Broken Stuff – mercuryvapour.co.uk

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.

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

Another CD gone to the charity shop in the sky

Rotting CDRs are starting to get on my nerves now.

I don’t find one for years, and then I find two within a week. Same issue as before. Paper label, destroyed data.

This one’s by a band called “Scarlet Renegade”… and unfortunately, that’s all I can really tell you. The cover of the CD features a Myspace link, which, of course, no longer works. The only other information is who was in the band, and even then, it’s just first names and nicknames…

Stu – Vocals
Dan – Guitar
Chris – Bass, Vocals
Spud – Drums.

The CD comes presented in a slimline jewel case, like you’d get back in the day when you’d pick up a pack of CDRs. The cover design is relatively simple, though the inlay is professionally printed.

As mentioned, there’s a Myspace link at the bottom of the sleeve. Of course, it didn’t survive the great Myspace purge, so the link no longer works. I did find an article in the Northern Echo, where they’re mentioned for performing at the ‘Newblood Festival’, but sadly no music. And I quote…

The bands for the evening’s entertainment were Scarlet Renegade, Bubblegum Thrash, Girls Last Choice and Midterm Break. Both Scarlet Renegade and Bubblegum Thrash performed good opening sets, Scarlet Renegade certainly took my fancy (although I must admit I did see them play excellently at Richmond Live in the summer)

I’ve found no more info about the band. The name coincides with something from World Of Warcraft, so obviously that’s taken priority over a small indie band from Darlington.

The annoying thing is, this particular disk partially works. It rips, but barely. You can actually hear the music on it, there’s just a lot of distortion, as if you’re listening to it on a radio that’s picking up interference from a nearby washing machine. There’s lots of hiss on it, and the guitars probably sound a bit more crunchy than they’re supposed to be. I’ve ripped it a few times now, and I think I’m going to get it as good as it’s ever going to sound.

And following on from the previous ‘Rotten CD’ post, I tried that “Serving Suggestion” disk on another machine (and another piece of software) and again, got nothing. Couldn’t even get the first track to read, therefore I’m giving up hope of it ever working. Turns out there was an entry on Discogs for that particular CD, so I’ve scanned the covers though and uploaded them, so at least the nicely designed cover hasn’t been lost to time, even if the actual music inside certainly has.

I’d love to read any comments you have on Scarlet Renegade, and any history of the band.

If only I could travel back in time 20 years

I wish I had a time machine. there’s only one thing that’s starting to come to light now, and to be perfectly honest, I’m the only person who probably knows about it. As you know, I’m a music lover. I’m done with trawling the charity shops for good CDs though. Now I trawl the charity shops for obscure CDs.

You know the type. A local band, usually consisting of a few ex-school friends or work colleagues. They get together and form a band. They record some tracks, they burn a few copies, print out a lovely case, and even stick a fancy paper label on there using one of the many, many CD labelling kits around at the time. They give some to their mates, maybe give some away at gigs when they do something at their local pub.

They eventually drift apart, and the bands get forgotten about. These burned CDs occasionally end up in charity shops, and I happily hoover them up. I’ve found some absolute pearlers of songs amongst them, some of which I intend to go through and document here in the future.

Anyway, that’s a story for another post. What I’m writing about here is that a lot of these CDs are now sadly unplayable.

Remember a few lines above where I mentioned that the bands / individuals will stick labels on the disks to make them look nice? Well, it seems those lovely labels are robbing future listeners of the opportunity to hear their music.

I, thankfully, haven’t found too many examples of this over time, but I know I’m going to find more, and it means that some songs are lost forever. No matter how small a band is or however long they’ve lasted, if they liked their music enough to put it onto record it, put it on a CDR and distribute it to a few people, then it simply deserves to be listened to by future generations… or, me.

Anyway, this all came about several years ago. I found a CD in a charity shop. It was a home-burned one, meaning it was all inkjet printed. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can certainly do this with CDs. I wanted to hear this.

The CD had one of those Inkjet label maker things on it. They were in every staionery store throughought the land in the 2000s. I put the CD in, attempted to rip it, and “nothing”. Or rather, It did eventually rip, but my CD drive sounded like it was having a nervous breakdown, and must have took an hour. I attempted to play it, but the sound was completely garbled. If you loaded it into Audacity, you could see the shape of a song there, but zoom in and the whole thing resembled a square wave. I tried this particular disc on many CD players. It was able to recognise it as a CD (the table of contents is stored in a very small area, only a few bytes at the beginning of the disc) but playing any of the tracks was a complete failure.

This CD was by a band called “Beckett”, and for all I know, this could have been the only copy ever produced, and now it’s gone for good. There are plenty of bands out there with the same name, but none of them appear to have the same tracklisting as what this CD contained.

Anyway, Last Saturday, I was in a charity shop, and picked up this.

It’s called “What’s In A Box” by a band called “Serving Suggestion”, released in 2002. It was 99p, and factory sealed. Enough for me to take a punt on it. Fast forward 8 days, I rip the cellophane off. I hope the image above just shows how pristine this thing was. Also, note that there’s none of your inkjet muck here. The case was professionally designed and printed.

The actual design of the case is clever. The disk was printed like a pizza…

Lift the CD out, and the underside of the inlay had a greasy mark printed, where the CD sat. It actually gave me a giggle.

I slapped the CD in, expecting to be greeted with some South African early 2000s indie tunes. After a minute or so, I got nothing. I took the CD out and examined it. From the naked eye, it looks absolutely pristine, after never being played before…

Ignore the dust, my phone loves picking up stuff like that. After a quick wipe, there was nay a mark to be seen, but I couldn’t be arsed reuploading the photo.

