Beckett… The CD that started it all

As you know, I’ve pretty much exclusively been talking about homebrew CDs I’ve purchased from charity shops. In a very early post on this subject, I mentioned a band called Beckett, and unfortunately the CD never worked. I did write a short post on it last year, but never published it. Tonight, I found the Cd again, so I thought I’d try listening to it again, with no success. I thought, as I haven’t updated this for a few weeks, I thought I’d dig this post out and publish it.

Charity shops. They’re the gift that keeps on giving. Sometimes, however, the gifts simply don’t work, and you spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been. This CD is one of those examples.

As you can see, the disc is by a band called Beckett, and sadly, there’s not a lot more I can tell you. as I can’t actually hear any of the music that’s on the CD.

The things that I CAN confirm. You start off with a standard jewel case, with inkjet printed inserts. The disc is printed on a CD-R with a stickered label, and other than the pictures I’ve shown, or will show, that is pretty much all I can tell you.

The disc isn’t recognised in normal CD players, and when I try to rip it from several different drives, it just sounds like interference. The disc looks in very good condition. There are a few marks and scratches, but nothing that would prevent the disc from reading. Any scratches that are present, are probably just from my ghetto technique of attempting to clean the disc with 99% IPA and whichever item of clothing I happened to be wearing at the time. If I look at the disc surface under the equally ghetto method of “my phone’s camera in macro mode”, I can see small, dark patches on where the data is written. That’s not a good sign, and I suspect that te glue in the disc label has reacted with the foil coating of the disc and ruined it. A shame.

Who’s in the band? Well, according to the inlay, we have…

Ben Fisher – Vocals and Guitar
Greg Sleebush – Bass Guitar and Bacing vocals
Dave Bridge – Lead Guitar and keyboards
Ed Cross – Drums

There is a website listed on the dsc, which has, of course, long since expired, but according to the Wayback Machine, there was a small amount of activity from around 2004-2006, so I can only assume this is when the disc is from. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that any of the media was archived, so no pics by the looks of it. It appears that they did quite a few gigs around the London area.

I have had a look to see if there’s any mention of them on Spotify. Sadly, there are lots of artists and bands with the same name, and none of them appear to be the same band. There is a Myspace page that featured some later songs, but none of it survived the massive purge that took place, essentially wiping out an entire generation of unsigned bands’ work, a lot of it never to return.

Unless I can find a CD player somewhere that can play this sadly decaying CD, Beckett will forever remain a mystery. They could have been great, they could have been terrible. I wll probably never know.

Update: Since I wrote this post, I’ve changed CD drives several times, new and old, and sadly, none of them can read this disc. So, if you know what became of Beckett, or any of the members in the band, please get in touch. I’d especially like to hear the tracks I’m missing out on.

The weekend starts here…

Well, actually, it started over 24 hours ago. At the time of typing, it’s 22:34 on Saturday night. I’ve had a great day, in fact one of the best days I’ve had charity shopping for a long time. It started off at 10:30ish, maybe a bit earlier. Chris and I had arranged to go to Stanley. I did have a box of CDs that I had to donate, Turns out that the Walkers multipack crisp boxes are the perfect size to fit CDs. I know, I was shocked too. Crisps. Is there anything they CAN’T do?

We arrived in Stanley, after a particularly uneventful journey. In fact, I don’t even think I put the radio on the entire time. I was feeling particularly lazy, so I didn’t take the box of CDs. We hit the usual suspects. Scope fist, always expensive, sometimes some good ones in. Didn’t pick up anything in there. Second was the Sally Army. this is usually a goody too. 25p per disk. I think I picked up 8, though nothing really stood out as been exceptional. Mainly just more CDs I’ve never heard of, seeing as I have pretty much everything I’ve heard of now. Now that I think of it, and the shop I got them from, these are all going to be religious ones aren’t they? Oh well, the cases will do.

