A Brief History Of Robert Johnson And The Great Mississippi Delta Blues Musicians

Posted on by Nicholas Peart

By far the most well known of the great Mississippi Delta bluesmen is Robert Johnson. The Paganini of the Blues. The one who was said to have sold his soul to the devil in return for being able to play like no one else. He was truly a one off and isn’t called the King of the Delta Blues for nothing. I first listened to a compilation of his meagre recordings when I was 19 and I was blown away by them; by the magic and the mystic of these rudimentary and raw records as much as by his guitar skills. When Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones first heard one of his songs in the very early 1960s while living in a cold flat with fellow bandmate Brian Jones (before the Stones hit the big time), he famously asked who the other guitar player was? That’s how off the wall his guitar playing was.

Only two photographs survive and certainly no video footage of the man himself, although there are some who claim that there exists a very rare 30 second film footage of him. If anybody wants to know more about the man, especially from those who knew him, I highly recommend trying to track down a copy of the fascinating 1991 documentary produced by the musician John Hammond called The Search For Robert Johnson, which contains interview footage from his former lovers and some of his contemporary Mississippi bluesmen like Johnny Shins and David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards. The latter is particularly instrumental in the Robert Johnson story especially since he happened to be there on that fateful night when Robert was poisoned by the partner of one of the women he was sleeping around with. His whiskey was laced with strychnine and he died a slow and painful death. Eyewitnesses at the scene including Honeyboy recalled that he was in so much pain he was howling like a dog all night. Raw Wild West stuff. It is difficult to imagine one of Mumfords & Sons getting into such a pickle.

Unlike Robert, Honeyboy went on to live a very long life. He died in 2010 at the age of 95. I was fortunate enough to have watched and met the man on two occasions. Firstly at an Irish Centre in Leeds in 2007 and secondly at the 100 Club in central London in 2008. Within the paradigm of the great original Delta bluesmen he is no Van Gogh or Gaugain like Robert or Son House, but he is a solid, special and integral component of that red hot time. When I watched Honeyboy in 2007, he was 92, but no slouch. When he was not sliding away on the expensive Martin guitar he was playing, he was knocking back bottles of Becks.

Yours truly with David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards in 2007

But let’s go back to the roots of that great time of those original Delta blues axemen. Where did it all start? Many blues aficionados point to Charley Patton as the grandfather of that whole original Mississippi Delta blues scene. Patton was born in Hinds County, Mississippi in 1891 (although some claim he could’ve been born as early as 1881). When Charley was a young boy his family moved to the Dockery Plantation cotton farm in the wilder northern part of the Mississippi Delta looking for better work opportunities. While his parents almost broke their backs working on the farm, ol’ Charley boy didn’t care too much for all that gruelling cotton picking. Instead, he dedicated his time to developing the Delta blues and becoming one kick ass guitar player. If he’d have tried to please his parents instead, a great void would have remained. Shit, if everybody tried to please their folks there would be little to no inspiration to draw from and a tremendous cultural poverty would prevail.

Charley Patton

Charley already lived like a rock n roll animal decades before the likes of Jim Morrison. He lived the quintessential hard drinking, hard livin’ rough and tumble life. A serial womaniser too, he married and had affairs about as many times as most people walk into their living rooms to crash on the sofa after a hard day at the office. If you look at the only photo of him that seems to exist, it is not the face of a man you could comfortably introduce to your mum and dad. You don’t need to be a psychic or know anything about the man’s personal history by looking at that photo to deduce that he was one ‘don’t fuck with me’ son of a gun. It also appears that he was an interesting mix of African American and Cherokee (or possibly even Mexican) heritage, which was unusual as most of the Mississippi bluesmen of that time were African American.

Within the whirlwind of his brief 40 years on this planet, he was popular and he played at many parties and events for both a black and white audience. He performed frequently at Dockery Plantation farm where he developed his own style. Even though Patton today is widely seen as the father of the Delta Blues he was highly influenced and tutored by a local musician called Henry Sloan who was one of the very early proto Delta bluesman. He was born in Mississippi in 1870 and died in 1948 leaving behind no recordings. Perhaps one could deduce that what the 13th century Italian artist Cimabue was to the development of the Italian Renaissance, Sloan was to the development of the Mississippi Delta blues. And in the context of the Italian Renaissance, Patton could be compared to Cimabue’s most gifted student Giotto.

As Patton performed at Dockery and other local plantations he got to know the legendary bluesman Willie Brown (more on him later). Patton also knew several younger bluesmen like Robert Johnson, Tommy Johnson and Howlin’ Wolf and just as Henry Sloan taught him, he mentored those younger Turks of the Mississippi Delta Blues. Patton was quite a versatile player and could play old hillbilly and country songs as well as traditional ballads and other styles. He was like a living jukebox who had a natural knack for whacking out almost anything from his battered six string machine. That may also explain why he was such a big draw at various events. He could play his own raw and authentic style of deep blues yet at the same time he could also give the people what they wanted.

My own introduction to Patton came when I was 20. Having spent most of the previous year obsessed with Robert Johnson, I naturally investigated further, checking out other great blues artists. Via a secondhand four CD compilation of miscellaneous blues performers which I purchased from Notting Hill Tape and Exchange for three quid, I discovered the Patton song High Sheriff Blues. I later checked out his other songs, but it was this particular song, which made a big impression on me. His deep gravelly whisky soaked voice hypnotised me. It was so unpolished, almost, dare I say, verging on rank. This was not the voice of an angel. This was the voice of a fucking criminal. If he came back from the dead to perform that song on the X Factor show, he would never have made the stage. He would’ve already been arrested and given a good hiding by one of the burley security guards at the entrance.

Willie Brown was a friend of Charley’s. Yet beyond this friendship he is one of the most mysterious of the early Delta bluesmen as well as one of the most influential. He is mentioned by Robert Johnson in his famous song Cross Road Blues in the line, ‘my friend Willie Brown’. I myself know very little about the man, but I am fascinated by his myth and legend in the history of the Mississippi Delta Blues. I see him more as a Henry Sloan figure, yet unlike Sloan who left behind no recordings, Brown did cut six songs for Paramount Records in 1930, which were released as three separate records on shellac 78rpm discs. Of those three records, only the Paramount 13090 two sided recording “M & O Blues” / “Future Blues” is known to have survived of which only three copies of that record are declared to be in existence (making it one of the rarest records in the entire history of recorded music). The other recordings are rumoured to have been destroyed in a fire. Alan Lomax, the son of the groundbreaking father and son field recording John and Alan Lomax duo, claims to have recorded that same Willie Brown in Arkansas back in 1942. Yet some dispute as to whether the recording he cut for Lomax, “Make Me a Pallet on the Floor”, was actually by that same Willie Brown who cut those early records for Paramount 12 years previously.

What is important though is Brown’s association with Patton, Johnson and the other legendary bluesman Son House. Willie Brown and Son House were very close. They were both born at the turn of the 20th century, both were musical partners who each cut recordings for Paramount (along with Patton) in 1930, and, more importantly, both musicians influenced Robert Johnson. Yet it was Son House, more than Brown, who was probably the biggest influence on Robert.

Eddie James “Son” House Jr was born in 1902 in a small Mississippi hamlet called Lyon situated to the north of Clarksdale, a town deeply rooted in the history of the Delta Blues. It was the birthplace of Willie Brown and John Lee Hooker. 1950’s Rock n Roll pioneer Ike Turner and the legendary early soul singer Sam Cooke also came from Clarksdale as well as numerous other musicians.

son house

Son House

The interesting thing about Son House was that in his early years he hated the blues and was passionate about religion instead. He found that the blues, being the music of the devil and all that, went against his religious beliefs. At the age of 15 he was living in New Orleans and had started to preach sermons. He also married when he was 19 to an older woman called Carrie Martin. They then moved to Carrie’s hometown of Centreville in Louisiana where her father owned a farm. Most of Son House’s time over there was spent with her father working on his farm. It was grilling work under a swampy Deep South sky and after a couple of years, feeling he was being taken advantage of, he split from Centreville leaving behind Carrie, her father and his farm. House remembered of that time, ”I left her hanging on the gatepost, with her father tellin’ me to come back so we could plow some more.”

House, like his blues brother Charley, hated farm work and most forms of manual labour. He found a way out of it by accepting a position as a paid pastor, initially in the Baptist Church and then later in the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. However during this period he began drinking and womanising. This conflicted greatly with his role as a pastor (no shit!!) and he eventually left the church.

In 1927, when Son House was 25, he threw himself into the Devil’s music he’d long tried to suppress. He began frequenting and playing at local Mississippi juke joints. Juke joints were rough and raw wooden, shack-like barrelhouse dens where music, dancing, drinking and gambling occurred. They were places where cotton plantation workers and other menial labourers could relax and wind down after a hard day’s work. These juke joints, scattered around the Mississippi Delta, were instrumental in the development of the Mississippi Delta Blues. It was at these juke joints that the younger generation of blues musicians like Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters would watch Son House and his buddies Willie Brown and Charley Patton perform. Muddy Waters, just as much as Johnson, idolised Son House and he would try to go to almost every juke joint where House was playing.

One night when House was playing at a local juke joint around 1927/8, someone in the crowd brandished a pistol and went on a shooting spree. One of the bullets hit House in the leg. Son House swiftly reacted with his own weapon and shot the man dead on the spot. House was sentenced to 15 years at the Mississippi State Penitentiary. He served only two years of his sentence. His early release was the result of the intervention of an influential high ranking white plantation owner whom his family worked for. After his release, he left Clarksdale and caught a train to the small Mississippi town of Lula, 16 miles north of Clarksdale. Here he hooked up with fellow outcast Charley Patton who had already been kicked off Dockery Plantation, I imagine, for probably spending too much time creating one helluva racket on his six string machine, drinking and chasing women and not enough time being a good diligent cotton picker. Patton was with his partner in crime Willie Brown who by then had both developed quite a reputation on the local Mississippi blues juke joint circuit. All three of them would eventually play together and go on to cut records for Paramount.

This brings us now to Robert Johnson. The most legendary and famous of all the Delta bluesmen. For a long time the little I’d actually read and discovered about his life was either via the scant liner notes in the copies of his recordings I purchased and via well trodden anecdotes. There is so much mythology around the man. This is only fuelled by the fact that aside from the few recordings he left behind and just two confirmed photographs, almost all other information extracted about him has come from people who were associated and close to him. It doesn’t help that he died in 1938, before the second world war and at a time when mass media communications were far less developed than what they are today. 

Recently though, I discovered a book called Escaping The Delta: Robert Johnson And The Invention Of The Blues by Elijah Wald. This is probably one of the best books out there on Robert Johnson that does a commendable job on hacking through the dense thickets of myths around his life and getting to some of the more mundane facts. Chapter 6 of Wald’s book, A Life Remembered, contains a lot of this information. Robert Johnson was an illegitimate child born in a small Mississippi town called Hazlehurst (about 30 miles from the capital, Jackson) on May 8th 1911 (although this date may be incorrect). His biological mother was married to a man called Charles Dodds who was a relatively wealthy landowner and furniture maker. Following a clash with some white landowners, Dodds was forced by a lynch mob to leave Hazlehurst. He had now started calling himself Charles Spencer. After leaving Hazlehurst, Robert spent 8-9 years in Memphis. It was in this city that he developed his love for blues music and the popular music of the time. He later returned to Mississippi to a small town on the Mississippi Delta. At school he had a friend named Willie Coffee who remembered Robert from that time for having a knack for playing the harmonica and the jews harp…

“Me and him and lots more of us boys, we played hooky and get up under the church. They had a little stand up there and we’d get up under there…and he’d blow his harp and pick his old jew’s harp for us and sing under there. We’d play hooky until the teacher would find our variety, and she’d make us come in and give us five lashes.”

