Love, Loss and The Eternal Soundtrack

At an unspecific point in 1979, my dad arrived home from work carrying a long playing record. It turned out to be the new Police album.  At this point, ‘Message In a Bottle’ had been all over the radio and I knew I liked this new music. My mum, on the other hand did not have quite the same enthusiasm; she’s a bit put out that this does not have ‘Roxanne’ on it. Presumably, the album – like others – had been purchased at Barnaby’s, a record shop (no longer there) very near my dad’s then place of employment; a giant tin shed in which he worked with dangerous acidic chemicals and little regard for health and safety. That Police album (‘Reggatta De Blanc’) got played a lot. If I think hard, I can still see Dad sitting by his Fidelity stereo system lifting the needle onto the record and playing the title track over and over and I remember thinking how fitting it was that the word emblazoned on the front looked a bit like the word fiddle. That piece of music must have spoken to him:  decades later, he would still attract my attention by calling my name to the tune of that track.

The sight of my dad coming home with new music in this way was not entirely uncommon.

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THE BIG LED ZEPPELIN POLL

With the release of the ‘Physical Graffiti’ deluxe edition due in a few weeks and Jimmy Page’s Led Zeppelin reissue campaign reaching the halfway stage, Real Gone decided to have some fun.

We know there are a lot of Led Zeppelin fans out there – and a fair few visiting this website regularly.  This week between Wednesday 21st and Tuesday 27th January, it’s OFFICIAL ZEPPELIN WEEK at Real Gone!

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Dance and Sing In Celebration: Led Zeppelin Covered

In early 2014, the announcement finally came that the Led Zeppelin catalogue was to be reissued with bonus material, with the first three albums potentially appearing before the summer.  Prior to this exciting announcement, the only extra material Zeppelin fans had seen officially includes a couple of extra tracks on two box sets, a couple of live recordings and a few extra tracks inserted into the running order of the band’s live opus ‘The Song Remains The Same’.  Meanwhile, almost every other major rock artist saw their catalogues reissued with bonus materials galore, and in some cases – The Who and Hendrix, especially – several times over.  Having been denied this treatment for so long, the idea of the entire Zeppelin catalogue being overhauled and awarded bonus discs of unreleased material provided much cause for celebration.

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