Tim is still a special one. Over forty five years after he made his last, terrible mistake. Almost twenty five years after his poor, neglected son made his. There's something deeply haunting about both of these great talents, one fully realised, one not quite.
Yesterday was a very good day in my life. I woke and had a great Zoom chat with my best friend and a former student Salvo, from my year in Catania, Sicily over twenty years ago. Then, I had another good phone chat with my mother about that and my impending meeting with Mustafa from Baghdad, another former student, but now just a friend, who I taught online for a couple of terms earlier on this year and is now in Newcastle embarked on his engineering PhD. .He's just completed his quarantine and asked if we could meet. My mother told me to tidy my flat and invite him round next time as mothers are wont to do. I agreed to do so. We both laughed.
Then, to look presentable, I had a Turkish Shave from an Iranian barber just round the corner from me. He did the shave thing, then wrapped the faceclothes round my face and left me there, prone on the swingseat with the gorgeous heat and perfumes soaking into my face. Great job. I gave him a tip, though he certainly wasn't asking for or expecting it.
I still had some time to kill before meeting Mustafa so I wondered down to RPM Records, my favourite record shop in Newcastle,. There was an offchance that the copy of Sophtware Slump by Grandaddy which I'd ordered a couple of weeks back, to my mind their finest album and ultimate statement, might be there. It wasn't. But I'm sure it will be eventually.
So, being something of an expert on record shops and how to behave in them, I tried another tack, probably at the core of why I'd wandered down there in the first place. A few weeks previously I'd marvelled at the low cost of the Tim Buckley albums in their racks. Richie, one of the guys behind the counter had told me that they'd broken up a boxset that had been released and no one had bought and sold the individual albums off at affordable prices.
Which brought me to the reason my feet had brought me down to RPM . The Tim album that had driven my feet down to RPM in the first place and the one I really wanted wasn't there. Blue Afternoon, an album that has special personal memories for me from over twenty five years ago. I asked if they might have or could track down an affordable copy. Rich said he'd go upstairs and have a look.
In the meantime, I had a chat with Duncan, the other RPM regular assistant on our feelings about Starsailor often considered to be Tim's greatest, certainly his most far out album. With an artist of this calibre, it's difficult to opt for just one. Record store small talk. There are no awkward silences.
Richie came down not much later with a copy of Blue Afternoon. Not just any copy but an original release with a fabulous gatefold sleeve. For just 10 pounds. A steal. He gave it a clean, we gave it a play and I was on my way.
Forty five minutes later, after a great catch up with Mustafa, so incredibly grateful and polite and having given me a wonderful gift that connected immediately to our teaching / learning experience, we parted and I wandered down to my new local The Telegraph for a couple of pints and some jukebox action and then returned with my plunder. Mustafa's gift and Blue Afternoon. I've been playing it ever since.
Blue Afternoon may not be Tim's best album. How do you judge these things. But its my favourite. It has special memories for me and a certain cadence that will never be supplanted in my affections. It remonds me of a couple of the best years of my life, when I was in Dortmund between 1992 and 1994.
On Friday's I used to go round to a friend Matt's flat. We'd chat and drink beer and smoke and eat and listen to music. I seem to remember he had mentioned Tim Buckley the very first time I met him. He certainly played him a lot. One sunny afternoon he put this golden record on.The moment has stuck with me ever since.
Matt is no longer with us. He passed in painful circumstances a few years back. So glad to have finally tracked down a copy of Blue Afternoon. It's utterly transcendent in a way very, very few records are.
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