Of course, the shop of the day is always Farplace. Always an eclectic mashup of randomness. Sometimes good, sometimes garbage, sometimes… just OK. I think I picked up 15 at 3 for £1, and a copy of Blaggers ITA ‘Oxygen’ on 12″. I, of course, have the 7 inch pressing on green vinyl, but I thought the 12 inch version might have better sound quality. Dunno yet.

While in there, some guy started talking to me about the films he was picking up, asking if I remembered it, and basically if I’d known whether he’d seen it or not. Er, no. Anyway, he mentioned Consett. a place I’d never been to in anger, and certainly never in the form of charity shop shopping. I mentioned it to Chris. I wasn’t sure if he was reluctant or not, but he seemed to warm to the idea when I mentioned it was only 15 minutes in the car.

We arrived. It seemed like a small town centre. I wasn’t quite sure how good it would be for charity shops. Had I just wasted the fuel that Id just paid for? I needn’t have worried.

We left the car, and walked through a small shopping precinct. Nothing much in there. A paper shop. Maybe a grocers and there’s probably a barbers thrown in there, there always is. The light at the end of the tunnel appeared, and it was canary yellow. That can only mean one thing. YES! FARPLACE! Most people get excited over brands of cars, or expensive shoes. It’s charity shops for me. I ran towards the shop at a rate of knots, my little heart beating faster with every excited step, my pupils widening at the thought of shiny plastic discs.

I gleefully skipped over to the “media section”. A little room dedicated to books, records, DVDs, and of course, CDs. My smile, resembling a badly worn zebra crossing, grew wider as I looked at the prices. The CDs were indeed 20 for £1. This was the lowest price I’d ever paid for CDs in a shop. I came out with 40, for the princely sum of £2. At the time of typing, I’m not too sure what I’ve got. For that price, the whole lot could be used for spare CD cases and I wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

My pink carrier bag was bulging, and no, that’s not a euphemism, they really did give me the CDs in a rose-tinted bag. It can just be seen in the bottom right of this photo.


Over the road from the Farplace was another charity shop. Delta North.

While the DVD section was overly excessive, with shelves and shelves of them, the CDs weren’t quite as dense. I still managed to pick up a 5-cd set of “Sisters Of Mercy” albums, and two other random CDs for £1.

There were a couple of other charity shops dotted around the place, and I picked up a few more CDs. Little did I know that the highlight of the day was yet to come.

If these little towns do anything well, it’s a discount store. It’s where all of the surplus stock from the big supermarkets and warehouses get one last chance of getting sold. I’m not sure if thye other parts of the world have an equivalent, but imagine, a big building, full of food, for near enough pennies, and this place is huge. I was slightly gutted. I had to limit my spending. I can’t remember if I mentioned anywhere thought this marathon ramble that I’d broken my bank card the day before, so I was literally having to go by whatever money I had in my wallet. Oh, yes, and what I could carry too. I was also lumbering around 55-60 CDs at this point too. Oh, and I stupidly didn’t get a basket. Duh.

without doubt, the purchase from in there, was this….

Mmmm. I can already taste the peaness.

Actually, that line was just an excuse to crack a dirty joke, I can’t stand the bloody things! Chris actually bought them for the princely sum of £2, and when wrapped up in a shiny box with a bow on top, they made a lovely raffle prize for the little organisation I go to on a weekly basis!

The last stop was to FINALLY drop off the CDs. The ladies at the Willow Burn hospice shop were only too delighted to take them off my hands, so I hope they sell well.

And, that was it for Consett. I was pleasantly surprised about the place, and I’d happily go back any time, even if it’s just to visit Barry’s Bargain Warehouse again… or whatever it was called.

There was just enough time to hit the pleasant, cobbled streets of Peterlee. A town with less culture than a pot of yoghurt. thankfully, there was one last Farplace there. I’ve been there that often, I think I’ve worn the carpet out. Another 16 CDs for £3. You’ll do for me.

And, that was that. I headed home, laden with more CDs than I actually needed, but when is that different from any other weekend?

Jenson – Cheap to Anyone… a lost CD?