On February 1929, before Robert had turned 18, he married fourteen year old Virginia Travis, who shortly died in childbirth. Some argue that this tragic incident had a deeply traumatic effect on Robert and was the catalyst for his life of rambling. During this time Robert crossed paths with Son House and Willie Brown who would both have a huge effect on him. I’d already been aware of the influence Son House had on Robert when I purchased some cheap double CD comp of all his recordings. I was also familiar with the name Wille Brown as I heard his name mentioned in his song Cross Road Blues (‘You can run, you can run, tell my friend Willie Brown’). In the scant liner notes of those recordings, there were quotes from Son House directed at Robert. Most of these quotes were from Son House telling Robert to quit making such a racket on that guitar. Even though in those early days he was a talented harmonica player, Robert was a very rudimentary guitar player and would drive people nuts in the juke joints. As Son House recalled…

He (Robert) used to play harmonica when he was ‘round about fifteen, sixteen years old. He could blow harmonica pretty good. Everybody liked it. But he just got the idea that he wanted to play guitar….He used to sit down between me and Willie. See, Willie was my commenter, you know, he’d second all the time, he’d never lead. I’d do the lead. And we’d be sitting about this distance apart, and Robert would come and sit right on the floor, with his legs up like that, between us. 

So when we’d get to a rest period or something, we’d set the guitars up and go out – it would be hot in the summertime, so we’d go out and get in the cool, cool off some. While we’re out, Robert, he’d get the guitar and go bamming with it, you know? Just keeping noise, and the people didn’t like that. They’d come out and they’d tell us, “Why don’t you or Willie or one go in there and stop that boy? He’s driving everybody nuts.”

I’d go in there and get to him. I’d say, “Robert,” I’d say, “Don’t do that, you’ll drive the people home.” I’d say, “You can blow the harmonica, they’d like to hear that. Get on that.” He wouldn’t pay me too much attention, but he’d let the guitar alone. I’d say, “You stop that. Supposing if you’d break a string or something? This time of night, we don’t know no place where we can get a string.” I’d say, “Just leave the guitars alone.”

But quick as we’re out there again, and get to laughing and talking and drinking, here we’d hear the guitar again, making all kinds of tunes: “BLOO-WAH, BOOM-WAH” – a dog wouldn’t wanting to hear it!

Then one day Robert disappeared for many months. During that time, he got married to a woman named Callie Craft and performed frequently in various juke joints and lumber camps. When he returned, he persuaded Son House and Willie to let him play at a small joint they were both playing at. Initially, they were both very sceptical but they eventually caved in. When Robert got on the stage he blew everybody away with his playing. As impressed as Son House was, he was concerned that Robert was by that stage accelerating head on into the musician’s life and embracing the liquor, women and drugs that came with it. Whenever Son House tried to warn Robert of the dangers of this lifestyle, Robert would simply shrug and laugh it off. 

From 1931 until his death in 1938, he led an almost nomadic existence travelling across the country and leaving all the people he encountered dazzled and spellbound by his off the wall guitar playing. One thing I immediately notice when I study those two photos of Robert are his abnormally long fingers. Johnny Shines, who sometimes travelled with Robert during those final seven years of his life, remembered, ‘His sharp, slender fingers fluttered like a trapped bird.’

The bluesman Robert Lockwood Jr, born just a few years after Robert in 1915, learned to play guitar directly from Robert Johnson. Robert lived with Lockwood’s mother off and on for ten years. Lockwood was born in the same year as Honeyboy Edwards and also lived for a long time into his 90s. On a two week trip to New York City back in September 2006, I discovered that Lockwood was playing one evening at a small venue in the city of Cleveland in Ohio during my stay. He was 91 at the time and along with Honeyboy one of the very few remaining original Mississippi Delta Bluesmen still alive at the time. Unfortunately, I passed on the opportunity to see him on the grounds that I didn’t have enough time on this trip and that the greyhound bus from NYC to Cleveland was both too long and too expensive. I did however make up for this lost opportunity by seeing Honeyboy in concert twice over the following two years. 

One of Lockwood’s memories of Robert Johnson was how isolated and restless he was. He never seemed to want to get too close to anyone and would always be on the move;

“Robert was a strange dude. I guess you could say he was a loner and a drifter.”

Johnny Shines, during his time spent with Robert, remembered that in addition to his incredible musical skills, he also had a strong aura and magnetic appeal;

“…Robert was a fellow very well liked by women and men, even though a lot of men resented his power or his influence over women-people. They resented that very much, but, as a human being, they still liked him because they couldn’t help but like him, for Robert just had that power to draw.” 

Personally, I can fully believe this. Whenever I look at the photo of Robert looking incredibly dapper and handsome with his guitar and pinstripe suite, there is something striking and hypnotic about him that one just doesn’t easily forget. He was not some rough and tumble Charley Patton or Son House character. There was an elegance and fineness about him. Shines also remembered Robert as being quite a versatile musician who was up to date with all the latest musical styles and sounds. In this sense that is what separated him from the older Delta blues players such as Patton and House. Aside from the blues, Robert was also able to play anything from hillbilly songs to Bing Crosby hits:

“He did anything that he heard over the radio…When I say anything, I mean anything – popular songs, ballads, blues, anything. It didn’t make him no difference what it was. If he liked it, he did it. He’d be sitting there listening to the radio – and you wouldn’t even know he was paying attention to it – and later that evening maybe, he’d walk out on the streets and play the same songs that were played on the radio.”

This was all quite a revelation to me. For a long time, I thought Robert was a pure bluesman and that he didn’t play anything else beyond the small collection of recordings he left behind. That’s how much I fell for this kind of a myth. I could not envisage this other side to him. 

However, it is those recordings that he left behind that I prefer to remember him for. As they are an astonishing set of recordings. I think that I would be deeply disappointed to hear Robert hollering some hillbilly tune. The story of these recordings begins in 1936, just two years before he died. At some point during that year, Robert walked into a furniture shop, H. C. Spier, in the city of Jackson. As well as selling furniture, Spier also sold phonographs and records in addition to being a talent scout of note in the area. Most of the Mississippi Delta blues musicians had got their recording deals via him. When Spier first heard Robert he was impressed with his skills and connected him with a guy called Ernie Oertle, who was an agent for the ARC company and who booked Robert in for a session at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas in November of that year. The sessions were conducted over three days on November 23, 26 and 27 where he recorded a total of sixteen songs – recording two takes of each song. Of Johnson’s total recorded output left behind, there are several songs that were recorded twice. 

The sessions Robert did in November 1936 yielded one modest hit, “Terraplane Blues”, which sold reasonably well. When Son House, who had initially in those earlier days so doubted Robert and his guitar skills, first heard that song he was knocked out by how good it was;

“Believe the first one I heard was ‘Terraplane Blues.’ Jesus, it was good. We all admired it. Said, ‘That boy is really going places.’”

The sales of those recordings from the November sessions were respectable enough, that ARC invited Robert back in June 1937 for another session this time in Dallas. For those sessions Robert recorded a further thirteen songs. Unfortunately, Robert’s life would soon be cut abruptly short. His reputation as a ladies’ man would eventually have grave consequences. As Shines recalled…

“Women, to Robert, were like motel or hotel rooms. Even if he used them repeatedly he left them where he found them. Heaven help him, he was not discriminating. Probably a bit like Christ, he loved them all. He preferred older women in their thirties over the younger ones, because the older ones would pay his way.”

Even though many women were attracted to Robert, it was natural that some men were going to be jealous. As Shines further adds…

“If women pull at a musician, naturally men’s gonna be jealous of it. Because every man wants to be king…and if he’s not king and somebody else seems to be on the throne, then he wants to get him down. It don’t take very much to set people off when you’re being worshipped by women. And so naturally we got into a hell of a lot of trouble.”

This last paragraph from Shines pretty much gets to the heart regarding the reason why Robert was poisoned on that fateful night at a small country joint concert near Three Folks in Greenwood, Mississippi in August 1938, which he was playing with Honeyboy Edwards. According to Edwards, the man who ran the joint was under the impression that Robert was sleeping around with his wife. So, at the show he gave Robert some whiskey to drink laced with strychnine, which he duly accepted. In a sense, Robert was still at this point rather naive. As I mentioned earlier, Son House would invariably warn Robert to be careful regarding the lifestyle he was living. He often told him not to accept any drink that was given to him as he may not know what may be in it. Sometimes House would be very cross with Robert when he behaved like this and would duly push the offered bottle of whiskey away from him. Robert would get angry and say, “Man, don’t ever knock a bottle of whiskey out of my hand.” 

But Robert paid a huge price in the end. There was nothing romantic or glamorous about the way he died. He died a very painful and undignified death and was still just a young adult of only 27 – arguably one of the first members to join that club long before Jim, Jimmy, Brian and Kurt. Son House, born almost a decade before Robert, lived well into his 80s passing away in October 1988. 

By Nicholas Peart

Published 16th May 2024

(Written 2016/2024)

(c)All Rights Reserved

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FURTHER READING:

Escaping The Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues by Elijah Wald

Searching For Robert Johnson by Peter Guralnick

VIDEOS:

The Search For Robert Johnson – directed and produced by Chris Hunt and narrated by John Hammond

RECORDINGS:

The Complete Recordings – Robert Johnson

Back To The Crossorads: The Roots Of Robert Johnson

“WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?”: The Unstoppable Gravity Defying Rise Of The Stock Price Of Nvidia

Posted on by Nicholas Peart
Can Nvidia Defy Gravity? AI Chipmaker Faces Lofty Expectations

The stock price of the much hyped American technology company Nvidia has been on a truly staggering rise since September 2022 that doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. In fact, since the company posted its latest financial results yesterday, the company’s stock price is currently trading at close to it’s all time high up nearly 10% during current after hours market trading.

On 1st September 2022, the share price of Nvidia was trading at around $121 a share. A little earlier this month, the share price hit an all time high of $746 a share representing more than 6 times increase in the share price of Nvidia in less than 18 months. When the company stock hit it’s all time high it had a market capitalization of more than $1.8tn. With a current after hours market trading share price of $736, the current market cap is very close to that figure.

The latest results were on the surface very impressive. For the year ending on January 28th 2024, total revenue was $60.922bn. This is more than double the total revenue of $26.974bn for the previous year ending on January 29th 2023. Digging a bit deeper into the breakdown of its latest reported total revenue figure of $60.922bn, $47.525bn of this amount was generated from its Data Center business. This figure represents a more than 200% increase compared with the previous year figure of $15.005bn for this segment of Nvidia. A spectacular increase indeed.

What is interesting though when comparing the revenue breakdown figures for both the year ending on January 28th 2024 and the year ending on January 29th 2023 is how relatively flat the other business segments of Nvidia have been. For example, the revenue generated from its Gaming business grew from $9.067bn to $10.447bn representing a more sober increase of just 15%. In fact, for the year ending January 30th 2022, the revenue from its Gaming business was $12.426bn meaning that the revenue from its Gaming business for the year ending on January 29th 2023 actually decreased by 27%.

Revenue from its Professional Visualisation business increased by just 0.58% from $1.544bn on January 29th 2023 to $1.553bn on January 28th 2024. Interestingly, for the year ending January 30th 2022, revenue from this segment was higher at $2.111bn meaning that the current revenue from this segment is down by more than 25% from two years ago.

Pretty much the vast majority of Nvidia’s revenue growth has come from its Data Centre business. However, the important question is whether the current share price and market cap of Nvidia is justified?

Here is the problem I have. Although it is impressive for any company to more than double revenues in the space of a year, the current total revenue figure of $60.922bn is peanuts next to a market cap of $1.8tn. The share price is trading at close to 30 times total revenue. I used to think that a company trading at 10 times revenues was madness, but this company surely wins Olympic Gold for the utter insanity of its current market cap. And what is even more mind blowing here is that this is a company with a market cap of more than half of the UK’s GDP. This is not some cheeky small cap stock.

