I have found an interesting second-hand record store not far from my local area which I didn’t even know existed.

It is called Audiomania. It’s a bit oddly located in a semi-industrial area and, unusually, is only open two day’s a week for four hours at a time! On one side of the shop there’s an extensive selection of good quality vinyl (pop, rock, blues, lots of jazz and a bit of a specialty of the store – reggae). On the other side of the space they have vintage hi-fi (amps, turntables, CD players, etc.) and – wait for it – restored motor cycles….

It is the most eclectic record shop I’ve come across in some time.

My son and I descended on Audiomania on the weekend a couple of weeks ago. He was on the hunt for jazz vinyl, and me in search of the Beatles (or anything else Beatle-related).

I ended up with three items. An Australian copy of Paul McCartney’s Red Rose Speedway; a copy of his Give My Regards to Broad Street; and Ringo Starr’s Ringo the 4th.

I wanted the McCartney LP’s because the Red Rose Speedway (Australian pressing) had a cover which didn’t have the Braille writing on the back, and the Broad Street was a US copy on the Columbia label (in Australia this LP came out on Parlophone).

Like I said in the previous post, I seem to moving from not having much of Ringo solo on vinyl to now having quite a few of his releases all of a sudden. I didn’t have this LP at all in my collection. Despite the ringwear on the cover (which you cane see below), this one being both a US pressing and a promo copy, it seemed worth the A$5.00 asking price:

As you can see it has a big black and white Atlantic Records “Promotional Copy” sticker on the front containing a track-listing with composers, song publishers and running times (for use by radio stations I guess), plus a gold-embossed stamp on the upper left-hand side saying “Promotional Copy NOT FOR SALE”.

You can see the rear cover above (pardon the pun). I don’t know who that is sitting on his shoulders or why they are there….if you know please drop us a line. There is also a paper inner sleeve with a photo of Ringo and his co-writer of many tunes on the album Vini Poncia:

The album came out in 1977 on the Atlantic label and has a cast of top session players and guest artists of the day including David Spinozza (guitar), the great Steve Gadd on drums, Chuck Rainey (bass), Michael and Randy Brecker (horns), and Bette Midler, Melissa Manchester, Jim Gilstrap and Luther Vandross (background vocals). 

So, one more Ringo Starr for the collection – and a promo copy at that.