We interrupt this period of silence to bring you… a post. I know you’re all waiting with baited breath for Derby Part 4, but before that, I have a little bit of a favour to ask… Does anyone know, if a CD is coming up “blank” (as in, it’s recognised by the OS as being so 685Mb free), but there is definitely data written to it, is it possible to get to that buirned data?

That’s the question, here’s the brief story. Over the last couple of days, I’ve had a particularly successful run of getting CDs, including some very good ones. I had to go to the doctors today, and just down the road is a charity shop. A lovely one seemingly ran by two old ladies. anyway, through the mounds of Mario Lanza and Perry Como, I picked this one out. It’s from one of my favourite genres these days… “Homebrew”. And this one fits the bill perfectly.

You’ll have to forgive the really ad-hoc nature of the photos. I’m doing this as a spur of the moment thing. One of the ladies had a quick look at what I’d bought, paying close interest to this one, in fact she thought that it was a copy and she shouldn’t have put it out. I explained that it wasn’t a copy, but a personally recorded CD – a home-made recording of their own work. I got it, and hurried home to play it. I opened the box and foind… oh, no. the dreaded paper label.

Ugh, I thought it was a goner from the start. It was copyright 2000. I didn’t think I’d have much hope of it being played Thankfully though, the data on the disc looked perfectly intact. In fact, it was very “prominent” for a CD of this era…

Looks perfect. However, when I put it into the drive, I get this.

Windows sees it as a blank disk. So yeah, as per my original question, is it possible to recover the data? I can’t tell, looking from the disk reflection. So, is anyone aware of any software that can recover this disk?

EDIT: Linux also sees it as a blank disk. Tried programs such as cdparanoia and dvdisaster to see if they can make any sense of it, but no. The on;ly thing I haven’t tries is what happens in a regular, bog standard CD player

Derby Day 3

The 3rd day started a lot earlier for me than the previous day. As I mentioned, I intended to visit BPM records frlom when they opened, which means i was up and about for about 9:30. Chris was,of course, sound asleep still.

Off I went, to the short walk to the rcord shop. I was there so early, I even turned the lights on for them. That’s not bad going. Here’s a few more photos of the inside, and of course, what I describe as my little heaven. I’m never more happier than when I’m knee deep in records and CDs.

I found some classics, and ones that are a little more… shall we say… obscure.

My time in BPM Records came to an end when an old guy, who was also flicking through the vinyl, let out the most gut-curdling fart you’ve ever heard. The room isn’t particularly big, as it probably comes across on the photos, and if I didn’t get out of there right now, there would be no escape from having to breathe his gut-guff, so I held my breath, grabbed my stash, and headed downstairs. Honestly, he’s probably still scraping that one off the inside of his trousers. Unpleasant.

I headed back to the hotel, trying to get the sound of that out of my head, failing miserably. It’s something that I’ll probably suffer PTSD over.

Anyhoo, Nottingham was to be the entertainment of the day. A place I’ve been to many times, and I have a vague recollection of where the charity and rexord shops are. I was aware of two shops in this little arcade type place. Unfortunately, it seems that one of them has gone, and the other one was just closed…. Grim. Just like the car park.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo, so you’ll have to make do with a Google screenshot. This was the NCP car park on Maid Marian Way, and it’s one of the worst car parks I think I’ve ever had the misfortune to stay in. There’s development going on all the way around it, and it looks like part of it has already been demolished I don’t think it’ll be too long until it’s ripped down. If the passage of time doesn’t rot the concrete, the gallons of urine in the stairwells certainly will.

For charity and record shops, Nottingham was a bust. A shame, as I remember in the first few times we went, there were lots of good ones but they seemed to have dried up or closed down. Overall, not many CDs, but I did come away with this…


A tub of curry.

I’d heard good things about this from someone at work, so I grabbed some. I’ve yet to try it out, but I’ll post my findings when I do. “Bring to the boil, stir and simmer… It’s that easy!” We’ll see about that. I can burn cornflakes, me.