Of course, there will be some who push back on my analysis with words along the lines of Nvidia being at ‘the forefront of the AI Revolution’, etc. But none of this matters. We’ve been here before. Bubbles of this scale never end well. In fact, I will leave you with the words of Scott McNealy, the former CEO of Sun Microsystems that was one of the hot stocks during the dotcom boom and bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s…

At 10 times revenues, to give you a 10-year payback, I have to pay you 100% of revenues for 10 straight years in dividends. That assumes I can get that by my shareholders. That assumes I have zero cost of goods sold, which is very hard for a computer company. That assumes zero expenses, which is really hard with 39,000 employees. That assumes I pay no taxes, which is very hard. And that assumes you pay no taxes on your dividends, which is kind of illegal. And that assumes with zero R&D for the next 10 years, I can maintain the current revenue run rate. Now, having done that, would any of you like to buy my stock at $64? Do you realize how ridiculous those basic assumptions are? You don’t need any transparency. You don’t need any footnotes. What were you thinking?

By Nicholas Peart

22nd February 2024

(c)All Rights Reserved

LINKS/FURTHER READING:

NVIDIA Latest 10-K Form For The Fiscal Year Ended January 28th 2024

CRATE DIGGING IN MOROCCO: On The Hunt For Vintage Moroccan Vinyl Records

Posted on by Nicholas Peart

My time spent in Morocco during the months of November and December last year proved to be quite fruitful overall in my search for old vinyl records in this country. This was my sixth trip to Morocco. I have travelled extensively across the country in the past yet I knew very little about the country’s music and musical history. 

In the months before I embarked on this trip I tried to look for old Moroccan music on the internet and even created a YouTube playlist of old Moroccan songs I discovered and found interesting. Via the online vinyl records database site Discogs, I also stumbled upon an interesting and esoteric compilation entitled Kassidat: Raw 45s From Morocco released in 2013 on a small label called Parlortone. I loved the songs on that compilation and began to find out more information on the old major Moroccan record labels such as Boussiphone, Casaphone, Koutoubiaphone, etc, and all the many releases on those kinds of labels. I also discovered some very helpful blog posts written a number of years before my trip by travellers who documented their digging adventures and stories across the country. These blog posts were very helpful and gave me in advance a taste of some of the music and artists to look out for, including some unique Moroccan singers and musicians. 

My Moroccan crate digging (mis)adventures begin in the old walled medina of the imperial city of Fez. The medina is a veritable never ending labyrinth of narrow and winding passages. It is an awesome and fascinating place yet it’s equally at times an overwhelming, high pressure and high octane experience. Some of the souk sellers are hardcore in their persistence of persuading you to buy stuff from their shops even if you only project a mild glance. 

Deep in the medina I find a small bric-a-brac type shop selling miscellaneous junk shop bits. In the corner of the shop, I spot a small pile of 7 inch records (or 7s as I like to refer to them). The records look exactly like the kind of discs I am looking for and superficially tick all the boxes. Alas, on closer inspection some of the records are in very poor condition. I discover cracks and heavy scratches on the surface of some of the records. Also, I notice that many of the records are not in their correct sleeves. I have no intention of buying any of these records even though the shop owner is insistent on giving me a ‘good price’. I reply with a calm but firm ‘La shukran’ and continue down the endless maze of the medina. 

The medina of Fez

In a quiet and more sedate part of the medina, I find a nondescript hole-in-the-wall cafe where I pause for a strong pot of pick-me-up the a la menthe with enough sugar to give me some serious dental decay. If I were a careers advisor in Morocco, I would recommend a career in dentistry as you will always find work! But I digress. This is just what I need right now at this moment in time. This brew sustains me in this can’t-stand-the-heat kitchen of Fez’s medina. 

On the way back to my riad accommodation, I stumbled upon a small and cosy antiques shop exuding a laid back old bohemian vibe. An old John Lee Hooker song hums from the back of the shop. Situated amongst the pillars and stacks of trinkets smoking on a pipe is the shop’s owner, Omar, who could be a throwback from 1950s Tangier when the city’s residents included the Beat writers William S Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Omar is a dude and refreshingly bereft of the characteristics of many of the grade A hustlers in the medina. In his humble little emporium he has a sizable pile of vintage Moroccan 7 inch records unstably resting upon each other like jagged mini Babel towers. Next to the 7s is a stack of dusty LPs, but it is the 7s that interest me. A lot of the records are in tired condition, but there are a number of records that are not too bad and with some thorough cleaning I could probably restore them to a much better condition. My fundamental rule here is to avoid the records that are severely trashed – regardless of how rare they may be. Any records that are cracked or heavily scratched are a no-no for me. Omar has the records I am looking for. On my initial visit to his shop I purchase two old Moroccan 7s that look interesting and are in good condition. The first record is on the Koutoubiaphone label by Rais Hmad Amentag, a traditional Berber singer and musician. And the other 7 is on the Atlassiphone label by Chaab Mohamad Hilali. I have no idea who either of them are but they look intriguing. Omar wants 40 Dirhams for each record, but we agree on 50 for the two. 

For the remainder of my stay in Fez, I make a few more visits to Omar’s shop where I purchase more records. I would say that in total I purchased 10 records from him. I found some crackers in his shop including a couple of 7s on the Boussiphone label by Mohamed El Aroussi, who is a jbala style composer and singer from the Taounata Province, as well as a rare 7 by Albert Suissa, a Moroccan Jewish musician from Casablanca. The Suissa 7 was released on the label, Editions N. Sabbah, which was an old label from Casablanca dating back to the 1950s that released many records by Moroccan Jewish musicians. I know very little about the music of Jewish Morocco, but it was thanks to a blogger called Chris Silver and his excellent and revelatory post, Record Digging, Cassette Collecting and Musical Memory In Jewish Morocco, published in 2012, that I was able to learn a bit about it and it was through this post that I first became aware of Albert Suissa and other notable Moroccan Jewish musicians and singers. 


Most people who come to Fez will visit the famous medina, but very few venture to the Mellah, the old Jewish quarter of Fez. Morocco used to have a large Jewish community. Before the state of Israel was established in 1948, around 265,000 Jews lived in Morocco making it the country with the biggest Jewish population in the Muslim world. By 2017, that number had been significantly reduced to only a couple of thousand. When Morocco had a sizable Jewish population, the mellahs in the large cities were thriving. Sadly, as the Jewish population diminished over the years, the mellahs fell into a state of neglect. But the mellah of Fez is not a sleepy part of the city. There are some amazing old buildings, albeit in a crumbling and worn state.

The mellah of Fez

There is an energy here, but thankfully it isn’t of the intense and high stress variety that one finds in the medina. Here nobody bothers you or tries to sell you anything. My random mellah wonderings lead me to a small block of antique shops. The first of these shops that I visit has a small pile of vinyl LPs on the floor near the entrance. I have a hurried flick through them. Sadly none of the LPs are of much interest to me and are mostly European landfill records from the 1970s and 1980s. However, in the next shop I visit I spot a stack of vintage Moroccan 7s on a table at the back. They look promising and I dig out two 7s including a rare 7 by Fatima Zehafa, an old aita singer from the town of Settat, on the Ifriquiaphone label. The shop owner wanted 100 Dirhams for both 7s, but we eventually agreed on 60. 

Fez crate digging fruits

From Fez, I take the train to the nearby city of Meknes, only an hour away. I stay at the faded French colonial style Hotel Majestic in the pleasant and rather modern nouvelle ville. In the morning of my second day in Meknes, I have breakfast and then take a petit-taxi to the old walled medina part of the city. The medina of Meknes is big with lots of souks, but it is free of the almost constant hassle of the medina of Fez. Walking deeper into the heart of the medina I soon enter a marche brocante area with lots of stalls selling antiques and other miscellaneous items. One stall displaying a dazzling kaleidoscope-like array of old trinkets and bits catches my eye. The elderly owner has a modest stash of old dusty 7s that I dig through. Unfortunately, many of the records are in a sorry state and when I do find a record in reasonable condition it is not in its correct sleeve. 

The medina of Meknes

Meknes doesn’t yield much in my digging searches. Fortunately, I have more luck in Rabat, the capital of Morocco and the next city I visit. In the eastern part of the medina of Rabat towards the end of Rue Souika is the old market of Rabat. Here I discover a number of antique and bric-a-brac shops. The first one I visit is run by a bona fide curmudgeon. He brings over a pile of old 7s. It is not a bad stack at all. It’s a mix of vintage Moroccan records with a smattering of records from Egypt and Lebanon. I pick out a nice looking 7 by the Lebanese singer Fairuz. It is however not a Lebanese pressing but a French pressing. The owner wants 100 Dirhams for the record. When I offer 30 for it, the owner snatches the Fairuz record from my hand and slams it down on a nearby table. I never witnessed Omar behaving like this, but to be honest Omar was likely so stoned most of the time that losing his temper must have been too much effort. Omar is a cool dude. This guy, on the other hand, has some serious unchecked aggression.  I think about duly getting the fuck out of his shop. But in no time the shop owner cools down, relaxes his composure and points me to a small tray of records on the ground. On first impressions the records don’t excite me, but the owner tells me that they are 25 Dirhams each. Most of the records in the tray are charity shop 70s Euro Pop fodder destined for the bonfire. I do however get lucky and unearth a vintage Moroccan 7 on the Casaphone label in great condition and an immaculate old Egyptian 7 on the Sono Cairo label in its original company sleeve. 25 Dirhams for each of those records is an excellent price and I don’t even haggle with the owner. 

The medina of Rabat

I visit a couple more shops in the old market. Both shops have records, but I don’t find any that interest me. The next day, I return to the old market of Rabat and randomly check out a small bookshop. I ask the owner whether he has any records? ‘Arabic?’ he replies. I nod my head and he brings over a modest stack of 7s in varying degrees of condition. I select six of the better records from the pile. The ones I pick are all in playable condition with their original picture sleeves. Initially, the owner asks for 300 Dirhams for the records. I put my hustle muscle to work and we eventually agree on 130 Dirhams. These finds include a record by the Egyptian musician Abdel Halim Hafez on the Lebanese Voix Du Liban label as well as a record by the Moroccan singer Fathallah Lamghari on the Ifriquiaphone label and another record by an old Moroccan singer and songwriter called Brahim El Alami on the Koutoubiaphone label. 

From Rabat I continue on the train along the Atlantic coast to nearby Casablanca. Casablanca is huge and a grittier city than Rabat. In contrast to Casablanca, I found Rabat a more relaxed and accessible city. Fortunately, Casablanca has a modern tram system and I am able to reach my hotel without too much bother from Casa Voyageurs train station. From reading the aforementioned Record Digging, Cassette Collecting and Musical Memory In Jewish Morocco blog post by Chris Silver, I learn about two record shops located in Casablanca, which I am excited to visit. The first record shop, Le Comptoir Marocain de Distribution de Disques, looks encouraging. It is located only a few streets away from the Hotel Astrid where I am staying. When I finally reach the shop it looks permanently defunct. I later learn the sad news from the owner of a nearby shop that the shop closed down during the COVID pandemic. And much to my dismay again, the second record shop, Disques Gam, also appears to have ceased trading. 

