Vinyl log 5 - 16 April

Day	Month	Year	Artist	Title
16	April	1970	Blodwyn Pig	Getting to this

I presume that this album was also purchased from the strange shop at the bottom of Christmas Steps, although I imagine that by now I had discovered that records were sold in other places. I and my colleagues frequented a shop which might well have been part of a department store which was very close to my school; most of the records purchased in Bristol came from there.

I have written about this record at greater length here, so I'm not going to repeat myself. Instead, I'm going to write about a related record: "Stand Up", by Jethro Tull. Let us not forget that Mick Abrahams was part of Jethro Tull for their first album, then left to form BP.  

From 1970 until 1973, I used to go to a youth club which met in rooms connected with a local church. Despite the apparent religious problems of this for me, there was actually very little connection between the church and the club. It might well have been that there was a chaperone but I seem to have edited this out of my memory. What we did was talk, play table tennis and listen to records (lots and lots of records). I was introduced to this club by my former scout leader, Andy Vowles (not the Andy Vowles of Bristol group Massive Attack, who was only a toddler at the time of these events). Most of the boys went to direct grant grammar schools like me, although only a few went to BGS. Again, most of the girls attended the girls only direct grant schools in the city.

Sometime in the spring of 1970, I bought the sheet music album for "Stand Up"; I would have been familiar with Tull's contribution to the "Nice enough to eat" compilation which was compulsory listening at the time. At some unknown stage, I bought a copy of SU, although I doubt whether I bought it new. I didn't care for it that much as I probably sold it shortly afterwards. I do remember a picture of me taken in my bedroom with the cut outs standing up, but I haven't seen that picture in years.

I did go and see Tull when they came to Bristol in September or October 1970, touring "Benefit", but my interest in them waned. It wasn't until the early 1990s when Tull came to Israel that I saw them again - this time, Daves Pegg and Mattacks were in the group, so I was able to score a free backstage pass due to the Fairport Connection.