The Ned Wood Archive

I’m not changing my suggestions

I’m here to tell you that you need

Someone like me

Shadows of Knight

I made another one of those mad dashes into town and back to score the vinyl and then get it on the turntable before the rest of the hall woke up.  Although given the regularity of the bus service, it was always going to be nearer eleven when I got back.

But this was the test.  I’d got the Ramones’ “Sheena is a Punk Rocker” and the Jam’s In the City album under my arm and I was headed over to Glen to call on Annie the Headbanger and to test her out.  I didn’t know at the time, but of course she hadn’t got a stereo or anything, so I had to drag her back to my room to get her to listen to the records.

Her place was in one of the old blocks of Glen, made out of nice solid old red brick, with a strong wide stone staircase leading up to the first floor where her room was.  The simple cream paint on the walls and the wide windows along the corridor brightened the inside of the block.  Likewise her room, though fairly spartan inside was light and cheerful in its simplicity.  Across from the door, her bedroom window looked out onto a couple of silver birches whose bright new green leaves were starting to fill the view.

I have a lot of good memories of that window.  Leaving it open of an evening and hearing the buzz of student life pass by.  Hearing the song of birds wash through early of a morning.  Being entertained by Racanelli, the girl below who was seeing Bernie’s mate Bruce.  She loved to live up to the stereotype of an Italian and show off her fiery temper.  I’m sure Bruce encouraged her.  But she’d wake us up some nights throwing stuff at him.

But all of that was later.  I interrupted Annie’s Friday morning reading by asking her if she wanted to hear my new Ramones single.  And of course she said yes – my charm being what it was.

Before I tell you her reaction to the wall of sound, I should tell you a couple of things about that single.  Number 1: It was a limited edition twelve inch single with a free T-shirt offer.  You tore out an application form from the sleeve and sent it in to Sire, and they sent you a T-shirt back.  Except mine was too small and some fool washed it with my blue Jam T-shirt and messed up the colours, but I still have it somewhere.  And the other thing about the record was that it was badly pressed.  You got them every so often – a record that would sound like listening to Radio Luxembourg behind a 3000 foot mountain in Wales on an old radio with surface noise like ham radio static.  We all know vinyl is a good thing.  A nice analogue sound, far superior to the cartoon cardboard digital stuff today’s youth have to put up with.  A few years back I bought a Phil Ochs CD.  All of his stuff was out of print and would cost twenty quid on vinyl in Camden, so I got the CD to complete my collection.  Then I found an original vinyl version in the US.  Paid three or four bucks for it up near Seattle.  The vinyl must be half an inch thick.  All American disks from the sixties are built like that.  Built to last.  Over here they used to rip us off terribly back in the seventies.  Paper thin records that you could almost fold in half.  But that American vinyl was glorious.  You don’t need me to tell you that the think black vinyl Phil Ochs platter sounds so much better than the little silver ashtray.  So, like I say, vinyl is a Good Thing, most of the time.  However, every so often, it lets you down.

Anyway, fizzing with anticipation, I put Sheena is a Punk Rocker on my deck, delicately lifted the proud sharp stylus into the deep black grooves, stood back, and cringed.  Instead of the mighty brothers, I got white noise.  So I left Annie in my room, threw the 12-inch under my arm, and got the bus back into town to change it.  Now, the trouble with these faulty pressings is that they crop up like wire coathangers, or London buses – once you find one, you can’t find nothing but.  So when I got the second version back up to my room, it was just as bad and I had to get back into town yet again.  Annie, who’d sat reading in my room went back to Glen while I went in to Southampton for the third time that day.  But what was happening was that each time I went down, the guy at Virgin thought I was trying to sneak another free T-shirt coupon from the record sleeve, so he would grill me about why I kept bringing this stuff back.  And I’ll swear he gave me the same disk that I’d just brought back.  Truth is I never got a decent version.

So I played Suzy is a Headbanger for Annie instead.  And she loved it.  Actually she already knew all of the words.  And Blitzkrieg Bop.  And I Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement.  And You Should Never Have Opened the Door.  And no-one’s gonna ever tear us apart cause she’s my sweetheart.