Downtown Casablanca

Casablanca is a spicy city. It is the commerce capital of Morocco and for that reason it is not so reliant on tourism like Marrakech is, for example. I love exploring the streets of Casablanca. There are some amazing old faded French colonial era buildings in the centre of the city. When I walk along the streets close to my hotel I feel as if I could be in Marsaille or the Riquier district of Nice. Yet on the fringes of the city’s enormous old medina I know very well that I am in Africa. The old medina surprisingly disappoints in my search for old records. Casablanca hasn’t delivered the goods. However, one day when I am walking along one of the Parisian style arcade streets close to the Place Mohammed V, I spot a stall selling old records. There is a large pile of LPs on the round along with a few 7s. Most of the LPs are no great shakes, but I do find an original UK edition of the second album by Terry Reid – an English musician from the 1960s-70s, also known for turning down an offer by Jimmy Page to be the singer for his new band Led Zeppelin. The vinyl is in respectable condition, but the sleeve is completely destroyed. The 7s are a different story. I find three 7s that interest me. One of the 7s is a rare Algerian pressing. Sadly, on closer inspection of the vinyl I detect a crack on the surface of the vinyl and end up passing on it. The second record is by an old Moroccan Jewish musician called Haim Botbol released on the Boussiphone label. I later discover that the Botbol record is also quite rare. The third record is by an old Berber musician on the La Voix Du Maghreb label. The record seller is very pleasant and is happy to accept 60 Dirhams for both the Botbol record and the record released on the La Voix Du Maghreb label. 

Place Mohammed V in Casablanca

On my penultimate day in Casablanca I visit the Derb Ghallef market en route to the Museum Of Moroccan Judaism. Derb Ghallef is raw. Located south of the centre of the city, it isn’t for the faint of heart but I recommend a visit for those who want to experience a taste of rough and tumble Casablanca. The markets sells lots of electronic goods as well as furniture and building parts. When I visit I find a couple of antique shops, but alas no luck in finding any old Moroccan records. 

From Casablanca, I take the train further south down to Marrakech. Marrakech, one would think, with its abundance of souks in the old medina would be a mecca for crate diggers. Unfortunately, during my stay here this has not proven to be the case at all. That is not to say that there is an absence of places to find records. There are, but I encounter hurdles. The first shop I visit, close to the large Jemaa El Fna square in the medina of Marrakech, sells an assortment of traditional musical instruments. When I discover a small stash of 7s, I have a brisk plough through them and select a few that interest me. The young owner of the shop is a stubborn and temperamental sod and refuses to accept less than 100 Dirhams a record. This is madness as the records are not uber rare and I personally wouldn’t pay more than 30 Dirhams for each one. 

The Jemaa El Fna in Marrakech

At another shop I visit in the medina, I ask the owner whether he has any magic Moroccan 7s? He tells me that there is a record shop only a few shops away and that he will take me there. We end up walking for close to ten minutes and, being rather asleep at the wheel here, it dawns on me that I will have to give this guy some form of baksheesh. When we arrive at the record shop he becomes grumpy and predictably demands payment. I hand him a few coins and thankfully he leaves. I have to admit I am underwhelmed by this record shop. Many of the records are in an irrevocably fucked state. He has an original LP by the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum. Both sides of the vinyl look like the surface of the moon. The owner wants 300 Dirhams for the record, which is a preposterous price. When I put the vinyl on the shop’s record player, it skips all over the place and fails to play properly. The owner remarks that the reason for this is nothing to do with the fact that the record is totally mutilated, but rather because ‘the record player is no good’. After this incident, I come to the conclusion that the main Marrakech medina around the Jemaa El Fna square is not the place for crate digging. And this suits me fine as I find the whole experience of being in this place for too long like being in a medieval free-for-all open prison. I can’t breathe. 

But I don’t give up entirely on Marrakech. At a small shop by a rank of grand taxis outside of the medina, the kind owner recommended that I visit a market on the northern outskirts of the medina called Souk El Khemis. A small local bus departing from close to the Jemaa El Fna takes me to this part of the old town in around 20 minutes. The market here is different to the souks around the Jemaa El Fna. Here, there are no other tourists and nobody bothers me. The souks here sell mostly household goods. There is a souk selling large ornate old wooden doors. Another souk sells bed frames and mattresses and others sell mechanical parts and a variety of secondhand home products. The bit of the market that interests me is the souk full of bric-a-brac shops. The first of these shops I enter sells lots of old books and miscellaneous antiques. In the back corner of the shop I find a cardboard box containing a stack of LPs. Most of the LPs are not what I am looking for and I sadly don’t find any old Moroccan LPs. However, I do unearth an original LP from the 70s on the EMI Egypt label by the Egyptian singer and composer Mohamed Abdel Wahab. The sleeve is slightly worn around the edges, but the vinyl is in stunningly pristine condition. I can’t detect a single blemish on either side of the record. What’s more, the owner lets me have the record for only 50 Dirhams. In an adjacent shop I found a 7 in respectable condition with its original picture sleeve by the Syrian-Egyptian singer Farid Al-Atrash released on the Moroccan Casaphone label. The pleasant and easy going owner is happy to accept 30 Dirhams for it. 

From El Khemis, I walk a few kilometres on the road leading to Bab Doukkala at the edge of the medina. There are lots of informal sellers selling all kinds of random items and bits of junk. At one point I see a landslide of miscellaneous crap strewn across the side of the road – like a kind of odd homage to Kurt Schwitters. 

Outskirts of the medina of Marrakech

After Marrakech, my Moroccan travels take me to Essaouira, Agadir, Tiznit, Sidi Ifni and Taroudant. I find a few more vinyl bits in these places, but all in all I would say that the cities of Fez and Rabat have been the most rewarding for digging. In the attractive coastal town of Essaouira, I visited a shop close to the main square that appeared to be owned by an elderly French chap. The shop sold many old books and a few racks of old records. He had a fantastic collection of old Moroccan records – one of the best I’ve seen on this trip. Unfortunately, as wonderful as the records were, I found the prices a bit too high for my liking. 

I find a smattering of old Moroccan records in the souks of the medinas of Taroudant and Tiznit. In the coastal city of Agadir, I visited the Souk El Had – one of the largest souks in Morocco. Sadly, records are quite thin on the ground here, but I do find a small shop with a modest collection of 7s. From this pile I dug out two interesting old Moroccan records on the Casaphone label. I managed to get them both for 50 Dirhams. The record digging highlight of Agadir for me though is a cool little record shop located not too far away from the market called Records Zaman run by a pleasant young man called Amine. It was founded back in 1967. The shop may be small, but there are quite a number of records to dig through. There are a few rare original Moroccan LPs on the display racks on the walls, but alas they are out of my price range. I dig through a crate of LPs that are mainly western Rock and Pop albums. The crate that does interest me contains a couple of rows of old Moroccan 7s. Whilst digging through them I pull out an old record on the Editions N. Sabbah label by the Jewish Moroccan singer Feliz El Maghrebi. Save for a slight edge warp, the record and picture sleeve are in near perfect condition and Amine lets me have it for a good price. I must have spent a good hour chatting with Amine. He is great company. His English is very good and he shows me his own personal collection of LPs containing some very rare and obscure records across the Arabic world. Amine has a deep love of music and I feel that with him at the helm, Records Zaman will become an increasingly popular record shop to visit. I wish him all the best. 

Text and photos by Nicholas Peart 

8th February 2024

© All Rights Reserved   

LINKS/FURTHER READING:

https://jewishmorocco.blogspot.com/2012/11/record-digging-cassette-collecting-and.html

https://terminal313.net/2016/04/feature-dusty-vinyl-from-rabat.html

CRATE DIGGING IN LONDON: The Best Places In The City To Look For Vinyl Records

Posted on by Nicholas Peart

In this article I am listing some of the best places I have visited in London to crate dig for vinyl records. Here I will be focusing on old original records. In this case, that would be records mostly from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s spanning all music genres across the globe. I am not so much interested in new releases or Record Store Day releases, etc. The places I am listing below tick the following boxes. Firstly, they offer ample opportunities for digging. Secondly, they sell many old original records. And thirdly, their prices are reasonable and the records are graded conservatively. 

Flashback Records 

Right now, I would argue that the Flashback Records chain of record shops is the best place to dig for records in London. Flashback originally began its life as a single record shop on Essex Road in Islington back in 1997 before expanding and opening two more record shops under the Flashback name in Shoreditch and Crouch End. It has all the ingredients of what a good record shop should be. The shops have a huge selection of old original secondhand records (as well as many new records) across the main music genres. Their prices are very competitive and with the great number of records in their shops and the very reasonable prices, bargains can be found. The shops are all well run and orderly. It is an accessible place and the staff are friendly and helpful. There are no snobby or rude staff at the till a la Barry Judd in The High Fidelity. Although to be honest much of this kind of behaviour is largely now a thing of the past. Flashback is a welcoming place for everyone. 

A lot of the records for sale at Flashback are listed on their website. Yet, there are also many records in their shops, which are not. Both the Islington and Shoreditch shops are each set over two floors and are excellent shops for crate digging. The two shops have lots of LPs and 7s across a wide mix of music genres such as punk, rare prog/experimental music from the late 60s-early 70s, collectable 60s-70s rock and pop, indie records from the 80s to present, jazz, reggae, world, soul, folk, dance, etc. In my own experience, I have found Flashback to be a really good place to find original collectable first edition LPs for a decent price as well as some very nice rare 60s psychedelia, beat, reggae and world 7s.  

The Crouch End shop is smaller than the other two shops and it is a bit harder to reach, but it is worth the effort to visit this shop as their stock is also very good. If you do visit the Crouch End shop I recommend first taking the train to Hornsey station and then walking there. Close by the station is KONK recording studios. You will see the neon KONK sign above the entrance. KONK was founded by The Kinks (the brothers Ray and Dave Davies are both from nearby Muswell Hill) in the 1970s. They made many albums here and lots of other bands and artists have also recorded at KONK.  Nearby is a small record shop called The Little Record Shop. It is an under the radar gem with limited opening times and no online presence, but is very popular with those in the know. Although it may be a small space, it has a large selection of rare and collectable vintage LPs in decent condition. The prices are not cheap, but the stock is very good. However, it is not all high priced rarities here. There are a few bargain areas, which contain some collectable and great records for an affordable price. Even in the bargain sections there are good records to be found. There is no charity shop fodder here. From The Little Record Shop it is only a ten minute walk along Tottenham Lane to the Crouch End branch of Flashback. One last thing I should mention is that all three Flashback shops are equipped with turntables for customers to listen to and test out any records they want to buy. 

https://flashback.co.uk/

Music & Video Exchange 

Music & Video Exchange is one of the oldest and longest running independent record stores in the city first established in 1967. It is also one of the first independent record shops I used to visit on my trips to central London during my early record collecting days more than 20 years ago. I remember my first visit to the flagship Notting Hill store at the turn of the millennium. Back then, I think I remember there being at least 3 Music & Video Exchange record shops in Notting Hill; the main rock and pop shop, a shop that sold soul and dance records and even a shop just for classical music records. There also used to be a separate video/DVD shop as well as a second hand clothes shop on two floors and a couple of books and comics shops.  This place used to be huge; a veritable emporium selling all kinds of second hand old records, books, comics, clothes, you name it. 

There also used to be Music & Video Exchange shops in Soho and Camden, but they are sadly no longer around. However, the Music & Video Exchange shop in Greenwich is still in operation. Today the Whole Music & Video Exchange business is a smaller affair. The original rock and pop store in Notting Hill set over three floors is still going and is today the sole Music & Video Exchange music shop in Notting Hill. The shop now sells second hand vinyl records of all genres and prices as well as lots of CDs and DVDs. Also, the Music & Video Exchange book shop in Notting Hill is still there and is worth a visit. 

Some people say that Music & Video Exchange is not what it used to be, however I don’t agree and I am very happy that this place is still going and that both the Notting Hill and Greenwich shops are still doing business. The Notting Hill shop still holds a special place in my heart and is a unique and surviving example of the old Notting Hill – a part of London that has changed so much over the years. 

