250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 87 Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Anthology

 

There's a story behind this. I went out one Saturday morning in the Spring of 1986 with two of my three best friends in my first year at university, We were young though we didn't really know it. We didn't know any better. We caught a bus into Norwich. Walked together through the pedestrianised streets of the old city To Backs Records. The independent record shop. We were to old for the sweet shop. We'd moved on from comics to pints and records It was what boys like us were born to do at that time on the planet. I realise now looking back. It was only right,

. There was a copy of Smokey Robinson & The Miracles The Anthology/ Ben and I wanted it. But money was at a premium in those days. Buying a record meant a sacrifice elsewhere. We decided to get it together and flip a coin for it.

Rod the third friend recalled the incident decades later. I'd certainly never forgotten it, It felt like an episode. Something memorable and somehow significant Rod was anxiety prone and didn't like what was happening, 

This felt like Sophie's Choice moment for sad 20 year old boys. Something out of Nick Hornby or Julian Barnes. I was confident. I always won tossed coins. Ben was not. He always lost them, Ben won the toss. He got Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Anthology, I was left with a gap in my life.

I moved onto a girl the next term. Smokey and the Miracles would have nodded sagely in approval  and flowed to the chorus. The three of us kind of fell out, drifted apart the next year, I had to take a year out of university because I fell horribly ill. .The whole story feels dramatic, intense and worthy of a novel. The true story of the Eighties. I won't be the one to write it. This is just a page in the draft. James the fourth friend was not there that day. I imagine he could supply footnotes.

It now seems like a different lifetime frankly. I've bought my own copy of the record. It feels like the ultimate soundtrack to  falling in and out of love. In and out of friendship. In and out of life, Side One has jut come to an end. I think I'll put on Side Two