Twelve Inches

Added on Wednesday 28 Oct 2009

Photo: mono glasgow. West End Volume 10

Even guys need some retail therapy every now and then. Not shoes and bags, of course, but power tools and vinyl records. Man stuff, basically. I've done enough DIY destruction recently so it had to be vinyl this time. There are not that many places in Glasgow selling twelve inches of pleasure these days so a visit to Mono in King Street seemed like a plan.

As record shops go, it's a good one. They stock no end of stuff that you've never heard off and plenty of stuff that you've long forgotten. Naturally there is the obstacle of a vegetarian restaurant in the way but I had taken the precaution of stopping at Macdonald's the bakers on the way there for a big bag of pastry products. As garlic keeps the vampires away, the unmistakeable - and truly glorious - odour of freshly baked pies had the vegetarians running for their lives.

Anyway, an LP by Lisa Germano called "Magic Neighbor" just jumps out of the rack and demands that I buy it. I'm glad I did as it turned out to be a haunting and distracting album. It also had a CD copy of the album inside. Just the very thing for a comparison. An evening of scientific comparison and Leffe followed with the result of this being that the LP sounded more natural - more specifically less compressed - than the CD. Looks like it is all in the mastering. When I sobered up, I was actually more interested in the fact that a CD had been supplied with the LP rather than the usual MP3 download. I'd like to know the marketing thinking behind that. If you wanted the CD then surely you would buy the, no doubt cheaper, CD and MP3 downloads make sense in these iPod infected times. However, I would have thought that the LP buyer probably bought the LP for reasons of sound quality. Or maybe just because size is important? One to ponder.

I'll round off with the live highlights of the past week. The Cinnamons played a cracking set at The Admiral and likewise so did Andrea Marini and the redoubtable Dumb Instrument when they appeared at The Liquid Ship. Thumbs up too to the hard strutting city rock of A Joker's Rage when caught at Pivo Pivo.

Lisa Germano - /www.lisagermano.com

The Cinnamons -

Andrea Marini - www.myspace.com/andreama

Dumb Instrument - www.myspace.com/dumbinstrument

A Joker's Rage - www.myspace.com/ajokersrage

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