Come Back and Stay Famous in our Future Record Shop Forever. (3:00)
Ross & the Realifers (written, recorded, performed by Ross SInclair)
This song reflects on the psychological, emotional and spiritual space of the record shop, and how it has both changed and stayed the same over the 45 years or so I’ve been visiting. I was thinking about the joy, the excitement, the apprehension, and inevitably the disappointment conjured up across 4 decades of joy and pain. In particular, I was considering the changing nature of success and failure and fame and obscurity often represented by the records that no one wants anymore, the ones you find in the bargain bin, repeatedly reduced for final clearance. Of course, record shops have changed a lot in all those decades, as has the demographic of these unloved records but I think something about the very core of these shops and the folk who frequent them has stayed the same. I find this very reassuring. In a way this song is a celebration of the resilience of these records that you always see in the discount crates and racks, knocked down, two for one and BOGOF. The selection I mention here were all observed (and some purchased) in the charity shops of my local town of Helensburgh on the West Coast of Scotland, hence the strong presence of the ancient Caledonian troubadours Glen Daly, Sidney Devine and The Alexander Brothers. I’m sure your town has the equivalent local colour clogging the second hand racks of Yorkshire, The North East, The Black Country, London etc. Inevitably, these local heroes are seen alongside the omnipresent James Last, Elvis, Trad Jazz, Easy Listening, more recently, our new friend No Parlez, standing proud alongside the immortals at the forefront of whom must surely be the unyielding Rumours, by Fleetwood Mac. Is it true the current vinyl shortage is caused by multiple record plants in the USA churning these bad boys out 24/7? If you have ever visited a second-hand record shop in the UK, you would definitely believe that this could be the true.
Parlez in Parledonia (2:17)
The Caledonian Parledonians (written, recorded, performed by Ross SInclair)
Nothing much is known about this mysterious group that works out of a home studio in the tiny village of Kilcreggan, near the Nuclear submarine base at Coulport. Soaked in the radioactive cloud of the military industrial complex absorbed into the surrounding beautiful and bucolic landscape, this song turns around the No Parlez demand, implicit in the song and album title and instead implores us to talk, to converse, make a dialogue – to Parley in Parledonia...wherever that might exist in your own imagination.
