Golden Discs

International Record Store Day a couple of weeks back - designed to put a focus on local record shops, under mortal threat from the major chains – was marked in Derry by the release of a cracker EP by Strength. Set me thinking.

Cool Discs in Foyle Street provides a service as important to the cultural life of Derry as the Playhouse Theatre or Void gallery. It's where you can buy the mainstream stuff, but also find the work of musicians and material which you aren't going to hear on national radio or find in Virgin or HMV. That includes the best of the local music scene. Cool Discs is, typically, the only commercial outlet in the area where you'll find Here Comes The Landed Gentry's first album, Here Comes the Landed Gentry Volume 2, just across the aisle from Bill Haley – The Ultimate Collection. ('Hot Dog, Buddy Buddy', 'You Hit The Wrong Note, Billy Goat', 'Choo Choo Ch'Boogie'... They don't write songs like that anymore. They really don't.)
And if you need a natter about what's worth a while of your limited ear-time, Lee and Danny will be on hand, with an unfeasible knowledge of music from Draperstown to Dakar, which they'll happily share. Or you can just browse around the shelves and note that they are still putting out work by Billy Fury – a more significant figure than he was ever given credit for way back yonder. 'Half Way To Paradise'! Ah.
No harm to the cheerful and courteous young people at HMV up in the shopping centre, but ambling into Cool Discs is a different experience. Deserves savouring and saving. There's probably something similar, or nearly, in your town too.
Which reminds me of a day I dandered into Comet Records in still-ungentrifed Temple Bar in the company of Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler, who'd confided that he wanted while in Dublin to buy a couple of records that'd be hard to come by back in Birmingham. Wouldn't tell me what, but furtively whispered to the guy behind the counter. "Don't av em. An 'e don't know where I'd get em," he came back.
Now he told me. So I took him to the Provos' shop in Parnell Square, where we were greeted by Joe Cahill, reputedly chief of staff of the IRA. What Geezer wanted was an album by Mary O'Hara, the singing ex-nun who ever harped on about the need to be wholesome. Turned out Geezer's dad was an Irish sentimentalist.
What has this to do with Cool Discs and International Record Store Day, you might ask. Well, a lot, in that I've been waiting for a while for an excuse to tell my Terence Joseph Butler story.
The eponymous 'Strength' can be downloaded for free from strength music.co.uk.

What do America's foremost right-wing commentator, the late William F. Buckley; the economic guru Margaret Thatcher doted on, Milton Friedman; Bush senior's Secretary of State George Schultz, Barbara Ehrenreich and Noam Chomsky have in common?
They all have urged the legalisation of cannabis.
Last month saw the launch in the US of another declaration saying that the ban on the drug "fills our jails and prisons with hundreds of thousands of non-violent people, and increases crime and violence in the same way alcohol prohibition did."
US police made 750,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2008. Most were of black men — a major reason for the second most stupefying statistic in the world — that one in nine African-American men between 17 and 34 are presently in prison.
Of course, marijuana is not harmless. No mind or mood-altering substance is. And any practice which involves sucking smoke into your lungs must be damaging to health. But if these are reasons for prohibition, there are other more harmful substances freely available in premises licenced by law of which the same and worse can be said.
Where's the sense? Where's the logic? What good is this doing? And why are these simple truths so seldom spelt out here?

Paul Gill is walking the length of the land to ensure it's still legal to give God a lash.
The Buncrana man popped into Sandino's for a Enchiladas/Junior Johnston/Future Chaser gig to tell us about his marathon march against the Blasphemy Bill.
He aims to walk 25 kilometres a day for 25 days from Mizen Head to Malin Head, leaving May 5, arriving May 30. If his path takes him close to wherever you're hanging out, show him you are shoulder to shoulder.
Paul's route to rationality takes in the poetical townlands of Mizen Head - Goleen - Durrus - Bantry - Kealkill - Inchigeelagh - Toons Bridge - Macroom - Coachford - Donoughmore Cross - Bweeng - Dromahane - Mallow - New Twopothouse - Buttevant - Charleville - Croom - Patrickswell - Dooradoyle - Limerick - Cratloe - Sixmilebridge - Kilkishen - Tulla - Nowhere - Gort - Kiltartan - Ardrahan - Kilcolgan - Clarinbridge - Oranmore - Galway - Cloonboo - Headford - Shrule - Claremorris - Knock - Kilkelly - Charlestown - Tubbercurry - Ballinacarrow - Collooney - Ballysadare - Sligo - Drumcliff - Grange - Bundoran - Ballyshannon - Ballintra - Laghy - Barnesmore Gap - Ballybofey - Lifford - Letterkenny - Newton Cunningham - Buncrana - Carndonagh - Malin - Malin Head.
I feel tired already. But I'll join him for a kilometre or two.