I recommend visiting both the Notting Hill and Greenwich record shops. Both shops are excellent for digging. There are lots of old collectable LPs to dig through across all genres and prices. One could easily spend an hour or two in either shop. My advice is to go through all the main racks if you can as you don’t know what you might find. Some records can be quite expensive, but then you may also find that record you’ve been searching for ages for a really good price. Thus it pays to dig here. 

https://mfeshops.com/pages/music-video-exchange

Reckless Records

I have been going to Reckless Records in Soho for almost as long as I’ve been going to the Notting Hill Music & Video Exchange shop. Today I would say that Reckless is one of the best record shops in central London to dig for old and collectable records. The shop has lots of LPs and 7s across most genres and a lot of stock is of high quality and conservatively graded. There is little fodder here except for in the bargain crates, which are worth going through as you may find a classic record for next to nothing. Every time I search through records in the New Arrivals section, I usually find a record I have had on my wantlist for a reasonable price. I have found a good number of collectable and rare LPs in this shop for a good price. Those who extensively dig here are often rewarded. Some of the best LPs I’ve found here have been rare original prog and experimental rock albums from the late 60s – early 70s on labels such as the early green Harvest and pink Island and Charisma labels. I have also found some really rare and hard to find original LPs from countries in West Africa like Nigeria. Reckless is also a great shop to dig for old 7 inch singles (or 7s as I refer to them here). They usually have lots of rare reggae, old jazz and 60s beat and psychedelia singles and sometimes some quite rare and hard to find world music singles as well as original rock and pop 7s pressed in countries like India and Hong Kong. 

If you visit Reckless it is also worth visiting nearby Sister Ray records shop. Sister Ray used to have a larger shop on the same street, which I used to frequent regularly many years ago now. The new Sister Ray shop is good and it does have a sizeable number of records to go through, but a lot of the LPs are new editions. If you like high quality new reissues of old classic albums then this is a good shop to visit. Sister Ray also has a large collection of CDs and boxsets with a selection at bargain prices. 

https://reckless.co.uk/

Jelly Records 

Jelly Records, with the exception of the Flashback Records Shoreditch branch, is probably my favourite record shop in East London right now. It is a small place located on the basement floor below a furniture shop not too far from Homerton Overground station. But please don’t be dissuaded by the size as this place is a crate diggers paradise. I would recommend visiting in the middle of the week when it is less busy as it can be too hectic when the shop is full of people. What makes this record shop unique is that it has a very good selection of original world music LPs and 7s – probably one of the best in the city. Furthermore, the prices of these records are very reasonable considering their scarcity and the grading of the records and sleeves is conservative. 

Whenever I visit this shop, I often find a number of rare LPs from countries in West Africa like Ghana and Nigeria. I discovered some lovely collectable highlife LPs from Ghana as well as some rare afrobeat and juju records from Nigeria. And sometimes in surprisingly good condition. One has to understand that the covers of many original old African LPs can be quite fragile. I am also impressed by the crates of 7s at the front of the shop. Last time I visited I spotted a handful of rare original 7s from pre-Revolution Iran as well as many 7s from Pakistan and India. There were also some nice 7s from West Africa in addition to a good selection of original rare reggae 7s. 

This is an excellent little record shop and the owner is very friendly. There are also some other record shops in this area of East London not too far away and have a good selection of old LPs and 7s. Not far from Jelly Records, there is a small record shop called Kristina Records. And in central Hackney I recommend visiting Tome Records and Atlantis Records. The latter place has lots of records to dig through.

https://jellyrecords.co.uk/

Upside Down Records 

Upside Down Records is a new record shop that opened its doors last year in November that is located in Deptford, South East London. The reason I am listing it here is because the people behind this record shop are the same people who used to run Rat Records in Camberwell, which sadly closed in 2022. Rat Records was a legendary place and one of the best record shops in the city to crate dig for old original records. The best time to visit was on a Saturday when the shop would fill the crates with large stacks of newly arrived records at really good prices. For this reason it was a hugely popular place and those Saturdays could get madly busy, but it was always worth it as I picked up some fabulous records. So I was delighted by the news that the same folk behind Rat have opened this wonderful new record shop. When I recently visited Upside Down I was impressed by the records they had in the racks. The prices are just like there were at Rat and I think this record shop over time will do well and become increasingly popular. I can also see the stock of records in the shop increasing over time and I look forward to making many more visits here. 

upsidedownrecords.co.uk

Out On The Floor Records 

No photo description available.

For many years I used to visit Camden Market to buy records. However, in more recent times, I feel that overall the market doesn’t offer the same experience and value that it did in the past. Music & Video Exchange used to have a great record shop in Camden that was perfect for digging, but alas it is no longer there. There is, however, one record shop in Camden that is a great place for finding old and rare records for a reasonable price and that is Out On The Floor Records. It’s a small shop located close to Camden Town tube station.  The racks are full of records of different genres. I find this shop particularly good for original and collectable 60s and 70s rock, prog and punk LPs in addition to old reggae 7s. There is also a large area of bargain records. Most of the time digging through such crates can be a waste of time, but in this shop I have found quite a few original, albeit slightly tired, and collectable LPs for only a few coins. 

outonthefloorrecords.com

Crazy Beat Records

Crazy Beat Records is located in the Essex town of Upminster at the eastern end of the District Line on the edge of Greater London. Despite its far location, it is well worth the effort to visit this record shop. In fact, I would even recommend a day’s visit here. This shop has many crates of records to dig through. The speciality here is reggae. I would argue that this shop has one of the biggest and best stock of old original reggae 7s in London. It is actually quite mindblowing the amount of reggae records they have. On my last visit here, there were at least 20 boxes of new arrivals to dig through. Lots of rare old 60s soul gems were in the boxes as well as some collectable old 60s and 70s rock and pop 7s. However, most of the records in the boxes were original old reggae 7s from the 60s and 70s in varying states of condition. One could spend at least 2-3 hours just going through those boxes. It can be gruelling at times, but the rewards can be bountiful. I found a handful of lovely original old reggae and ska records on the Trojan and Blue Beat labels as well as a few rare soul 7s from the 60s for a very reasonable price. In addition to these boxes of new arrivals, many more crates await. 

After getting all reggae’d out, I walked over to the bargain section of LPs by the entrance. I highly recommend digging through the bargain crates. A lot of the records in this section are no great shakes, but with persistence some seriously good and collectable LPs can be discovered for an amazing price. I will stress though that it is important to always check the condition of the records in this section. I once found an original first pressing of the first album by Emerson Lake and Palmer on the pink Island label for just £4. Alas, on closer inspection, the record had some rather nasty scratches so I passed. However, on my last visit I found an original Bo Diddley LP from the 60s on the Chess label also for only £4 and the vinyl was in much better shape than the ELP record. 

There are also crates of original soul, funk, reggae and jazz LPs to dig through plus a huge collection of dance 12 inch records. 

crazybeat.co.uk

Shaks’ Stax Of Wax Record Shop

May be an image of eyewear, hat shop og tekstur

Before this record shop, located in Kingston upon Thames, began trading as Shaks’ Stax Of Wax in October 2018, this place used to be known as the Collectors Record Centre. I used to frequent the Collectors Record Centre quite regularly during my early record collecting days. In fact, some of the first LPs in my collection were purchased from this shop. I remember one time almost 25 years ago purchasing an original LP copy of Hatful Of Hollow by The Smiths in decent condition for only a quid. Back then vinyl records were cheap and lots of people were dumping their LPs for CDs.  Hard to believe now. 

Stax is a great record shop for digging with lots of crates to get stuck into containing a wide range of original records across many different genres. It’s a worthy successor to the Collectors Record Centre record shop and the owner is very friendly. The shop has a good selection of original 60s and 70s rock and pop LPs as well as crates of quite decent original jazz and world music LPs. One of my favourite places to dig are through the crates of 7s at the back of the shop. There are lots of crates in this area of the shop containing some unusual and rare records to discover if you search hard enough. 

If you have time, its also worth checking out nearby Banquet Records. Today Banquet sells mostly new releases focusing on new music. I would argue that its probably one of the best independent record shops in the country to buy LPs and CDs by new bands and artists and its been very successful. Before this shop was known as Banquet Records, it was originally known as Beggers Banquet Records. I used to frequent Beggers quite often back in the day. 

Banquet Records also puts on a number of live events by established and up and coming bands and artists inside their store and at local venues such as The Hippodrome and The Fighting Cocks. 

https://collectors-record-centre.business.site/

VIP Record Fair London Victoria 

VIP Record Fairs have been holding record fairs across the country since the 1980s. The VIP Record Fair in London Victoria is one of the biggest record fairs in the city. This is a phenomenal place for crate diggers with more crates to dig through than one can shake a stick at. One can easily spend the whole day here and that’s what I would recommend doing. Give yourself ample time to check out all the stalls. Some stalls sell some very rare and collectable records that are priced accordingly. Sometimes though, one can find highly sought after original records through persistent digging for a good price. It is also possible to bargain on certain records with some sellers so it doesn’t hurt to make an offer, especially on a large or expensive purchase. This record fair is highly worth the £5 entry fee (£10 early entry). Even in the unlikely case that you don’t end up buying anything it is a great experience. This fair has an amazing buzz and there are some interesting characters here. All in all, this is a real mecca for dedicated diggers and not to be missed. 

http://www.vip-24.com/

Your recommendations 

I think I have picked some pretty stellar places in London that are fantastic for crate diggers of old original vintage records. However, I don’t think my list is definitive and I am sure that I have missed some really great places that I haven’t discovered yet. If any of you know of any other places in London that I haven’t already mentioned and that tick most of the boxes of the kind of places that I am looking for then please mention these places in the comments section below. These places could be independent record shops overflowing with stacks of old records or even flea/antique markets and car boot sales in the city where one can dig through crates of records and find some gems for a reasonable price. 

By Nicholas Peart

24th January 2024

(c)All Rights Reserved

The Next Fifteen Years

Posted on by Nicholas Peart

When I look back on the last 15 years going back all the way to the beginning of 2009 and the aftermath of the 2007-8 Global Financial Crisis, it is clear that this has been a difficult and rocky period for humanity as a whole. In some ways it feels like many people have still not fully recovered from this crisis. There are so many people who are still struggling and with that there’s a palpable sense of tension and discontent. 

In the UK, for example, the early years since the financial crisis were marked by government funding cuts and austerity. Most notably, university tuition fees were tripled. The last fifteen years for young people, especially, have been very tough. As the years progressed we saw the emergence of politicians from the more extreme ends of the spectrum come more to the fore; reflecting this discontent. 

Economically, the last 15 years have been a disaster for many people. For over a decade, from 2009-21, the main central banks such as the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the ECB, etc, kept interest rates at near zero percent. The effect of this has been very real. When interest rates are at rock bottom levels, prudence is thrown to the wind. There is no incentive to save money (as it yields no interest) and only encourages rampant speculation and risk taking. And this is what happened during this period. Asset prices for property and many stocks and securities went to the moon. Also, due to interest rates being so low for such a long time, debt levels exploded. During this time frame, total US government debt went from just over $11 trillion at the beginning of 2009 to almost $30 trillion at the end of 2021. As I write this US government debt is now over $33 trillion. Furthermore, average US house prices doubled and the S&P 500 index increased more than 5 times in value. Meanwhile, during this time average wage growth was relatively flat. 

Keeping interest rates at such low levels for over a decade has been very damaging for society as a whole. The huge inflation in asset prices, far eclipsing income growth, has not been a good thing. This is certainly true for most of the younger generation where the possibility of owning a home is now very remote. But it isn’t just younger people who are hurting. This prolonged period of Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) has resulted in a level of inequality not seen since 1929 just before the great stock market boom of the Roaring Twenties collapsed and led to the 1930s Depression and a lengthy period of unrest and stagnation. 

