Mike Gets His Mojo Back/The Ian Chappell Collection

Apologies to all loyal readers for the enduring dormancy of this blog. What was it Sly Stone said? “Heard you missed me, well I’m back.” (Look what happened to him.)  

I shall strive to be a more regular correspondent from now on. Besides, I have a subject, renewed motivation and a new source of income since the music journalism dried up. I am now an eBay trader! 

I have my friend Cliff Lee to thanks. It was Cliff who sent me a link about an upcoming auction at Omega Auctions, in Stockport. There were some heavyweight items: oh, the usual suspects - Vashti Bunyan, Another Diamond Day; Led Zeppelin I with novel coloured lettering; Nick Drake, Five Leaves Left; Christy Moore, Paddy on the Road. And Lot 129 comprised two C.O.B. LPs, Spirit of Love and Moyshe McStiff, which attracted Cliff because band-member John Bidwell is a pal of his. I seem to remember that C.O.B. was a vehicle for Incredible String Band founder Clive Palmer. Indeed, the acronym stands for Clive's Original Band. 

My own interest centred on Lots 268-298, boxes labelled Miscellaneous Folk. The auction was scheduled for Saturday, 30th June, 2012. 

To make a hard story easy: the individual items mentioned above lay outside my price range (Lot 129 fetched £600), but - thanks to the consortium I’d managed to get in place - I came away with 11 boxes containing roughly 100 LPs each. 

My purpose was threefold: 

1. To boost my record collection and, to a lesser extent, those of my backers (thank you Ant, Al and Eva). 

2. To furnish material for my proposed book on a folkie theme. 

3. To establish my little eBay trading post, which I christened one-for-every-fair-and-rainy-day. This was appropriately folksy sounding and it announced my modus operandi: to list one record a day, thus guaranteeing a steady stream of income but without foul commerce taking my life.

I shall tell you how I got on tomorrow.