MEMORIES
In this section of the web site I would
like to tell the story of how I got
involved with Gilbert's music. I have to
go all the way back to 1973 so we'll see
how good my memory is.
Before I start I would like to say a big
thank you to Harmony for helping me
build this web site. Without Harmony
this web site would not exist, so from
the bottom of my heart thank you
((Hammy)).
1973
I was 16 years old in 1973 and not much
of a music fan, I was more into sports,
hockey, football, baseball etc. I
remember a girl in high school, her name
was Sylvie and she kept humming this
song so I finally got curious and asked
her what the song was. She told me it
was Alone Again [Naturally] by Gilbert
O'Sullivan and it stuck with me even
though I had never heard the song
before. I remember one evening in the
spring of 1973 I turned on the radio and
Alone Again was playing, I just could
not believe how good that song was. As
soon as I heard it I was
hooked.
A few days later I heard Clair and Out
Of The Question and that's when I really
got interested in music. It was
impossible to find the single for Alone
Again so I decided to buy the album but
when I got to the store (Zellers) the
only Gilbert album they had was Back To
Front, so of course I bought it. Wow I
remember the feeling I had when I got
home and played it for the first time, I
just loved the album. Then in july I
bought Get Down, still one of my
favorite songs. I had to wait until
September to buy I'm A Writer Not A
Fighter but it was well worth the
wait.
I was still looking for an album with
Alone Again on it and since I couldn't
find it I thought that only the single
existed but that was about to change. In
the fall of '73 I bought Ooh Baby, not
one of my favorite but another single
with a different b-side. A few days
before Christmas I went shopping and
there was this little record store I had
never seen before, it was in a shopping
mall very well hidden so I decided to
take a look, well I couldn't believe it
when I saw Himself right in front of my
eyes. There was only 1 left so of course
i grabbed it, oh man was I happy. So as
the year came to a close I had 2 singles
and 3 albums and I thought I had quite a
collection then.
1974
1974 started on a good note as I traded for the single Alone Again, i'm not quite sure but I think I traded the single Sugar Baby Love by the Rubettes for Alone Again, this meant another new song for me as Save It was the flip side. About a month later I traded the single Yesterday Once More by the Carpenters for Clair, and again I had another new song with Ooh-Wakka-Doo-Wakka-Day.
I also bought 3 more singles that year, Happiness Is Me And You and A Woman's Place and during the summer I found Out Of The Question in a used record store.
In the fall of '74 I went in the record department at Eaton's in Montreal and of course went to the GOS section and it was quite a surprise to find A Stranger In My Own Back Yard. So since buying my first single in July 1973 I had 7 singles all with different flip sides and 4 albums, I thought I was doing good and it would be easy to buy his records for the next few years, well I was in for quite a surprise after 1974.
1975-1976-1977
Things would change dramatically during the next 3 years, I did not hear much about Gilbert. We have to remember that the internet did not exist back then, so it was very difficult to get any news. The only thing I remember is in 1975 when "You Are You" was released. I could not find the single but one radio station, CKLM 1570 in Montreal used to play the song often, specially between 6 & 10 in the evening.
The disc jockey used to be from my hometown and I used to go to school with his brother, anyway turns out that the DJ was a big Gilbert fan so he would play the song at least once or twice during his show. 1976 & 1977 was bad because nothing new from Gilbert could be heard on the radio. So after a year and a half of finding 7 singles and 4 albums, I could not find a new record for 3 years.
1978 & 1979
I had been working for Texaco for just about a year when I decided to go on vacation in Cancun, Mexico. So in february I went to the travel agency wich was in a shopping mall, and after picking up the plane tickets I decided to take a look at a record store, well in my wildest dreams I never thought I would find a new album "Southpaw". I know the album was released in 1977, so i don't know for how long the album had been there but it was the only O'Sullivan record in the store.
I remember going home at night and played the album over and over, after all it had been over 3 years since the last one. I really liked that album, I loved all the songs. The thing that disappointed me was the fact that the lyrics were not included. Being Frenh Canadian, my english was not very good back then so the lyrics were very important to me.
The next morning I left for Cancun, so I didn't listen to the album for 2 weeks. The first thing I did when I got back, of course I listened to the album again.
Nothing happened the rest of the year and the same for 1979, I did not find a new single but I was really happy about "Southpaw". To be honest at the time I remember thinking that "Southpaw" was probably going to be Gilbert's last album...thank God I was wrong.