One other thing we did, was to take an updated look at the Grand Central railway that once ran through Nottingham , mainly through a series of tunnels. There’s one section of it that’s still visible, although a car park now stands on part of it. I look a photo of it when I first went to Nottingham in…. whatever year it was, so here’s the two photos however many years later.


For future reference, I was stood on Cairns St when I took this photo, though I’m unlikely to forget that name any time soon. Only difference seems to be that the bushes coming out of the wall have grown, and the lights in the car park have been replaced with LEDs.

We returned from Nottingham, and there was just enough time to have a look around the museum that was next door to the hotel. This was a great place. The star of the attraction has to be the huge airplane engine that they have there. I believe it would have been manufactured local to the area.

Oh yes, and then there’s this guy…

As this would be our last night in Derby, we said goodbye to the establishments that had became our regular spots over the last 3 days. We had one last drink in the Taproom….

And of course, we couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to the Ye Olde Dolphin. Now, I was going to type out the history of the place from this photo, but bugger it, you can just read it yourselves.

For some reason, the one-atmed bandit had been turned off, so that made the place seem ven more olde-wurlde.

They had the Screeching Owl back on, so I enjoyed a pint of that. Not pictured is a creepy guy that came in just sat there, staring out of the window with his bag of crisps. Thankfully, we survived, and our attention turned to food. Now, there was a nice looking place next to the Spice Lounce, the place we’d frequented on the first night, named Okra. (There’s a tilde in there somewhere, but I’m using my bluetooth keyboard amd I don’t know how to type that) . Chris suggested we give that a go, and off we jolly well popped.

I can confirm that the food was absolutely wonderful here too. Can’t believe we’d hit the three-for-three. All places we’d tried, we really liked, and it’s not very often you can say that.

We said one last goodbye to the Old Silk Mill on our way back. Once again, you can read the spiel about the place here…

While our time in Derby was coming to an end, we still had the rest of the day to do stuff… Onto the fourth and final day!

Viva Darbados Day 2: Some Loughborough Steamers

So, day 2 commenced with me waking up as “fresh” as a “daisy”. Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was the curry, but I felt like I’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. I suspect the beer. I decided to just lay in bed for a few hours staring at my phone. You may recall that I mentioned that the room windows didn’t open. I suspect that I actually partially cooked in my own juices during the night. It was extremely warm, and it turned out the air conditioning didn’t work either.

It got to 10:30 and I decided I wanted to do some exploring, so I nipped out for an hour.

As I mentioned in “yesterday’s” post, there’s a river near the taproom, with a nice little path going down the side of it, so I thought I’d have a leisurely stroll down there. And very nice it was too. Nice to see a bit of greenery in a city.

I also just have to post this for posterity. I was stood under a road bridge that went over the river, and I mentioned there was a distinct lack of amusing cartoon graffiti. Not even so much as a badly drawn set of male genitalia. Seconds after I thought that, I spied this beautiful sticker stuck to a lamp post.

I don’t know if there’s a story behind it. I don’t really care. I just know this was the greatest thing I’d seen in my current time down there.

After my merry jaunt along the water, I had a bit of a wander around near the hotel, and found a couple of charity shops. I picked up a couple of things. Not really anything I’d heard of, but that’s half the fun. There was also a Greggs, where I picked up a sausage roll. The way my stomach felt would confirm if I was hungover, or hungry. I can confirm I was hungover. Somehow, I forced it down, rather like that scene on the Vicar Of Dibley where Geraldine has to eat all those sprouts and had to physically force them in there. That’s what I was like with that sausage roll.

By this time, Chris was ready, so I headed back to the hotel. Today’s plan was to go to Loughborough. For once, there was something there for both of us. Chris wanted to see the trains that are there, and I… well, of course, had the charity shops. Beforehand, we had another small walk around the Derby City Centre. Chris wanted some brekky, and I settled for a bottle of coke. The slice of lemon that came with it would be enough to keep me going all day.

