Reasons to be cheerful
Charles Spencer
Iused to love the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, and when I’m kicking conkers on the way to the station or picking damsons on a sunny Sunday evening in the front garden, I can still see that it has its charms.
But the melancholy nature of autumn that seems so attractive when you’re young becomes almost unbearable in middle age. I find myself actively dreading winter, and in particular the way it gets dark so early. It’s less than a month now until the clocks go back, the moment of the year when hope always comes closest to extinction. It’s then that you are condemned to what feels like an interminable twilight of the soul. With my strange job it’s dark before I even set off for work, falling leaves and then snow are liable to turn the rail journey into a nightmare, and as you stand on the platform waiting in vain for a train, the east wind eats into your very marrow.
In the old days, of course, there was the consolation of super-strength whisky macs, that wonderfully warming mixture of scotch and ginger wine, which along with a classic gin-based martini are the two alcoholic drinks I still find myself craving.
So what’s required at this time of year are what Ian Dury described, in his delightful list song, as reasons to be cheerful. And one of these must surely be the ridiculous cheapness of CDs. The shops seem to be more or less giving away great music these days as they face ferocious competition from piracy, file-sharing, CD burning and Amazon.com. For those too daunted by the technology to get on with the iPod, or who have, like me, paid someone else to do the fiddly stuff only to find that the bloody machine promptly broke down, these are times of unexpected plenty.
Way back in 1963, when I acquired my first LP (With the Beatles) it cost £1.12s.6d. The other day I fed this amount into a website (eh.net) which has a tool for calculating the changing value of the pound. According to the retail price index, a record that cost 32/6 in 1963 ought to be selling at a whopping £22.78 today. In fact these days £16.99 is the very most you’ll ever have to part with, and you hardly ever have to pay that. Classic records in all genres often now sell at around a tenner or less, and there are always endless bargains of the five-for-£30 variety in the major chains.
What’s more, CDs have almost twice the running time of LPs, and though this can lead to tedious padding on new albums by bands with too little strong material, it’s a boon when it comes to compilation albums or ‘best of’ collections.
So here are a couple of sensational bargains to keep you going through the dark months of winter. The great jazz label Blue Note, now a subsidiary of EMI, has just issued four double CDs of past glories, available for just £10.99 a pop at Virgin. I would especially recommend Sharp Shades & Finger Snaps, which focuses on the classic (and irresistible) Blue Note Sound of the early Sixties, where hard-bop met soul jazz.
It features a superb selection of tracks by the impeccable likes of Hank Mobley, Art Blakey, Lee Morgan and Horace Silver, and scrupulously avoids excessively over-anthologised tracks in favour of fresh selections. There’s great stuff, too, on the keyboard-dominated Hip Hammond & Soulful Grooves, the Latin and Afro-Cuban selection Back Down to the Tropics, and the often thrillingly weird psychedelic jazz of the late Sixties and early Seventies collected on Righteousness. These addictive, hugely accessible and excellently annotated sets are ideal for newcomers to jazz, but they will also reward longstanding buffs thanks to the rarity value of many of the selections.
There’s equally good news for soul fans with the reissue of the tremendous eightdisc Atlantic R&B series that chronologically covers the influential label’s output from 1947–72. It begins with Professor Longhair and the great Ruth Brown, moves on through giants like Ray Charles and vocal harmony groups like the Coasters and the Drifters, before climaxing in an orgy of classic soul from the likes of Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and Booker T & the MGs. The last time I looked in the Virgin Megastore, these outstanding discs were selling for less than £4 a pop. I’d warmly recommend buying both the Blue Note and Atlantic collections for your own pleasure, plus a few more sets for Christmas gifts. This will not only save you stress as the festive season approaches, but also earn you the undying gratitude of the lucky recipients. With so many positive vibes being directed your way, and these great sounds on your stereo, it should be a doddle to keep on trucking through even the cruellest winter.
Charles Spencer is theatre critic of the Daily Telegraph.
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