1980-1981-1982
1980 started very slowly, then in march I remember one morning sitting at my desk and a fellow worker asked me if i'd heard the new Gilbert O'Sullivan single!!!! I looked at him with a grin and said yeah right Claude. After he told me a couple of times I started thinking that maybe he was serious, anyway I went home that friday night wondering if he was serious. As soon as I got up saturday morning I turned on the radio and waited, and waited until right after the news a song came on and as I was reading the paper I heard "What's In A Kiss". So of course for the next couple of weeks I was looking for the single but just couldn't find it until about a month after hearing the song I found "Off Centre".
I really enjoyed the album but again I was very disappointed that the lyrics were not included. About a week after I found the new album I bought the single What's In A Kiss. It was the first single I had bought since 1974 and I was happy to have 1 more song as "Down Down Down" was the b-side. The rest of the year was very quiet as no more singles were released in Canada. Nothing new was released in 1981 and 1982.
1983
1983 would turn out to be quite a year for me, both on a personal level and for my record collection. After working 6 years for Texaco in Montreal I accepted a transfer to Toronto, little did I know that my record collection would grow so much in the next few years.
In June I found the Cambra Sound audio tapes. Even though it was a compilation, 5 of the 30 songs were new to me and another one "You Are You" I knew existed but had never been able to buy the single when it was released in 1975. The 5 "new" songs were I Don't Love You But I Think I Like You, No Matter How I Try, You Don't Have To Tell Me, Why Oh Why Oh Why and I'll Believe It When I See It.
Later that summer I found 5 compilation albums, again a few songs found on the albums were new to me including Just As You Are, Christmas Song, Underneath The Blanket Go, You Never Listen To Reason, Doing The Best I Can and Susan Van Heusen. So I found 12 songs that had been released in the 70's but were new to me. After having a hard time adjusting to a new life in Toronto at least I was very happy at the way my record collection had grown within a few months.
1984-1985-1986-1987
After a great year in 1983 for my record collection the next few years would be very quiet. In the summer of 1984 I went to Montreal for a 2 week vacation and I found what would turn out to be the next to last Gilbert vinyl album I would buy. "Portrait" was a double album compilation imported from Germany, 2 of the songs found on it were new to me even though they had been released in the 70's. "Call On Me" & "Tell Me Why" were the 2 songs. It's always strange to find songs that were released 9 or 10 years earlier and you don't even know if the songs were released as singles, b-sides or out-takes.
Nothing much could be found over the next 3 years. Even though I was going through all the record stores the only album I could find was "Himself" UK version. Again I didn't know that version existed until I bought it in a used record store. "Himself" would be the last vinyl album I would buy.
1988-1989-1990
I had been working 5 years in Toronto when in the fall of 1988 I changed department, still working for Texaco but working on a new job when my boss told me about a vinyl record store on Queen street. When I finally decided to visit the store I couldn't believe my eyes how many singles that store was carrying. If I remember correctly on their business card they said that they had 250,000 vinyl records!!!!
So I went to that store every chance I had and between 1988 and 1990 I found 8 Gilbert singles. Out of the 8 singles, 4 of the songs were new to me. To Cut A Long Story Short was the b-side to You Are You, That's A Fact was the b-side to I Don't Love You But I Think I Like You. The other 2 songs that were new to me were found on a nice picture sleeve single imported from Italy, "A Minute Of Your Time/In Other Words. So even though I had found a bunch of compilation albums and 8 singles since 1983, I could not find a new studio album, and since the last one I bought was way back in 1980 I really thought that was it for my collection...
1991
Every friday morning in the Toronto Sun there was a chronic written by John Sakamoto about new compact discs being released. I had bought my CD player in the fall of 1990 so since that time I kept hoping that maybe I would find one Gilbert CD, so every friday I would sit at my desk and read Sakamoto's chronic. One friday morning, late november or early december the title of his article read something like this: Rhino To Repackage 70's Music. It sounded interesting and starting reading the article until I read that some of the music Rhino would release included "The Best Of Gilbert O'Sullivan" no need to tell you that I was shocked. I kept reading the article over an over just to make sure it wasn't a dream.
After waiting so long to find a CD, finally my dream had come true. For the next few week ends I would go downtown Toronto in search of that elusive CD but I just couldn't find one. Then I started thinking that maybe the CD stores in Toronto would not carry it, until 2 days after Christmas I entered Sam The Record Man on Younge street and right in front of my eyes, there it was my first Gilbert O'Sullivan CD, but no wait, after looking carefully there were 2 CDS!!!!! The Best Of GOS released by Rhino was there but also Nothing But The Best imported from France was there. Wow after waiting for so long I had 2 CDS.
