Get Involved blog

Yes, the Get Involved DJs (Gerry’s Joint too) are hitting up Glastonbury Festival again this year… We’ve got a three-hour set lined up before Richard “Beyond The Wizards Sleeve” Norris takes over the controls for his Friday night headline slot at The Stonebridge Bar in The Park area. To say we’re excited is a massive understatement. Come rain or shine, we’ll have a good time! Remember: 11pm, Friday night - get to The Stonebridge Bar in The Park!

Bring some maracas. Bring a tambourine. Bring some friends to hug. Come and Get Involved!

Kris Peterson – Mama’s Little Baby

I found this in JB’s the other week and really like it. It’s a bongo, piano and horn-fuelled funky soul escapade, vocally led by Kris Peterson. Turns out that this is the only single Peterson ever cut for Capitol – in 1967. The single came out in 1968. She cut an album in her own right called A Child’s Dream in 1972 on Richie Haven’s Stormy Forest Label but that’s it – although she also performed or recorded with some legendary musicians including Frank Zappa and Parliament / Funkadelic. With a voice like hers, it’s a shame she didn’t do more solo stuff.

Any hip hop producers or mash-up makers checking this out – the flip of this is an instrumental of the track. Ripe for some early 90s Jurassic 5 / Ugly Duckling style business… Nice!

Well, here’s another project that shows love for the good ol’ independent record shop is stronger than ever – a rather lovely new book by Emma Pettit called Old Rare New: The Independent Record Store, published by Black Dog Publishing (who also published last year’s title Ace Records).

The book is, quite simply, a celebration of the independent record shop and everything that is special about it. Through anecdotes of rare recordings, peculiar characters and above all, an infectious enthusiasm for collecting music, Old Rare New journeys into these eclectic spaces of musical exchange, and interviews those people that make them tick: record shop owners, collectors, dealers, DJs and musicians - and in doing so provides a rich account of the independent record store.

To be perfectly honest I was initially disappointed on my first perusal of the book because I’m not sure that the quality of the photography or design is as stunning or inviting as it could be. However, these initial misgivings were soon forgotten as I started to explore the written content. The fact of the matter is that Old Rare New offers a great read, delving as it does into the minds and memories of various people whose lives are bound up in the world of record collecting – with essays by Sean Bidder (FACT magazine), Bob Stanley (Saint Etienne), and Byron Coley (Ecstatic Yod) and dozens of interviews with the likes of Will Oldham, Joe Boyd, Barry Seven, James Dean Bradfield, Devendra Banhart, Billy Childish, Chan Marshall, James Lavelle and Get Involved DJ and founder, Gavin Lucas.

There’s a launch party tonight (June 11) from 7.30pm-10.30pm at Phonica record store in Soho with DJ slots from various peeps - including the book’s author Emma Pettit, Nick Luscombe (Flo Motion), Bob Stanley (Saint Etienne) and would-you-believe-it Gavin Lucas (Get Involved).

Old Rare New: The Independent Record Store,
RRP £19.95, has it’s own myspace page

It seems that now is a good time to champion the independent record store. Last month we linked through to a post on the Creative Review blog about Ali Augur and Spencer Murphy’s exhibition of photographs celebrating some of Soho’s independent record shops – and it was only a couple of months ago that the Get Involved site put up the Record Shops section – where we will continue to post up info about the record shops we visit. It was for this page that regular Get Involved DJ and ace photographer, Dean Chalkley took the above shot of the front of the House Of Oldies in Manhattan…

But Dean came back with more than just a solitary image of the shopfront… To see the images he took and read his account of this, his latest visit to House of Oldies, click here.

Good news for the serious 45 collector! UK-based company, Covers33, lovingly and faithfully create reproduction 45 sleeves. They have a whopping 228 different designs to choose from including classic house bags from Atco, Stax, Atlantic, Stateside, King, Columbia, Class, Imperial, Tamla, Motown and literally hundreds more labels. 41 pence is all it costs to give a special record the brand new sleeve it deserves. Go on, give your old gold treasures a treat! Visit www.covers33.co.uk