I'm starting off with a deviation from the norm by saluting my Dual 505 turntable, shown on the left. I don't know the exact date I bought it, but I know it was during the Easter holidays 1981, so that means it's been serving me for a quarter of a century. There's an intermittently dodgy connection between the headshell and the arm, and you have to be careful with the hinge for the cover where it's come loose due to a faulty design, but I've never had any mechanical trouble with this turntable. Ben, how's your old 505 (exactly the same model as mine, I think it was)? Still running?
Now here's today's disc, which is a 33⅓ EP. Unlike the NME cassette, this one was given away with the magazine, but, like the cassette, it was also compiled by Roy Carr.
The NME did a series of these around the mid '80s and I have five of them.
Twenty years on, some of the tracks on these EPs are rare and sought-after; some are forgotten or common as muck. Trouble Funk were a band that the NME made a lot of at the time. They seem to be mostly in the 'forgotten' category now, and that may be unfair. The Hüsker Dü cover of the Beatles' Ticket to Ride is OK, not great, but maybe someone heard it and had the idea for the Backbeat band.
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