong> (Nicely Out Of Tune), and Yes<\/strong> (Close To The Edge, Tales From The Topographic Oceans, Relayer).<\/p>\n I had built, in the comfort of my own bedroom, a record player of sorts.<\/p>\n The turntable was a cheap deck rescued from someone else’s unwanted items (possibly from one of my cousins, over in the next valley), but the stylus arm was an expensive and beautifully-balanced aftermarket addition that I bought from the HiFi shop in Abergavenny (Barnfields?). I had built the pre-amp from components liberated from decommissioned TVs, and the amp and a range of speakers came from several cast-off pieces of tech that I had begged, borrowed and possibly stolen from a friendly mechanic in Blaenavon who had a strong electronic interest.<\/p>\n I had a book, you see.<\/p>\n Teach Yourself Electronics.<\/p>\n So I did, sortov.<\/p>\n I can’t remember the detail of getting any of my new purchases home, but I can vividly recall the static cling as all new pieces of vinyl gradually slid out of the paper sleeve.<\/p>\n I would hold it up to the light and inspect it for visual fault, and finding none, place it on the turntable, and carefully place the stylus arm on the run-in to track one.<\/p>\n The slight ‘thud’ as the stylus landed.<\/p>\n The crackle and hiss as the needle sought the beginning of the track.<\/p>\n And while I’m sitting here, at 11pm on a Monday night, remembering – with a smile – what the occasional weekend (and sometimes a weekday, if I was bunking off school, which I did quite a lot and very often) would comprise, it is difficult to drag myself back to doing what I should be doing…<\/p>\n
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