We had enough time for a brief walk around Derby city centre before we went. We had became aware of the Derby Computer Museum, so tried to find it. Unfortunately, we couldn’t. It was on the 2nd floor of another building and Google Maps didn’t appear to signpost it very well, but it turns out it would have cost £7 to get in, and you had to book in advance. Oh well. To be honest, it looked to have been geared more towards kids and school groups anyway, so I’m not sure if there’d have been anything interesting for me. One thing that I happened to see out of the corner of my eye, that was even better than a computer museum, was a sign for a record shop, namely BPM Records. I go in and… Oh my. The new / sealed vinyl was downstairs, which didn’t really spark much interest for me, but upstairs… wow. Boxes and boxes of singles, an entire room dedicated to CDs, and even a couple of boxes of CD singles dotted about.

It was getting on at this point, so I grabbed a couple of CD Singles, the best one being “Flavor of the Month” by The Posies, a single that I’d bought back in 1993 on purple vinyl.

I vowed to come back the following day, so confirmed the opening times, and off we went to Loughborough. The first stop would be to get a photo of a building…

Apparently, they used to make parts of locomotives, or something, Chris did tell me, but seeing as it’s been a few weeks since the trip, I’ve entirely forgotten. I’m sure he’ll help out in the comments! The building is used for something else.

Next stop was to the Great Central Railway. I genuinely think we spent more time trying to get parked than actually being there. Considering this was a well-established tourist attraction (a lot of people apparently still like steam trains), there’s very little parking available, except for residential streets. I guess the locals must love that.

So, trains, then…

I took up most of my phone’s memory trying to get a decent photo of the station cat, who was happily wandering about, gathering atention from myself and other people hanging about. Of course, I don’t know if it was the station cat or not, but I liked to think he was employed as head mouse catcher, and to his credit, I didn’t see a single rodent.

We waved goodbye to the trains, and headed into Loughborough town centre. I’m happy to say I really liked it. We stopped off for a drink, and I was happy to see an old US streetlight still in use..

They were originally made by General Electric in the US, but the ‘moulds’ were bought by Phosco in the early 2000s so they could be manufactured over here. If you ever get close to one, you can see where the GE badge used to be…. cough, erm.

And so, off onto the major part of the day, for me at least… the charity shops. I’m happy to report that Loughborough does have its fair share of them, most of which are located in Biggin Street. One Age UK shop had a large amount of CD singles in there, so I filled my boots. I picked up other bits along the way too. I might elaborate on this if I can be bothered. It did have its fair share of nice old buildings, all appear to still be well maintained. Overall, yes, I can happily say, looking back, I liked Loughborough a lot.

Unfortunately, Chris got lost on the way back. It did give me a photo of what I’d consider to be the worst street I’ve seen. A passing interest of mine is to go around Google Maps and look at streets that have the worst possible view from the residents’ front window. This one is certainly up there….

I wonder what the going rate for lung / bronchial conditions is there..

We got back to the hotel dropped off our things, and then headed out. Of course, we wanted to see if that taproom was actually going to be open. Success! it was! We had a couple in there, and then went back to Ye Olde Dolphin inne. We got chatting to a couple of regulars while we were in there, who wondered what we were doing in Derby… I think they were more surprised than anything. I don’t think they get many tourists around those parts.

We got chatting about food, as you do, and where the best Indians were. A place called ‘Himalayan’ was highly recommended to us.

It was a Gurkha restaurant, admittedly not something I’d tried before. Always the ambitious type of guy, I went for something completely different on the menu… This time, I went for the…. chicken vindaloo.

It goes without saying that the food was incredibly nice, and the beer was also excellent too… again.

Not a brand I’d seen before, but I’d definitely get it again. On the way back, we nipped back to the Old Silk Mill for one more, and then back to the hotel. Great beer, great food. Now, ono the 2nd half of the trip! and because they didn’t really fit in anywhere, he’s a couple of arty shots of the cathedral…

Viva Darbados – Day 1

As both of my readers may know, I have just got back (well, last week) from a trip to the city of Derby. This follows the previous years’ excursion to Macclesfield, and the year before that, to Skegness, both of which have been with my mate Chris, and this year was to be no exception.