Globally, it feels like the recent 2020-21 COVID pandemic was this monumental event to manifest during this difficult 15 year period pushing an already hurting population even further into the abyss. It was almost like the punishing final act.

In my view, I believe that we are now at a stage where we have reached a major turning point in economic history. Looking beyond the last 15 years, I think we are now at a moment in time where the wheels of this era of neoliberalism that has prevailed since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were in power are slowly coming off. This epoch is coming to an end. 

What Will The Next 15 Years Bring?

I envisage that the next 15 years is going to be a period of enormous societal and economic changes. The current status quo and core orthodox beliefs of today are going to be turned upside down. This will be an incredibly disruptive time, but ultimately I truly think that it will be beneficial for all of humanity. If I had to compare this forthcoming period to a period in history, I believe that what we are about to experience will be similar to what happened during the French Revolution and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution as well as the Reformation more than 200 years before those two events. 

The Industrial Revolution was a time of unprecedented change through game changing innovations that radically transformed the lives of society. Yet in the beginning, at least, some of these inventions were met with fierce resistance from a population worried that such inventions were destroying their livelihoods. However, these inventions created new opportunities and new types of work. Before the Industrial Revolution, large swathes of society, especially those not born into aristocracy, worked gruelling and extremely long hours without the aid of any industrial production units that today are taken for granted. 

The French Revolution occurred around the same time as the Industrial Revolution was already getting going. It was a seismic period in history that completely altered the status quo in French society that prevailed for too long. Before the French Revolution, France had a feudal estate based system where society was divided into three estates; the First Estate (made up of the clergy), the Second Estate (made up of the French nobility), and the Third Estate (made up of “commoners”). The Third Estate comprised over 98% of French society that were not part of the clergy or nobility with next to no chance of improving their lot. Basically, if you were not born into money or privilege you were trapped. The Revolution was a violent and bloody event in world history, but it ultimately transformed French society for the better creating a much fairer and more progressive society. 

On that same note, I think that during the next 15 years we are going to experience something similar to those years towards the end of the 18th century. We will see many groundbreaking innovations just like during the Industrial Revolution. There will be new and emerging technologies and inventions that will be met with resistance and in some cases with violence by some sections of the global population. However, ultimately, this will all be hugely beneficial for all of society. As a specific example, let’s focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI). This technology has been around for some time, but recently it is being increasingly discussed and there is now a lot of hype around it. Yet there is no denying that this is a powerful technology that doesn’t stand still. People are right to be fearful and concerned by this technology, but I find that a lot of people are looking at it all too myopically. The very real possibility that it will eventually have the power and skills to do any kind of job that a human can do should be embraced. I actually think that AI will make the world a much better place. It will vastly reduce or even eliminate global poverty and will also negate the need for people to work. By this point I don’t even think that we will have an economic model based on Capitalism any more. In an earlier article I wrote back in 2019 entitled, THE TRUE SINGULARITY: A Universe Of Unlimited Abundance And Eternal Harmony, I stated how there would eventually be a “Post-Scarcity” economy of unlimited abundance facilitated by the exponential growth and development of new and emerging technologies like AI, 3D/4D Printing, nanotechnology, etc. Such a “Post-Scarcity” economy of abundance would negate the need for and nullify all the previous economic and ideological models of the past. 

I also believe that the political leaders of the next 15 years, compared with the last 15 years, will be of a much more enlightened breed who have more empathy and more of a human touch. They will be less self-serving and less career driven. They will encourage and support new and emerging technologies whilst making sure that everyone benefits. This culture of greed, Silicon Valley mega riches and extreme wealth inequality that has prevailed for far too long will become a thing of the past within the next 15 years. 

In the last 8 years, we have already had a taste of the discontent that many feel. Of those who feel neglected, marginalised and struggling economically amidst an unprecedented level of wealth inequality vote for more radical leaders. There is a sense that the current system and status quo is just not working any more for increasing swathes of the population. As long as the can of the current system continues to be kicked down the road, the more unrest and distrust there will continue to be. This is why I foresee in the coming years an event similar to the French Revolution. It will be an ugly, violent and potentially dangerous and unstable time, but it will also result in much needed changes that will lead to a better and more stable world. It will also create a society with a completely new set of values and core beliefs. And I would even go as far as saying that we will all be much more enlightened and more caring and altruistic as a society. I very much believe, as unrealistic as it may currently seem, that this is the new kind of world that will exist in the next 15 years and it will be a much better world than this existing one. 

Nicholas Peart

16th January 2024

©All Rights Reserved 

Image: Pexels

REVIEW: Don Van Vliet “Standing On One Hand”

Posted on by Nicholas Peart

This is the moment I’ve been waiting for; the chance to finally see in the flesh the paintings of Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart. I’ve been a fan of the music of Captain Beefheart for over 20 years. He was a one off with an incredibly singular vision and a style that was completely his own, without competition. And this is what attracted me to him; I’d never heard anything like him before. 

Through discovering and immersing myself in his music I soon also learnt about his paintings. Quite often when great musicians also produce (or in most cases “dabble in”) paintings, sculptures, etc, their works tend to fall short next to their songs. Bob Dylan is one of the greatest songwriters of all time; a timeless poet and a genius with words. Yet when I look at his drawings, I don’t detect anything special. They are far from bad drawings, but they don’t match his power as a towering wordsmith. David Bowie is another example. Even though he had an impressive and deep understanding of art, his paintings pale next to his magnificent body of music. 

What makes the Captain different is that his paintings are on par if not even better than his magical and highly distinct music. They are not divorced or different from his music. All together, along with his own unique and idiosyncratic being, they are a total work of art. Projecting the same rhythms, grooves and off beat time signatures that I hear on Trout Mask Replica. And this is why I love his paintings. When he stopped making music in the early 1980s, he devoted himself fully to painting. 

Looking at the paintings on display at the Michael Werner gallery in London, created in the 1980s and 1990s, one can conclude that his own vision, code and core never deserted him. When I focus and meditate on his paintings, I unearth so much. I see animal, human and other organism spirits of the infinite and asymmetric world. I also see a multitude of symbols each with their own irregular shapes and DNA. In the painting, Crow Dance A Panther, I see a celestial dog-like creature in a state of drifting metamorphosis with a raven head and an object in the form of a chair forming from its mouth in a weightless state of perpetual cosmic motion. The paint marks and elements don’t seem random. They each all have their own connection and balance in the composition. Paint is often applied thickly. The heavy white impasto marks have a physicality resembling frozen smoke and other forms of invisible moving matter; as if the paintings are always moving beyond their earthly boundaries.

The large painting, China Pig, has elements in it that remind me of some of the earliest cave art paintings found in South Africa and Australia. At the bottom of the painting painted in yellow is an extraterrestrial-like supernatural animal creation, a lively golden eagle bunny type of creature, riding on top of what appears to resemble a warthog or the Captain’s china pig! Elsewhere in the painting are pools of energy in non-stop flux; semi-buried faces, the dead, the living, the living dead, dynamic bodies and spirits, a myriad of colliding landslide landscapes; remnants of our dreams and nightmares without any filters. The golden eagle bunny keeps riding on its china pig through all these forever changes. 

The adjacent Feather Times a Feather painting appears to be on the same wavelength as China Pig and the next destination. The horizon and world of that painting is where the golden eagle bunny on its china pig feel like they should be heading towards. It’s the next stop in their no-return voyage. Feather Times a Feather is the Captain’s very own Garden Of Earthly Delights; hues of pink, yellow, orange, blue and green all representing symbols, cosmic fragments and morphing spirits, dominate the vacuum above and appear, perhaps deceptively, relatively gentle and calm. Below this area in the painting things are more unsettling. A distressed face bent below an ominous black crow symbol. An awakening crimson warrior to the right shows no mercy. In the far bottom left corner is a stagnant but ecstatically demented grey evil space cadet scarecrow figure – like a highly toxic deep sea creature. This painting is a veritable tripped out minefield. Pleasure and decay traps mingle hand in hand. 

In the painting Red Cloud Monkey, there are three towering mountain-like beings cunningly statuesque, but not too dissimilar to active volcanoes, they can erupt without warning. Meanwhile a frantic red figure features like a nimble devil, restless and insecure, in the bottom of the painting. In the night next to the volcanic trio, the figure is doomed. The Captain channels and strengthens this energy by his gift of creating bold hunks of space and discordant brush strokes. The black, yellow and green empty quarters are applied to the canvas furiously. Their primitive physicality is palpable. 

The other paintings that draw me in are the ones that have an afterlife kind of eternal calm; albeit a collapsing and destructive calm. I see this is the paintings, The Drazy Hoops #2, and Luxury Rack.  In the former painting, I see an extinct and dead frozen-in-amber type of creature with prominent and luminous yellow and purple gases forming from it’s behind well after it’s long gone. The yellow paint is applied generously to the canvas making it appear like it’s in constant motion. One can almost smell and taste these noxious gases. In Luxury Rack there is a beaming plankton type of silence. The Captain knows where to find the gold in the trenches of the deepest oceans. He doesn’t need a submarine. There’s no need for him to embark on some intrepid physical adventure or to travel to Mars. For it’s all present and well illuminated in his limitless and fertile mind. 

By Nicholas Peart

11th January 2024

(c)All Rights Reserved

Image: Don Van Vliet Feather Times A Feather 1987

Don Van Vliet: Standing On One Hand is on display at the Michael Werner Gallery London until 17th February 2024.

Searching For Honesty In Financial Markets And Why Short Sellers Should Not Be Demonised

Posted on by Nicholas Peart

Today, I think there are too many people dabbling in the stock market and investing in highly speculative assets. Despite the cratering in stock prices in 2022 and the very brief crash in 2020, we are still in one of the longest bull markets of all time that began in 2009.

But whether we are in a bull market or not, I am still blown away by the valuations of many stocks and other assets and the sheer amount of dumb money still in the market. Over three years ago, the well known short seller Jim Chanos commented that, ‘We are in the golden age of fraud’. In an interview with the Financial Times from July 2020, Chanos commented on the market environment at the time as; “a really fertile field for people to play fast and loose with the truth, and for corporate wrongdoers to get away with it for a long time”. He further expands on this by getting to the root of how such an environment was created;

‘ a 10-year bull market driven by central bank intervention; a level of retail participation in the markets reminiscent of the end of the dotcom boom; Trumpian “post-truth in politics, where my facts are your fake news”; and Silicon Valley’s “fake it until you make it” culture, which is compounded by Fomo — the fear of missing out. All of this is exacerbated by lax oversight. Financial regulators and law enforcement, he says, “are the financial archaeologists — they will tell you after the company has collapsed what the problem was“. ‘

In this paragraph Chanos nails beautifully the problem not just with the present state of financial markets and the industry as a whole, but with the current zeitgeist. The post truth world of ‘my facts are your fake news’ where real truth and wisdom has been forsaken is a real problem and dangerous. The Silicon Valley “fake it until you make it” culture has been exacerbated by the huge tail wind of a decade plus of zero percent interest rates and mountains of cheap and easy money. Such a background of very loose monetary policy has enabled many startups and companies with shoddy fundamentals that should have gone bust a long time ago to remain a going concern and in some cases even thrive with massively bloated market valuations. During this time wild levels of risk taking and speculation are rampant resulting in highly distorted and inefficient markets. Huge bubbles in highly dubious securities emerge with many dishonest charlatans with large followings on social media pumping these garbage entities to naive and unsuspecting investors. When the bubble eventually bursts it is those same impressionable investors who are left holding the bag. In the worst cases, some bet with money they didn’t have and couldn’t afford to lose. These incidents are especially common in the cryptocurrencies space and also for so called meme stocks – stocks made popular by a large following on social media. Often these stocks have market valuations completely divorced from their true intrinsic value. In some cases these companies should be insolvent, but are kept going by a zealous cult like following of investors happy to pay any price without questioning the fundamentals and integrity of the companies.

