Lullaby of Broadway…

This on Should It Stay or Should It Go? comments on a lack of quality control when you get stuff for nothing and it got me thinking about my own past and similar quality issues...

I didn't do "college radio" mostly because I didn't get to college but also because I don't suppose it exists in quite the same way over here. And yet I understand the quality control issue.-There was a record shop, "Lullaby of Broadway", tucked away in a side-street in West Ealing which was, I'd guess, a chart return store and so all the record companies would dump their second rate products there and the place would be full of boxes and boxes of 7" and 12" singles with poorly handwritten signs declaring that the contents were available at "20p each or 6 for a £1" or some equivalent ridiculous "bargain".

I'd guess I bought hundreds of singles in that place for any number of half-baked reasons: cool name; cool sleeve; might have heard of them in the MM or NME; needed to make up numbers to get the discount...

Most were played just once, if at all and most are an absolute embarrassment. When it comes to sorting through my past I will do it alone so that no-one will ever find some of the crap that I bought in "Lullaby"...