I turned the disk over, and realised that yes, this bloody disk had a paper label. It wasn’t apparent at first, as this was a nicely presented CD, but the scientific method of trying to lift it with my nail proved once and for all at this was, indded a paper label…

And, if you view the data portion in just the right light, you can see the issue… the bit where the data is stored has taken on a leapord-skin appearance, and is no longer a uniform shade.

It’s especially prominent to the left of the image, with that leapord-skin blotching. You can see where the lighter data section clearly had dark blobs on it. I can only assume that, over time, the glue on the label has reacted with either the dye on the disk, or the foil layer, or a combination of both. It’s sort-of like a “modern day” equivalent of the CD Bronzing fiasco that happened in the late 80s / early 90s. I don’t expect for this post to actually resonate with anyone, but I know there will be millions of people out there that will have used these CD labels and have precious memories stored on CDRs. Maybe it’s time to download the data from them before they all rot.

EDIT: I did try this disc on another machine, with different software,in the vain hope it’ll make any difference. Unfortunately, it didn’t. I’ll probably end up just binning this CD, but all is not lost. I’ve scanned all of the artwork in, and there’s a Discogs entry for this particular disc, and the artwork isn;t very good, so I’ll replace mine with that one. the case will go on to replace a damaged case.

Cleaning Amiga floppy disks – success!

It seems an extremely long time since I’ve updated this with any Amiga stuff, so I thought I’d do a quick update.

It’s a disgustingly wet August Saturday, and I’ve recently been accumulating more Amiga disks off ebay, and imaging them with the good old Greaseweazle, which is still going strong.

As part of the process of imaging them, I’m also grabbing the file listings off the disk, and putting them into a database. This is, so far, a long laborious procedure, and at the moment, I don’t know what purpose it’s going to serve, but doing this at least gives me a chance to test that the disks have ripped successfully, at least to a point.

Anyway, as the afore-mentioned weather is cack, I thought I’d spend an hour or two goiung through some of my recent images and getting rhe file listings. Anyway, after about 4 disks, I got the dreaded “read error” message one one of the disks I’d imaged.

Not fun. I loaded up hxc to check the disk image in a more thorough way, and sure enough, there were two bad sections of the disk, one on each side.

I went through and checked the disk, and there they were… mould spots.

Ugh. The bain of any old media collector. It’s just something that happens. These disks must be… oooh, dunno. 30 years old now, so any slightest but of organic material that’s crept on the disk in that time has obviously been taken over.

I’m surprised I didn’t pick up on this when the disk was getting images. A mould spot this severe would have definitely created a tell-tale noise when the disk was being imaged – a definitive click-click-click as the mould spot makes contact with the head, about once every 1/20 of a second.

Anyway, I had hopes of resurrecting this one. I took a tiny bit of IPA on the end of a cotton bud, and very lightly rubbed the surface. You don’t want to put any pressure on at all. The surface of the disk needs to be perfectly flat, and any slight ripple in the surface will render the disk useless and the data gone.

I didn’t get any pictures of this, so I don’t think you need much of an imagination to picture what I did.

Thankfully, the mould was no match for the IPA, and within seconds, it was lifted. I used the dry side of the cotton bud to remove any possible residue, and left it to dry for a couple of minutes. Obviously, IPA dries on its own really quickly, but the last time I tried this, I must have put far too much on and ruined the disk, and possibly didn’t help the drive much either.

Of course, the proof of the pudding is worth two in a bush, so did the disk actually work after I’d tried all this?

Oh, I’d say that was a success.

As a side note, I know I was holding the disk myself. I’m aware that you can buy little disk cleaning cradles that will hold the shutter open for you while you do this. I actually have one, but didn’t have it to hand when I did this.

Amiganuts! POWER!

Today, I saved the life of my Amiga 1200. And I’m slightly relieved.

I’ve typed on here several times about my love of the Amiga 1200, the computer I received on Xmas Day 1993. But what do I mean about saving its life? I removed the battery. Yep, that’s it. I took the battery out. “Hang on”, says both of the Amiga aficionados reading this, “The Amiga didn’t have a battery”. Well, mine did, because I bought a memory expansion which also shipped with a real-time clock, and obviously, a battery backup for it.

Back in 2007, I dragged my Amiga out for a quick play, to see if a problem with the video circuitry had fixed itself in the 10 years it had been in storage. Unsurprisingly, it hadn’t and my screen was still just a jumbled mess. OH WELL. Back in the cupboard it went.

Years went by, and that cupboard fell pretty much out of action. Certain room reorganisations, and knowing there wasn’t much stuff in that particular cupboard meant it wasn’t really accessible anymore. But my Amiga was safe in storage.

Fast forward to 2013. Dave Jones, aka EEVBlog, posted a video about an old Archimedes computer he’d been sent. The video was going great, until he’d opened it up and found that the RTC battery had leaked, completely eating away at most of the circuitry, including the ROM sockets and keyboard connections, turning the machine into a beautiful, yet pricey paperweight. My heart sank. I knew my Amiga had what looked like the same battery, and although that machine was older, it wasn’t MUCH older, and the clock battery in my Amiga hadn’t been changed since I installed the expansion board in 1995, pushing it up to 22 years. That thing must have been a goner.

I spoke to Daddykins about something random, and I mentioned about my Amiga and leaking batteries. I was surprised to find the cupboard now slightly more accessible. Enough to squeeze an arm in, and pull out an Amiga, anyway. Maybe he’d realised I was right, and the little Miggy was worth saving!

I precariously opened the underside door on the machine to see what grotty state the board was in…. Aaand.

Not a speck of corrosion. And yes, I’d taken the battery out before I’d taken this, but it was still in there, and came out perfectly shiny.

So, my Amiga might live to fight another day. If I can get that graphics issue fixed.

I have much more to say about this fantastic machine, so stay tuned for some more inane rambling shortly… Bet you can’t wait.