Short sellers often get a bad rep. In some cases this is justified. There are indeed short sellers who are nefarious and have a vulture-like mindset. However, there are those like Jim Chanos who play a very crucial role in the markets by searching for companies that are committing fraud and lying to investors. And they are often onto those companies at a very early stage way before the financial regulators get involved. As Chanos comically states, these regulators ‘will tell you after the company has collapsed what the problem was‘.

Chanos is famous for his large bet against Enron. At the time it was a darling stock and very popular with investors, but Chanos after having undertaken a deep fundamental analysis on the stock realised that the company was cooking its books and that at some point this would land the company in serious trouble. Whilst numerous financial commentators would be speaking glowingly and talking up the stock, Chanos, however, knew that something was rotten in the state of Denmark. The financial regulators were asleep at the wheel only acting after the fact.

Today we are still living in the golden age of fraud. Despite the 2022 wobble in equity prices and inflation spikes and rapid increases in interest rates, there are still too many investors playing foolish games who haven’t learnt their lesson. There are still zombie companies and entities trading on eye watering market valuations and worse, companies still trading at huge valuations that are committing fraud and the financial regulators continue to do next to nothing. This is precisely why short sellers like Jim Chanos should not be vilified. In fact, quite the opposite. They should be revered and respected. They search for honesty in the markets, pointing out the bad actors and the companies engaging in crooked behaviour. And I have no problem when they make money. Even when they make a lot of money. It is much easier to go long on a stock than it is to go short. Short selling is a difficult and highly risky venture. Even if you have spotted a company engaging in fraud and other egregious activity, the difficulty is getting the timing right when betting against it. The market valuation of the company may continue to remain irrationally high for a very long time creating huge losses for those that chose to bet against it. Short selling can be a very lonely path and often a financially ruinous one too.

Nicholas Peart

January 3rd 2024

(c)All Rights Reserved

LINKS:

Financial Time article: Jim Chanos: ‘We are in the golden age of fraud’ July 24th 2020 (https://www.ft.com/content/ccb46309-bba4-4fb7-b3fa-ecb17ea0e9cf)

Image: https://pixabay.com/photos/reading-glasses-book-read-4330761/

WHEN GOLD BEGINS TO SHINE

Posted on by Nicholas Peart

So much has been written about gold. Over the last decade it has been a frustrating asset to own. My own view on gold is that it is currently an unfashionable and misunderstood commodity. I also find that a lot of what is written about gold to be cliched and the truth is more nuanced.

Many say that gold is a hedge against inflation, but this is far too simplistic. It is also not enough to say that gold is a hedge against the US dollar. Although, generally speaking I find the latter point to have more truth in it than the former.

I also find it interesting when people compare gold with prominent cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin; the main argument being that Bitcoin has the same scarcity properties as gold. In the case of Bitcoin, it has a supply cap of 21 million coins – thus it can act as a store of value; a kind of ‘digital gold’.

I think this digital gold comparison is flawed. Although gold can be volatile, it has nowhere near the same levels of volatility as Bitcoin. During the last decade Bitcoin as an asset has performed extremely well. If you had purchased some Bitcoin in 2012, today you would still be sitting on an eye watering return. The period from around 2009 to 2021 has seen assets, notably many technology and growth stocks, increase exponentially in value. It is also no coincidence that during this same period interest rates have been at mostly rock bottom levels. This period of loose monetary policy and cheap and easy money has resulted in a dazzling stock market boom in the USA. If you look at the chart of the NASDAQ index, which is full of tech and growth stocks, you will see that in 2009 it was trading at less than 1500 points. Towards the end of 2021 it had reached an all time high in excess of 16000 points. That is some unbelievable asset inflation in a period of just over a decade.

Although many staunch Bitcoin supporters will deny this, it also seems to do very well when interest rates are low and money is cheap and abundant. Rather than being a safe haven against financial meltdowns, it behaves like a speculative technology stock that goes to the moon with interest rates at 0%. A vast proportion of Bitcoin supporters are young people whose only real experience of the financial markets is the landscape over the last 12-13 years since the Financial Crisis. They have never experienced high interest rates or any long lasting bear market. I think this point is very significant; many Bitcoin holders have never experienced a prolonged bear market and high interest rates. They have never been in the eye of a catastrophic financial meltdown.

Although the returns of gold and other precious metals like silver have been poor compared to Bitcoin and many high profile growth stocks over the last decade, it should also come as no surprise. When markets are performing well and there is abundant liquidity in the financial system, gold is not one of the primary assets that tops investors lists of assets to invest in. It is more enticing to invest in speculative high risk assets that are going gangbusters. When Bitcoin and some flavour of the month tech stocks are on a tear in this loose financial environment, positive feedback loops are created as more and more investors pile in. Investors see the returns being made on these assets or they see some of their friends making a fortune and they want in too – thus the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) bug enfolds them.

So when does gold shine? Gold will begin to shine when feelings of total despair and hopelessness are at it’s zenith. Since the beginning of this year, the more speculative areas of the market that have been performing very well for many years until 2021 have now been experiencing dramatic falls in their market values. Inflation has roared towards double digits in the US, the UK and the Eurozone and central banks have had to increase interest rates. Yet, interest rates are still nowhere near current inflation rates. If central banks were to dramatically hike interest rates to match inflation rates I believe this would cause a financial meltdown like no other – it would far eclipse the carnage of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-9. Although markets have fallen, they are far from this stage. There is still lots of speculation going on and inexperienced investors still playing foolish games. Inflation may have reached 40 year highs, but because interest rates are still low lots of speculation continues. The price of gold has actually been drifting downwards over the last few months and this has resulted in some commentators stating that it is a poor hedge against inflation. Yet, these commentators are missing the point. Although inflation is at high levels, there is still a lot of liquidity in the markets. There is no real urgent reason to hold gold. However, there may just come a time when interest rates increase to unforeseen levels and liquidity begins to totally dry up as money becomes more expensive. Investors panic and thus begins an amplification of negative feedback loops and FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) kicks in. It is the moment when investors swear that they will never invest in the stock market again and that they will never ever again touch cryptocurrencies that I believe gold and by extension other precious metals like silver and platinum etc will begin to perform very well.

By Nicholas Peart

24th September 2022

(c)All Rights Reserved

Could Now Be A Good Time To Buy Twitter Stock?

Posted on by Nicholas Peart
The Twitter bird logo.

Disclaimer: The following article is not investment advice. It simply only states my opinions.

Twitter is an interesting company to observe. For a long time I have had very mixed feelings about this social media platform. It is very easy to write it off and there are many reasons to it; chiefly one could argue that it is a toxic platform and has a negative effect on one’s mental health. From an investment point of view, there are additional reasons to be cautious. The company currently doesn’t have strong fundamentals and is not a cash generating machine in the same way that say Meta Platforms or Alphabet are. Even with its current share price more than 50% down from it’s $80+ high reached in February last year, it is a highly speculative stock.

However, when I look at Twitter objectively, I do think it’s model as a social media company, specifically how it’s designed, is unique and I would probably argue that Twitter is one of the most effective and powerful social media platforms to use if you want to get your voice or message heard instantly and to make some kind of noise. Traditional newspapers and journals will always have their place and there will always be a demand for quality content, yet for writers and journalists, Twitter is a much more powerful platform to get one’s message across than solely via a newspaper or blog. Twitter is the ultimate vehicle for someone not only to have their voice heard but to have it amplified in an exponential way.

The other thing that is interesting about Twitter is that almost every public figure uses it. Most people that matter and have something important to say are on it. Almost every person in government has a Twitter account. Almost every writer and journalist also has a Twitter account. The bottom line is that nearly every person who is outspoken is on this platform. For me, this is a very important sign and it reveals to me how powerful and disruptive this particular platform is.

Often I will value a company on its fundamentals in order to see what the company’s margin of safety is. Valuing something like Twitter is much more of an art. It requires truly understanding the platform, specifically it’s power and how it will develop as the internet continues to evolve. The fact that so many public figures, businesses and entities use the platform tells me that this platform clearly provides a lot of value and has very strong network effects.

Meta Platforms, which comprises of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, currently has a market cap of just under a trillion dollars. Alphabet, the parent company for Google and YouTube, has a market cap of nearly $1.8tn. Twitter, on the other hand, has a market cap of just under $30bn. Some people may say that for a company that lacks the cashflow generation of Meta or Alphabet, a $30bn market cap is still very high. And they are not wrong. However, what if Twitter were really able to harness it’s power and become a huge cash flow machine? It is often said that it is important that a company still has its founder/s on board to steer the ship and provide a unique vision of how the company should be developing and operating. However, in the case of Twitter it is not unreasonable to say that it’s founder Jack Dorsey may not be the right person to really take the company to even greater heights. He was instrumental in the beginning phases of the company’s growth. Twitter still needs someone who is visionary and completely understands the company to take it forward, yet it also needs a mature, resilient and pragmatic leader and one who is able to realise and, more importantly, monetise all the company’s untapped potential.

Recently, Dorsey stepped down as CEO of Twitter. He was replaced by Parag Agrawal, who has worked at Twitter as software engineer since 2011. In 2017, he became the chief technology officer of the company before replacing Dorsey as the CEO in November last year. I could be wrong, but I sense that Agrawal will have a lot of success in cleaning up the image of the company and improving its credibility by cracking down hard on fake accounts and accounts where individuals and entities spread disinformation. I also think Agrawal will be serious in establishing ways to further monetise the platform and increase its user growth which has been sluggish.

Anyone who has studied the market performance of Twitter stock since it first IPO’d back in 2013 will know that the stock hasn’t really punched above its weight. Yet I think even if user growth continues to be a challenge, at least in the short run, I think the company has the potential to vastly increase its revenue. In Q3 21, the company generated $1.28bn in total revenue. I think there is the potential for the company to at least quadruple it’s total revenues from that point whilst still maintaining a healthy sized gross profit margin and keeping other costs like R&D, sales and marketing, and administrative costs at a reasonable level. If the company successfully pulls all this off, I would not be surprised if it grew into a market cap quite a few multiples from its current market cap of just under $30bn. I think in the next five to eight years, it is entirely feasible for the company to command a valuation of at least $150-200bn provided it makes big changes and succeeds.

By Nicholas Peart

(c)All Rights Reserved

1st February 2022

Is One Of The Longest Bull Markets In History About To End?

Posted on by Nicholas Peart

The month of January has been a rather volatile one for financial markets. In particular, in the USA, where the markets over there are heavy with technology companies with enormous market valuations; a few of these companies, including Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet, currently have market valuations in the trillions of dollars. Already back in 2019, when the NASDAQ index, which includes those megacap tech names, was hovering around 8000 points I wrote an article where I expressed my concerns that I thought the index was looking very frothy. In 2009, toward the end of the Financial Crisis, the NASDAQ was below 1500 points. In a decade it had increased over five times in value. At the height of the 1999-2000 dotcom bubble, the NASDAQ hit an at the time all-time high of over 5000 points. It would be another fifteen years before the NASDAQ would breach 5000 points again.

Back in 2019, some analysts expressed concerns about the heady valuation of several US tech stocks and that with the NASDAQ trading at over 8000 points, it was ripe for a correction. Towards the end of February the following year, those analysts got their wish when global markets began to dramatically correct in response to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Investors began to panic and growth/tech heavy indices like the NASDAQ began to drop in value. In January of 2020, the NASDAQ had reach an at the time all time high of over 9000 points. By March of that year, it was trading in the 6000s.