I remember going home and being so excited about the Compact Discs that I would play about 20 seconds of a song, then skip to the next one and so on. All I was asking for was to have 1 GOS CD and now i had 2, I was the happiest person in the world and I remember thinking even if I never find another one, it doesn't matter, I have what I want :)
1992
1992 turned out to be quite a year for me on a personal level, this would be my last year in Toronto. The company i worked for "Texaco" had been bought a couple of years earlier by "Imperial Oil/Esso" and things were not going so good.
In early April I went CD shopping again and as I entered Sam The Record Man I had no idea that I was going to find 2 more GOS CDS. Castle Communications had released Himself (UK version) and I'm A Writer Not A Fighter. What a great surprise on what turned out to be a bad month for me.
We had heard that ESSO wanted to close down our department and in late April after more than 15 years with the company my boss called me in his office and just like that, i was out of a job. So in June I decided to move back to Montreal after living more than 9 years in Toronto. I went back to Toronto in September of that year to visit relatives and friends but could not find any new compact discs. So 1992 ended and I had 4 CDS.
1993
In April I went back to Toronto for a visit and again went CD shopping downtown Toronto and as usual the first CD store I visited was Sam The Record Man and I was not disappointed. I went to the GOS section and found 6 compact discs that I did not have. 3 of them were compilations, "Alone Again" "Another Side" and "Tomorrow Today - Best Of Best". The other ones were "In The Key Of G" Sounds Of The Loop" and "Rare Tracks". So 13 years after buying the last studio album, I found 3 new ones the same day. I can't describe the feeling I had when I saw all those CDS right in front of my eyes. I knew "In The Key Of G" existed but had no idea about "Loop" and "Rare Tracks". So after buying 6 CDS the same day I thought 1993 was already a great year...until a few months later.
While living in Toronto I met a girl named Christa and we became very good friends, Christa was from Switzerland and in 1990 had moved back home. We kept in touch and in 1993 she invited me to spend some time in Switzerland. The second day I was there we visited Zurich and i went in a CD store, i was curious to see what kind of music they were selling and to my surprise i found 1 Gilbert CD, it was a compilation CD "Get Down '90" I was very happy to find that CD because to my knowledge it is the only CD where you can find the remix of Get Down. Also on that CD the 1987 version of We Will is found and besides "Frobisher Drive" wich is almost impossible to find i think this is the only CD where you can find that version.
Christa had booked a trip to Paris, so after a few days in Switzerland off we went to Paris. After visiting for a few days I wanted to take some time and look for some CD stores, what can I say it's an obsession. The first store that I visited I found "20 Greatest Hits" no new songs but a nice booklet came with the CD with 16 pictures of Gilbert. I remember it was a very hot day and I had been walking around for a long time and being very tired but i knew there was a Virgin Megastore on Champs Elysee. I had to take the subway to go back to the hotel and decided not to go to the Virgin Store, then I had to switch train and I was at the Champs Elysee subway station and started thinkng what if I can find a CD or 2, so I changed my mind and decided to look for the store.
After walking for a while I finally found the store and went right away to the GOS section...WOW...I could not believe what was in front of me, there had to be between 75 and 100 Gilbert CDS. I bought Back To Front, A Stranger In My Own Back Yard, Southpaw, Off Centre, Life & Rhymes, The Little Album and the CD single Can't Think Straight. No need to tell you that I was so glad to have changed my mind back at the subway station. I knew Life & Rhymes existed but had no idea about The Little Album. There were many other Gilbert CDS there but I already had them. So that trip to Europe will always be remembered for the great time I had and the 9 CDS I found.
So between April and July I found 15 CDS and I thought it was very good but there were 2 more to come. On August 6 it was my dad's birthday and a good friend of my parents, Mildred came over for a visit and I was telling her about all the CDS I had bought in Europe and the next day Mildred was in a CD store and phoned me to let me know there was 1 GOS CD there, after talking to the owner of the store I found out that the CD was "Happiness Is Me And You" again another compilation. It really amazes me sometimes what we can find in a small CD store, that store was about as big as my living room (well a bit bigger but not much) and to this day I have never seen that CD anywhere else.
