Small Faces & Kevin Ayers on Vinyl
As if all the excitement about visiting Montaulieu and Montolieu wasn’t enough, when we returned home Rob Caiger, re-issue producer of ‘Diamond Jack and the Queen of Pain’, had sent us a gift of vinyl. A veritable cornucopia of Small Faces albums, including the classic ‘Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake’ and various promotional singles which gave us a chance to look at the quality of the Charly label’s reissue products. Impressively heavy vinyl, a beautiful sound and immaculate packaging with excellent sleevenotes. What a joy to be able to experience retro vinyl in a pristine condition.
A quotation from the credits on ‘Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake’ reads thus – “This Collectors’ vinyl was cut by Matt Colton on a Neumann VMS 80 mastering lathe, recently recapped by Air Studios Technical Director Tim Vine Lott, with nothing else in the signal path between the source material and the lacquer”. Sends shivers up my anorak-clad spine just thinking about it! (For our non-English first language fans…that means I was very excited).
Then there was the small, but very quirky, white label test pressing single of ‘Champagne and Valium’ taken from the ‘Diamond Jack’ album. I believe that this is a rarity (two examples exist, we now have one!) because it has the “wrong” A side, ‘Howling Man’ instead of ‘My Speeding Heart’. Cheers Rob, and all the best with the final stages of the re-issue of ‘Diamond Jack and the Queen of Pain’. Keep us posted…