Although, those who had been predicting a crash the previous year may have felt vindicated for a brief moment, very few could have foreseen the response by the Federal Reserve (Fed) and how it would promptly intervene with a dramatic increase in the US money supply and an enormous expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet. As a consequence, the NASDAQ duly rebounded from March 2020 and would embark on a mind-blowing run lasting many months. By November 2021, the NASDAQ hit a fresh all time high of over 16,000 points; more than doubling from it’s mid March 2020 level and almost doubling from it’s 8000+ level from back in 2019 when I wrote my article expressing concerns about it’s then heady valuation.

When the pandemic began to sink in and the Fed reacted via it’s huge financial stimulus programme essentially flooding the US economy with lots of new money, investors began to favour a certain group of stocks that became all the rage as they thought would thrive in this new pandemic environment. Governments around the world imposed multi-month long lockdowns and for many people at the time, there was a feeling that this pandemic would never end. Thus investors turned to technology stocks; stocks investors concluded would benefit the most from a stay-at-home environment. These stocks, already commanding rich valuations before the start of the pandemic, began to get even more crazy. At the same time, boring old school blue chip value stocks began to sell off even more. The travel and hospitality sector suffered greatly by global lockdowns and travel restrictions. The oil and gas industry too had a tough time with the price of a barrel of crude oil briefly entering negative territory. Sentiment in both those two sectors was completely shot to pieces, whilst the technology sector was in full on mania mode. But it wasn’t just the big tech names like Microsoft, Apple and Alphabet that were doing well, a new crop of technology stocks that became darlings during the pandemic, such as Zoom and Peloton, went on an epic tear.

As 2020 turned to 2021, this madness showed no signs of abating. In fact it all reached a brand new level of craziness. With many in the US receiving their COVID-19 financial stimulus cheques, which were originally intended to alleviate the financial burdens of those affected by the pandemic, a large portion of those cheques were used for speculation in the markets. A handful of stocks began to command valuations that just simply made no sense. One example was the struggling video game retailer, Gamestop. At the time it was one of the most heavily shorted stocks in the country. Until a group of investors from the social media site Reddit began to drive up the price of the stock massively with the intention of sticking it to the hedge funds who had large short positions on the stock. In the month of January 2021, Gamestop stock rocketed in value from just under $20 a share to over $300 before crashing to around $40 the following month. Many naïve and inexperienced investors got suckered into this micro rally and got badly burnt on the way down. It didn’t matter that this was fundamentally a worthless stock with no credibility.

In addition to those shenanigans, the beginning of 2021 saw another heady bull market emerging in the cryptocurrencies space with the price of Bitcoin entering the new year on a new high. But the increase in the price of Bitcoin during this period paled in comparison to other even more speculative areas of the crypto space. One of these was the booming popularity of NFTs or Non Fungible Tokens. These tokens are digital files that can be bought and sold with certain cryptocurrencies. During the first few months of 2021 this area of the market reached a complete fever pitch with a some individual NFTs even fetching millions of dollars. An NFT by an artist called Beeple fetched over $60m – an eyewatering amount of money; the kind of money that would exceed even the kind of money fetched for some of the best known and highly prized paintings by the most famous old masters of the ages.

Yet by the end of the year, cracks were already starting to appear. The last 13 years since the Financial Crisis has been dominated by a period of extremely loose monetary policy. It is no surprise that such a long period of rock bottom interest rates has led to one of the longest and most spectacular bull markets in history. And because of this it feels artificial. Wages have not gone up anywhere near the same level during this time period. In fact they have been rather stagnant. This has resulted in the USA experiencing a level of inequality not last seen since the 1920s. Or more specifically, the end of the 1920s. The so called Roaring Twenties ended with an epic stock market crash leading to a brutal multi-year long Depression. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) hit a high of over 6000 points in August 1929, at the apex of the 1920s stock market bubble. In December 1920, the DJIA was just over 1000 points. When the this near decade long bubble burst during the last few months of 1929, the DJIA continued to crumble over the next few years during the Depression reaching just 910 points in May 1932. This was less than the low breached by the DJIA in 1920. In a little under a few years, all the gains the DJIA had accumulated had been more than wiped out. The next time the DJIA went over 6000 points was in 1959; a staggering thirty years since that level was last reached.

Many investors and analysts like to compare the current stock market boom, especially over the last few years, with the dotcom boom of the late 1990s. Whilst there are many similarities, namely with all the exuberant valuations of many tech stocks with poor fundamentals, I find the stock market boom of the Roaring Twenties a better comparison. This is especially true when measuring inequality in the USA over a 100-120 period. The incredibly loose monetary policy over the last 13 years had made this current bubble not only one of the largest in financial history, but also one of the most dangerous. Total US government debt before the 2008 Financial Crisis was already very high. However, between Q1 2008 and Q3 2021, total US government debt has near trippled from $9.4tn to $28.4tn. This is an astonishing increase for such a comparatively brief time period in US history.

During the last year, inflation has began to rear its ugly head. Some have been taken by surprise by this inflation, but I am anything but surprised. This was a long time coming. It is amazing that it has taken so long to appear. Of course, the super lax monetary policy of the last 13 years has seen incredible asset price inflation, but not so much consumer price inflation. But this all began to change last year when the US rate of inflation hit 6.8%, it’s highest level since 1982. The Federal Reserve now finds itself in a difficult position as even just a very modest raise in interest rates can have reverberating effects on the US stock market and economy as a whole. Over a decade of rock bottom interests in the US has, as already stated, almost tripled the total amount of US government debt and created a stock market bubble of absolutely epic proportions. In November 2008, the NASDAQ was trading below 1500 points. In November 2021, exactly 13 years later, the NASDAQ traded above 16,000 points. This is a more than ten-fold increase of absolutely dazzling asset price inflation. So much is now at stake, yet this bull market has never looked more fragile.

As of now, US interest rates still stand at zero. However, the last month has seen the NASDAQ fall quite sharply in value. By the end of last week, the NASDAQ was trading at 13770 points. Whilst this is a not inconsiderable drop from the 16,000 points plus high of last November, it is still more than double the low it reached during the brief stock market correction of February-April 2020. Moreover, it is still more than 9 times the value that it was in November 2008. What has been interesting is that the NASDAQ falls of the last month occurred before any interest rate hikes. The Fed intends to raise interest rates in tiny increments. However, the real question here is how much of a problem will inflation continue to be? This is where the Fed under Jerome Powell has really been asleep at the wheel completely underestimating the long term consequences of a decade plus of uber low interest rates, quantitative easing and cheap and easy money. Some economists make forecasts as if their projections will come into fruition with complete certainty. Yet the truth is no one can predict the future, regardless of one’s credentials and brain power. Not so long ago, the prevailing narrative was that inflation would be ‘transitory’. I didn’t and still today don’t agree with this narrative. I also don’t believe that the sole root of this inflation is the supply side shocks induced by COVID-19. As I have already mentioned, I am simply just surprised that, after over a decade of very loose monetary policy, it has taken so long to rear it’s ugly head.

What can really cause the current bubble to unwind much more is precisely if inflation continues to be a much longer term headache. The Fed may want to only slowly increase rates by small amounts, but what happens if inflation were to get worse and go into double digits? If inflation were to get out of control, I suspect that the Fed would have to increase interest rates by much more than it originally intended. This would bring an abrupt end to the cheap money era that has prevailed for so long. The biggest winners of this era have been growth stocks – particularly those in the technology sector. Invariably, companies with weak fundamentals would be trading on gargantuan market valuations. These companies would not be making any money and would be burning through cash. Yet often investors would be attracted to them by the story they projected rather than doing a deep dive into their financial statements. The cheap money era has been particularly favourable for startup companies not even publicly listed yet. It wouldn’t matter whether or not these companies were making any money. With so much cheap money sloshing about Venture Capitalist funds would throw ever more money towards them. In such an environment valuations do not seem to matter. And this is why I find this current rise in inflation very interesting as there is every chance that it will force the Fed to raise interest rates by much more than it was expecting thus bringing an end to this party. All of a sudden valuations will actually start to matter and all those companies that had heady valuations without ever making a profit will be in real trouble.

Already some of the darling stocks of the pandemic have had drawdowns of more than 50%. The video teleconferencing platform Zoom, which became increasingly popular as the pandemic unfolded, saw it’s stock motor from $76 at the beginning of January 2020 to a peak of over $550 in November of that year. Last week the stock traded below $140. The other darling of the pandemic, the exercise equipment and media company Peloton, saw it’s stock increase from around $30 at the very start of 2020 to over $160 just before the end of that year. Today it currently trades at $25 more than wiping out it’s 2020 gains.

The larger and more robust tech titans like Apple, Microsoft and Amazon have also experienced drops during the last month but they have overall still managed to hold on to their mega valuations. Apple recently hit a market cap of $3tn making it the most valuable company by market cap on the planet. At the beginning of the year it traded at over $180. Today, it’s trading at $170 with a market cap of nearly $2.8tn. It was only in 2018, when Apple became the first company to reach a $1tn market cap. In just a few years it has trebled its market cap. This is simply amazing growth for such a juggernaut of a company. Yet Apple is not cut from the same cloth of the more speculative tech stocks. Where Apple substantially differs is that it is a colossal cash generating machine of a company. Apple has a very rock solid moat and phenomenal pricing power. Even with at a near $2.8tn market cap, it currently trades on a not unreasonable PE of 28. Apple and the other tech stocks with solid cashflows that don’t need to raise money, will likely fare much better, despite their rich market caps, than the more fundamentally shaky tech stocks that still don’t generate adequate cash flows. However, Apple is not completely immune from any future shocks. I suspect that a continued rise in inflation will not only put a bigger strain on the finances of consumers, it will also further inflate the prices of important raw materials that are integral to Apple products. There could also be unforeseen future problems in China that severely affect the manufacturing capacity of Apple products.

Over the last 13 years whenever there has been a sharp correction in US equity markets it wouldn’t last for very long. The Fed would promptly intervene by pumping liquidity and thus causing the markets to sharply recover all it’s lost gains. The bull market would continue to just hit new highs. It is because of this that the USA still hasn’t experienced a prolonged bear market since the last Financial Crisis. For some time investors have simply taken it for granted that the Fed would just simply come to the rescue whenever there was any major market turbulence and stocks would duly rebound. But what if this time, the Fed finds that it has limited options to calm a plunging stock market? Higher than predicted inflation will almost certainly force the Fed to substantially increase interest rates. Money at much higher rates will cease to be cheap and the market, like a raging drug addict, will find that it is unable to get it’s usual fix of central bank stimulus. I suspect this will all have the affect of leading to markets being volatile and plunging to bigger lows over a much larger time frame leading to a bear market of many months or even years.

Don’t think the tech heavy US markets could experience a painful multi-year long bear market? Well, think again. It took almost 30 years for the Dow Jones Industrial Average to reach it’s all time high reached at the height of the Roaring Twenties stock market boom. When the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s burst in 2000, it took the NASDAQ 15 years to reach it’s all time high reached at the height of that bubble. Some stock market indices never again reach their all time high. Japan in the 1980s experienced an absolutely wild stock market and real estate boom. At the very end of that decade, the Nikkei 225, was trading at an all time high at over 38,000 points. Over the next year in 1990, the Nikkei 225 almost halved in value and over the next several years drifted downwards eventually bottoming below 8,000 points in 2003. The Nikkei has since recovered and as of today trades at around 27,000 points. Yet this is still short of it’s all time high it reached more than thirty years ago.

By Nicholas Peart

January 31st 2022

(c)All Rights Reserved

LINKS:

https://www.macrotrends.net/1319/dow-jones-100-year-historical-chart

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN/

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

US Stock Markets Are Looking Frothy

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/dec/10/us-inflation-rate-rise-2021-highest-increase-since-1982

Image: nck_gsl