When I left the store I decided to keep driving and went downtown Montreal and I found another compilation CD, this one was "Unforgettable - 16 Golden Classics". Again no new songs but still fun to find a CD that I knew existed but as the CD was released in 1987 I never thought I would find it 6 years later. So by the end of 1993, 2 years after buying my first CD, I had 21.
1994
For some strange reasons it is more difficult to remember when the rest of my CD collection was bought. In april of '94 i was in Toronto and bought Sounds Of The Loop (UK Version). The interesting thing about that CD is that the first song is Are You Happy, wich is not included on the Japanese version and the english and japanese versions of Can't Think Straight are included on this CD.
1995
1995 saw the addition of 3 more compact discs to my collection. Again I was in Toronto in april of '95 and something strange happened at HMV. The store had only 1 Gilbert CD and it was Every Song Has It's Play but the weird thing is that the CD was not sealed, so i opened the sleeve and still was not sure if this was a Gilbert CD or if it were a collection of songs written by Gilbert and sung by other performers. After looking at the booklet i figured it was a regular CD but when it was time to pay there was a problem, the CD was not registered in the computer so the cashier didn't have a price, she asked a clerk to verify in the store room for another CD but this was the only CD that they had, so after a few minutes the girl told me that the price was $19.99, since the CD was imported I knew it had to be more expensive so i did not argue, I paid for it and was happy with the result.
Right across the street from HMV I went into Sam The Record Man and bought By Larry. I had seen that CD the previous year but had not bought it since it is the same CD as The Little Album, only difference is that By Larry has 2 bonus tracks. In the summer of '95 in Montreal i found the Live In Japan CD and i found it by mistake. The CD store had only 1 Gilbert CD in the POP section but as I went in the ROCK section I noticed that there was another file with Gilbert's name on it and as I checked it I was amazed to find the live CD. I could have gone 50 more times in that store and never would have found it. God knows how long that CD had been there. In the fall I found the CD single Dear Dream, i was glad to find it even though there is a terrible remix of that song.
1996-1997-1998
Again in the spring of 1996 I made my bi-annual trip to Toronto and i found "Alone Again - Super Best" at Tower Records, another compilation but with a different version of "Are You Happy?" That would be it for 1996.
1997 would see the addition of 1 more CD, "Singer Sowing Machine" I ordered that one from HVM Montreal and it took only 3 weeks for the CD to arrive.
I found 2 more compilation CDS in 1998, both were found at HMV in Montreal. The first one I found was "Greatest Hits" and in the fall I found "The Best Of Gilbert O'Sullivan"
1999
The last year of the millenium (depending on how you look at it) would turn out to be a great year. In January I received the CD single "Ain't No Telling (What Tomorrow Will Bring)" from Park Records. Thanks to the GOS mailing list I met a great online friend from Ireland, his name is Brian and we traded CDS and audio tapes. I had been looking for "The Best Of GOS Live In Japan" but was unable to find it until Brian traded with me.
Later that summer I received another CD single "Are You Happy?" from a CD store in Holland. Also received a very rare CD "Live In Dublin 1973" but I won't mention where I got that one. In the fall I found "The Very Best Of Gilbert O'Sullivan". I bought that one at HMV Montreal.
2000
In the spring of 2000 I ordered 2 compilation CDs from MUNDO in Japan. The first one was "Love Songs" with "Anytime" as a bonus track. The other CD was "The Greatest Hits" and this one has "I Have My Coat To Keep Me Warm" as the bonus track. In June I traded with a friend and as a result I received the Japanese version of "Singer Sowing Machine". This version is different from the UK version, the songs are re-mixed and 2 bonus tracks are on it, "Break A Leg (2)" and "The Luck Of The Irish".
In early July I received Gilbert's new CD "Irlish" from MUNDO in Japan. This one is quite special to me because it's my 40th Gilbert CD. So 8 and 1/2 years after buying my first one I have 40 compact discs now, and to think that all I was asking for, was to find 1 CD way back in the fall of 1990 when I bought my first CD player, who would have thought.
2001
In mid-April i received the brand new CD single "Have It" with "Couldn't Get Arrested" being the bonus song. That CD was sent by my good friend Brian from Ireland. Brian also sent me many more items from the Irlish Tour that he attended in late March early April. I received 2 autographed pictures a ticket stub from the tour, the tour poster and an autographed T-shirt...I received that just before my birthday, talk about a great birthday gift :) I will open a new section on my web site and everything will be displayed.
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Email: jeydee@webtv.net