Chris picked me up at 11AM sharp. The weather in Partypool was a little overcast, but dry. As we headed south, the weather changed and it would stay that way for the entire journey there.

Unlike previous years, we didn’t stop anywhere on the way down, as we had an extra day, so it was straight to Derby. To describe the journey as uneventful would have been an understatement. We arrived just before 3PM, and managed to get a parking space next to the hotel. the prices were very reasonable. £15.00 for 48 hours.

It was, of course, raining when we got there, and it wasn’t time to check in yet, so we headed to the first place to grab a drink, in this case it was a bottle of boke in the ‘Slug & Lettuce’.

So, a bottle of the ‘ard stuff later, the rain has stopped, so we had our first wander around. One thing became clear, Derby likes its abandoned buildings. Large swathes of the city centre appeared to be abandoned, or about to be demolished, and some of the shops that were opened were of a… shall we say… questionable nature.

As this was the first day of 4, we did a cursory glance around the charity shops. The first one happened to be a “Cats Protection”. Upon previous experiences, I know these are quite expensive, but at 50p a CD, it was acceptable. Nobody apparently wanted to serve me. Hmmm. Can’t be that used to havng customers. Eventually, a lady did servce me, and I left the establishment clutching a Nigel Kennedy Greatest Hits CD. No, I don’t know why either. I just felt like I had to start the trip somewhere.

We found what appeared to be the main shopping centre, namely “The Derbion”. This was a clean and spacious shopping centre. Your usual array of shops, and of course, there was the usual shopping centre collection of charity shops such as British Heart Foundation and Age UK.

The rain was continuing to fall lightly, so we headed back to the hotel to check in. The room was your standard Premier Inn affair, with the exception that the window didn’t open. Strange. I don’t think I’ve ever stayed in any hotel where this was the case.

By now, it’s an unwritten tradition what we watch Tipping Point. It just always happens to be on the telly when we get to wherever we’re going.

We spent about an hour or so in here while my phone battery charged. It’s reaching that age where it’s getting needier for a dose of electricity, and no, I’m not going to buy a new one until this one dies.

The rain had stopped, so it was time to explore the area in the search of… liquid refreshment. everal days earlier, I’d been exploring on Google Maps, and found a taproom just over the river from the hotel.

We walked in, only to be greeted with the sight of a laptop and papers strewn everywhere. Well, it didn’t look very open, and the guy behind the laptop had to check if they were actually serving today…. indeed they were closed. Apparently one of the contractors must have left the door open, as they were planning for a refurb. Gutted. The guy said that they’d be open at 3 the following day, so a return trip was planned. Instead, we went to “The Old Silk Mill”.

I liked this place. Pretty cosy, though it did seem to have an aroma of cooked fish about it. I can’t believe I got a pint of Madri when there were so many other exotic beers available. I didn’t see that they had Citra on draft until it was too late.

We had one or two in there, and then headed to “Ye Olde Dolphin Inne”. I really liked this place. It’s one of those places that were built when people were a lot shorter. Low ceilings, all the beers were pumped from a cask. the only thing out of place was the games machine. Sadly, I can’t remember the name of the beer I had (something like Screeching Owl), but it was exceptional. this was to become a regular for the next few days.

Two pints later, and we’d just excaped the rain. It was time to look for some food. There were a number of highly rated Indian Restaurants that appeared, so we picked one, seemingly at random…. The Spice Lounge.

This was certainly a good choice, as the food was excellent. Of course, I had the chicken vindaloo, and I enjoyed it immensely. If I had one critiscism about it, is that you don’t really get enough dips to go with your poppadoms. I think we’d finished 3 of the 4 dips between us, leaving only the white one, because nobody ever eats that stuff.

Overall, a very nice place, and I don’t think the prices were too bad either.

