What's in Store?

"Do I hear 25 quid?"

I very rarely mention Record Store Day around here; maybe it's something to do with the very fact that we now refer to them as stores; I was brought up with (and, for a time, virtually lived in) record shops. Quite when we changed the lexicon (and why) is unclear. Am I being petty/churlish? Probably. Can I move on and not let it spoil the rest of my life? Of course.

But while I'm here, and while RSD19 is still, for some anyway, fresh in the mind, another thing that annoys the hell out of me - folk queuing thru the night to enter the store at 9:00 a.m. and buy a single by, let's say Generation X, for a fiver (red vinyl, picture sleeve) and, by eleven bells, are selling it on ebay for a score. Probably the same charlatans who buy four tickets for a gig, keep two and sell the other pair on the secondary market. We are the secondary market and everyone is now a tout - since venues stopped selling their own tickets exclusively and it all went online.

I don't know what Tony James (bass player with Gen X - pictured above) would have to say about it. Though he's probably too busy preparing for the re-release of the band's eponymous album - first released in the Summer of 1978. Back when the hair atop his head was all very much his own.

Generation X - Your Generation (1977)

'45' (1924-1977)

45: Berlewi (1924) 

45: Bubbles (1977)

45: Your Generation

The Number One Son told me last week that one of his neighbours is currently sporting a giant Generation X '45' framed print in his flat - James isn't stalking the guy, this piece of artwork is so large it can be seen from space, apparently. Now, I know a thing or two about Generation X: 'I think you'll find that particular design was the brain child of Tony James' (Gen X bass player and joint CEO with Billy Idol), I said with that tone that fathers adopt when handing down vital nuggets of rock history down the male bloodline. Wrong, wrong and wrong.

45: Idol

45: James

If the graphic artist, sleeve designer and troubled soul that was Barney Bubbles (1942-1983) had been eavesdropping our conversation, he would have been yelling in my ear that, actually, the Generation X masthead was one of his - Tony James would just knock out copies when he was screen-printing band tee shirts.

However, I think Barney, real name Colin Fulcher, would be the first to admit that he was influenced by Polish artist Henryk Berlewi (1894-1967), whose 1924 work 'Composition in Red, Black and White' (at the top of this blog) was surely the inspiration behind Barney's 1977 iconic sleeve for Generation X's first single.

45: Derwood