IdleRich

IdleRich
Something that made me laugh the other day. Maybe it's just me, I dunno. There is this guy I know a bit, not well at all, but I know him vaguely through records and music and stuff, he's been around the edge of that for his whole life, been sort of involved in some hit records etc

Anyway so this guy put this post on Facebook the other day, he properly spilled his heart out saying about how he hated his job, HATED it. He works for some caravan firm and he has done so for years but he hates the job, the caravan people, that whole world.... at this stage he just really fucking hates caravans. In fact it was kinda at a point where he would admit it had become irrational quite how much he loathed the things and everything about them. In fact he even said he loved news stories when a caravan caught fire or fell off a cliff or something.

Whatever, he's always been into all this analogue stuff; tape edits and such. He's got all these old computers and he spends time restoring Sinclair ZX Spectrum tapes so they work and he can wait twenty minutes loading Pong or whatever so he knows it works - before playing it for two minutes and putting in the fixed pile I imagine. There was some eighties seven inch single that had code for a Spectrum game on its run-off groove or wherever. I remember him talking about that and hunting it down, making it work etc You get the type. But he is an extreme version.

A year or two back he bought this thing for pressing records, he does bespoke stuff, super short runs, ten copies of this, fifteen of that etc And he's done some interesting stuff, as well as just vanity pressings and so on.

And this Facebook post - a long and heartfelt one, even by my standards - went into how he hoped to get to the stage where he could chuck the day job and just do that. Right now it's really borderline for him. He does quite a lot of these bespoke pressings and it's a bit of a nightmare cos, well I dunno exactly, I feel like he's cutting them by hand, or at least cranking them by hand or something. Often it takes hours and hours to do a run, sitting up all night ensuring that every one in the batch is perfect in every way, then maybe getting a half hour of shut eye before sunrise and it's time to return to the hated caravans.

So, yeah, he put this on Facebook, it would be wrong to call it a sob story, but it was moving all the same. It was a clear eyed unflinching assessment of where he was, he wasn't asking for help or charity or anything like that. He was saying "if you wanna press a short run of vinyl use me" and "if you got a friend needs a short run, tell em to use me" etc he does a specialised job and he does it well and he was advertising while moaning too.

Bottom line; he hates caravans, he loves records, right now he's half killing himself doing both, but he is fucking desperate to get to the next stage, to get over the line and concentrate on records, pressing records... just records, no caravans. Did I mention, he hates caravans?

So he puts this on fb, some moral support, some people even saying "you know what, I've been meaning to get 20 of these for years, let's do it" and putting some work his way, as he needed.

But what made me laugh was the guy, not even joking who replied to this this... realness with "Can you advise me on the price I should expect to pay for a three bed 25 footer that I can fit on my Rover and which will work on narrow roads?".
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Something that made me laugh the other day. Maybe it's just me, I dunno. There is this guy I know a bit, not well at all, but I know him vaguely through records and music and stuff, he's been around the edge of that for his whole life, been sort of involved in some hit records etc

Anyway so this guy put this post on Facebook the other day, he properly spilled his heart out saying about how he hated his job, HATED it. He works for some caravan firm and he has done so for years but he hates the job, the caravan people, that whole world.... at this stage he just really fucking hates caravans. In fact it was kinda at a point where he would admit it had become irrational quite how much he loathed the things and everything about them. In fact he even said he loved news stories when a caravan caught fire or fell off a cliff or something.

Whatever, he's always been into all this analogue stuff; tape edits and such. He's got all these old computers and he spends time restoring Sinclair ZX Spectrum tapes so they work and he can wait twenty minutes loading Pong or whatever so he knows it works - before playing it for two minutes and putting in the fixed pile I imagine. There was some eighties seven inch single that had code for a Spectrum game on its run-off groove or wherever. I remember him talking about that and hunting it down, making it work etc You get the type. But he is an extreme version.

A year or two back he bought this thing for pressing records, he does bespoke stuff, super short runs, ten copies of this, fifteen of that etc And he's done some interesting stuff, as well as just vanity pressings and so on.

And this Facebook post - a long and heartfelt one, even by my standards - went into how he hoped to get to the stage where he could chuck the day job and just do that. Right now it's really borderline for him. He does quite a lot of these bespoke pressings and it's a bit of a nightmare cos, well I dunno exactly, I feel like he's cutting them by hand, or at least cranking them by hand or something. Often it takes hours and hours to do a run, sitting up all night ensuring that every one in the batch is perfect in every way, then maybe getting a half hour of shut eye before sunrise and it's time to return to the hated caravans.

So, yeah, he put this on Facebook, it would be wrong to call it a sob story, but it was moving all the same. It was a clear eyed unflinching assessment of where he was, he wasn't asking for help or charity or anything like that. He was saying "if you wanna press a short run of vinyl use me" and "if you got a friend needs a short run, tell em to use me" etc he does a specialised job and he does it well and he was advertising while moaning too.

Bottom line; he hates caravans, he loves records, right now he's half killing himself doing both, but he is fucking desperate to get to the next stage, to get over the line and concentrate on records, pressing records... just records, no caravans. Did I mention, he hates caravans?

So he puts this on fb, some moral support, some people even saying "you know what, I've been meaning to get 20 of these for years, let's do it" and putting some work his way, as he needed.

But what made me laugh was the guy, not even joking who replied to this this... realness with "Can you advise me on the price I should expect to pay for a three bed 25 footer that I can fit on my Rover and which will work on narrow roads?".
You should try to cheer him up, if you have the spare cash, by asking him to do a limited run of singles for you. You know, do one of those re-edits or whatever you call them, like you did a bunch of a few years back: a new track made out of a sample of an existing track, or a bootleg made from two mashed-up tracks, something like that.

Once he's made the records and you've paid him for them, he's likely to ask you where that cool sample comes from that you used, at which point you casually mention that it's from a song by the 70s prog rock band, Caravan.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I wrote 'big yogurts' in my phone's notebook app just now (meaning adult yoghurts, as opposed to kids' ones), and it automatically corrected it to 'Big Yoghurt', which sounds like a sinister cartel of yoghurt producers.
 
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