After we left The Spuice Lounge, we headed up the same road to see if we could find a nice pub to settle into for the rest of the night. We ended up in one called The Greyhound. Chris and I both agreed that this part of the city felt very much like York. and this place was no exception, it definitely felt like something you’d see there. The place was really nicely done out…. except for the toilets.

In the first draft of the blog, I put in a detailed description about them. Bog was, quite literally the operative word here Let’s just say some careful hovering was needed, and the rest I’ll leave up to your imagination. Instead, I’ll include a photo of the place itself.

The Greyhound had its last orders at half 10, so we drank up and completed the short walk to the hotel. One bottle of Peroni later, and that was me ready for bed. What excitement would await us the following day? One thing’s for sure, there won’t be as many photos of the inside of pubs as this one…

Pat Harris – Just For You

A couple of years ago, I had a couple of days away, travelling this wonderful country of ours. One particularly memorable stop was the beautiful fishing village of Grimsby, and there should be no surprise in the fact I frequented a couple of charity shops. Actually, no, read that as “every damn charity shop I could find until my feet bled, and the smell of fish drove me insane”.

During one of the last shops, I picked up a CD. A disc, full of mystique and wonder, and I thought deeply about how my life could continue in the same vein if I didn’t own this sultry lump of plastic and paper…. Ladies, gentlemen and miscellaneous, I bring you… Pat Harris – Just For You

Yes, I know what you’re all thinking. I need to invest in a new scanner that didn’t come from the 1980s.. Nope, that’s actually how the CD inlay looks. A photocopied piece of card, and on the back on this card is…

It should come as no surprise that these are the only ‘artwork’ on the case. The inlay card for the case is just a copy of that one above, but printed on A4 paper. Effort was made to get the spine label showing correctly, unfortunately, this was only achieved on one side of the case, the other one is a mile off.

The CD itself is, thankfully, an undecorated CD-R. I say ‘thankfully’ because, as you know, I’ve found that a lot of the CDs that have those CDR label stickers have all started to degrade over time.

I have, of course, googled the name, and have found a singer who released a couple of records in the 60s with the same name. I’m not sure if this could be the same person or not.

As you can probably tell, I’m holding off actually trying to listen to it. I mean, it’s two years since I purchased it. I’m donning the headphones, I’m pressing play, and…

…Oh, wow.

A song called “Losing You”. Now, I really don’t want to piss on Pat’s parade here. I don’t know this song, but there’s a warble in Pat’s voice that may, or not be close to the original record (I’m guessing these are all covers), but the amount of warble is almost offensive. A very cheap sounding backing track is playing. So far, this is everything I was expecting, and at the same time, everything I was dreading.

Track 2 is a cover of Buddy Holly’s “Bye Bye Love”, which, despite the Bontempi-quality backing track, I quite enjoyed. I liked that song anyway.

A few tracks in, I’ve noticed something. The entire album is recorded in MONO. I thought my headphones were on the wonk, but no. Audacity confirms every track is the same on both channels. A view of the waveform would also suggest that the backing track has a winder dynamic range than Pat’s vocals, suggesting either a really low quality microphone, or her vocals were recorded to something like a cassette tape before being inserted into the final project.

There seems to be an offensive amount of reverb used on every track, at least the ones I’ve dared listen to. It seems to ruin the vocals, and fair play to Pat, she’s knocked out a perfectly acceptable version of “Penny Arcade”, a standard that features on almost every one of these types of CD.

Track 7 is a cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine”. A song I don’t particularly like at the best of times, and… I just can’t say anything good about this version either. The warbling is back. You know, I’ve never, ever done this, but I’ve purposely put on John Lennon’s version just to erase Pat’s version out of my mind.

So… yeah. I got to track 7. Sorry, not a fan, but I hope that some of Pat Harris’s fans do comment on this and share stories and history. I was genuinely amazed and humbled when Jean Bennet’s friends and family commented on my post about her, and I hope that Google’s search gods allow people to find info about this CD, and I get a similar amount of comments about Pat. Without the reverb, though.