From the shelves

I’ve been on a Public Image Ltd. roll lately, revisiting their albums a lot. If you’re not familiar, P.I.L., as they are most commonly called, are the avant-new wave band started by John Lydon after the end of Sex Pistols, a project he carried on and off over the years and still fronts today. If you know them, the picture above will tell you that the phase I’m particularly keen on is their most experimental one.

‘The Flowers Of Romance’ is probably my favourite album from them, but everything up to that point is just brilliant. Whether they were shaping post-punk, pioneering punk funk, or toying with industrial or musique concrète, there was always enough challenging stuff on their table. Even the ‘Paris Au Printemps’ live album, disowned by Lydon himself, is worth your time, if you ask me. He claimed he agreed to release it just to pay Virgin back for the high expenses behind their second album, famously known as ‘Metal Box’ due to the tin case used for its limited original release, but despite that, the music is highly interesting for the way the songs are transfigured.

Pictured above are two sheets of paper stapled together that I found inside the jacket of my copy of ‘Second Edition’ (ie, a version of ‘Metal Box’ packaged in a regular gatefold) back when I bought it, obviously used. Apparently, the previous owner took the time not only to translate all the lyrics into Italian, but also to write them down in an attempt to emulate the look of the lyrics printed on the album back cover (also pictured for reference).

Finding unexpected things inside old records is indeed a fairly common occurrence, and it’s not unusual to read stories online about people stumbling into pictures, ticket stubs, letters, or even forgotten stashes of, uhm, illegal substances. Actually, the latter is always a main concern of mine, as I often happen to fly with used records bought here or there. I thoroughly check the insides before packing them, for fear of being stopped at a security check for a joint someone had stashed 40 years ago inside an XTC album. I’m happy to say it never happened. Generally speaking, I’ve only found things inside records a handful of times, and in no case were they drugs or any other items to dispose of.

The first time a record came with something that didn’t belong to it was when I bought A Flock Of Seagulls‘ ‘Listen’, which included a poster of Pete Burns from Dead Or Alive. As random as it may sound, it was two synthpop bands at least. I’m pretty sure it’s still there, though it would make more sense if I moved it to the sleeve of a Dead Or Alive album.

Inside a cd of ‘The Mirror Pool’, the solo debut album by Dead Can Dance vocalist Lisa Gerrard, I found two ticket stubs from a concert she played in Milan many years after the release date of the album. However, it checked out, since that’s the city where I bought it.

Something more interesting came with the debut album from Ya Ya, a British AOR band led by future Fastway vocalist Lea Hart. Four lyric sheets produced either with an 80’s computer or an electronic typewriter, the first one including a handwritten note indicating a “Ya Ya for Tommy Vance session” on some date in 1984. Vance was a BBC radio DJ famously associated with hard rock and heavy metal, and his Friday Rock Show indeed featured live performances of many artists of the genre. I reached out to Hart years ago and showed him pictures of the lyric sheets, asking if they looked familiar and if they were perhaps submitted to the network for pre-approval or something like that. While he confirmed that Ya Ya played a 4-song live session for Tommy Vance, he couldn’t remember the purpose of such sheets. One theory could be that my used copy was originally a radio promo used by the BBC, and that’s how those lyrics got stashed inside, but it’s pure speculation.

The most exhilarating finding came out of a 12″ of Robert Miles‘ trance club classic ‘Children’. When I pulled it out for a wet clean a couple of years ago, tucked inside the inner sleeve was a 100.000 lire banknote – lire was the old Italian currency before the switch to the euro. It was a decent amount of money; adjusted for inflation, it would be about 80 euros from today. To this day, I have absolutely no idea how that money ended up there. I bought the record at a flea market in the early ’00s, surely after the switch to the euro, and some writing on it seems to indicate that it previously belonged to a DJ. However, I played it many times over the 20+ years that followed, and I never noticed the banknote until then. It doesn’t make a difference at this point, as there’s no chance to convert old Italian currency anymore (it was only possible until 2012).

How long had it been there? Did I buy the record with money inside? Possible, but it’s indeed strange that I never found it before. Or perhaps I found an obsolete banknote, put it into a record to flatten it and keep it for old times’ sake, and then I totally forgot about it. Again, a bit far-fetched, but possible. I mean, last year I tucked an envelope with a little present for my wife between records so it would flatten, because it came in the mail a bit creased. Of course, I forgot I had put it there and looked for it everywhere to no avail. Only three months later, by complete chance, I found it slipped between Queen’s ‘Innuendo’ and something else. I guess I’ll never know for sure what happened here.

Anyway, finding these handwritten lyrics inside the P.I.L. album spurred me to do something similar. Over the years, I’ve collected a lot of material that would be better kept inside a record than just lying around. I started to slip a lot of these things inside the jackets: stickers, flyers, clippings, pictures I’d printed but didn’t end up in my concert photo albums, and the like. Not randomly, of course: there is usually a straightforward connection between the record and what I put inside it. At least if I need something, I know where to look, more or less.

Wherever they are, I hope the previous owner of ‘Second Edition’ would be happy to know their beloved record is in good hands and still being enjoyed. Just as I hope wherever my records will end, they will still be enjoyed and carry a few memories to pass on.