Leeds Memories - the 1990s Merrion Centre

I was idly pondering the Leeds Merrion Centre today and I thought I'd jot down some memories of Leeds generally in the mid 90s when I was a student at Leeds Uni.

Living in G-block of St Mark's flats on Woodhouse Lane (opposite the School of Mechanical Engineering), our choice for food shopping was limited. We invariably went to the Morrisons in the Merrion Centre, and hauled the shopping back up the hill - what a drag. If we were feeling flush we caught the bus for the short journey, just to avoid that 'orrible hill. Some in our circle had access to a car, and braved the funny Morrisons underground car-park. What an indulgence.

But! The Merrion Centre. What a treat, the most budget shopping centre Leeds has to offer. Even in the mid-nineties I could see it was an appalling 60s concrete wasteland. Entering from Clay Pit Lane, the first thing that struck me was the nasty subway, which reminded me of that bit in A Clockwork Orange where Alex and his droogs beat up a tramp. I used to feel quite uneasy walking through it. They bricked it up in the year 2000. Leading up from the subway to the Merrion Centre entrance was a breathtaking conceit - an outdoor escalator.

Albeit, it never ran when we used to use it, IIRC it was covered in moss, and I imagine it broke very soon after installation in the 70s. I mean, a metal escalator completely unprotected from the elements, whose loony idea was that? It's been replaced by concrete steps since.

Going through this entrance to the Merrion Centre, you would find yourself in a very odd narrow hall of shops with fibreglass frontages that made them appear to be a row of olde-worlde shoppes a la Diagon Alley - this was grandly titled the Georgian Arcade but the effect wasn't very convincing, situated as it was in a bright '60s mallspace opposite the glass windows that looked into Morrisons. It felt more like a scene from THX1138 than anything else.

I recall one of the shops was the kind of new-age place that stunk of pachouli oil and joss sticks. They sold overpriced CDs of whale-song and tribal chants, tie-dyed wall-hangings and little buddha ornaments. In typical student fashion I bought loads of this stuff although oddly I haven't lit a joss stick since 1997. Those shops were everywhere in 1994, especially in the now-defunct dark-arches Granary Wharf market.

The other notable tenant of the Georgian Arcade was a Tap and Spile pub. Amazingly it was a very nice and friendly pub and I spent quite a few happy hours in there drinking some amazing brews. My favourite was called "Whitby's Nut Brown" and it was like pure chocolate. Nom! Sadly this pub and all the other tenants in the arcade had their leases closed pending a redevelopment that never happened.

Moving into the Centre now, we pass a newsagent's shop, next to which is a thin indoor alley that leads to the Merrion Market. Dear traveller, what delights await you in the market? It really was the most unbelieveably inhumane and scruffy place, making the Kirkgate Market seem a cultural paradise.

I used to feel a weird vibe while roaming its oddly artificial labyrinth, wondering how any of the stallkeepers stayed in business, or stayed sane under the cold striplighting. Was this the 1960s vision of the future? I revisited in 2010 and it was even more of a ghost-town with many of the stalls permanently closed. A very spooky quiet lay on the place. I'm led to believe the plan is to close the whole thing down now and try to redevelop the place into bars and eateries for the new Leeds Arena.

Returning to the Merrion Centre proper, at the main indoor atrium entrance to Morrisons, let us pause a while to consider the blank wall opposite. Why is it blank? Shouldn't there be shops there? Well, beyond it lies a secret that only the Urban Explorers whisper about now. You see, a large Odeon Cinema opened in the Merrion Centre and although it closed in 1977, it still resides behind blanked-off doors within the building, it's seventies concession stands still intact, its vast main screen still waiting in the darkness, presumably ready to show the première of Star Wars yet.

I'll not enter Morrisons at this point - it was just a gloomy supermarket as I recall. Unremarkable, and certainly not as down-at-heel as Kwik-Save (with its depressing torn open cardboard boxes presenting the merchandise). Instead, let us proceed to the middle of the Centre where an odd central column contains a door and steps leading down into darkness. What is this?

Why it's Bar Phono, the north's finest dingy basement club! Starting as The WigWam Club in the 70s, in its gothic heyday in the 80s Le Phonographique (as was) claimed to have invented the classic goth 2-step backwards-forwards dance. A swift boogie on its tiny "dancefloor" soon explained away this claim to fame - On the stickiest linoleum imaginable with nary 12 feet from wall to wall, an imposing structural pillar stood slap in the middle of the space. So, dancing backwards and forwards in this tiny corner was de rigeur. I have fond memories of the place, even though I was far too late to see it in its prime. Student nurses in black fishnets or black wedding dresses. Surly but gentle chaps with black nailpolish. Pints of snakebite. All good fun.

Swiftly moving on towards the Merrion Street entrance, one passed a large glass display cabinet containing an odd contraption, The Featherstone-Kite Openwork Basketweave Mark Two Gentleman’s Flying Machine.

This is the work of Rowland Emett, and can also be seen in this Pathé video. Emett was a type of Heath Robinson style inventor, and was also responsible for one of my favourite memories of childhood, the The Aqua Tintinnabulator water clock found in Nottingham's Victoria Centre. So the guy had a rep for adding a touch of wonder to many an urban shopping experience.

Okay folks, I'm all out of Merrion Centre memories now. Hope this brought back a happy memory or two to anybody out there. Please comment if you have any you'd like to share.

Grooveshark Advocate

Just heard some record exec bloke say that Grooveshark should be able to give away music as soon as Walmart starts issuing free food to musicians.

To me, comparing MP3s with food isn't valid. Growing, harvesting, and distributing food is an expensive business. Making music and disseminating it electronically is not. The public is totally aware that they've been ripped off by the music industry for years (15 quid for a CD - ridiculous). Now that technology has rendered the old model obsolete, what's the point of fighting it? Music won't be killed, just the old valuation of it. If people find that they can't make a living being a musician, maybe they should consider the ephemeral nature of that vocation. Personally, I like making music at home - it's what I call a "hobby", and quite separate from my constructive day job.

That said, since discovering Grooveshark this year, it has brought many artists to my attention that I would never have otherwise discovered, and has led directly to me buying their albums from iTunes / Amazon. Therefore, Grooveshark has made more money for artists from me than any other conventional promotional route.

1967 Omega Seamaster 565 caliber - 165.010 / 166.010

As I'm getting into wristwatch collecting I thought I'd post some info on my favourite watch, my every-day Omega Seamaster. My Dad gave it to me in 2006 after buying it on ebay a couple of years earlier. I've found a photo of what seems to be it, in a 1964 sales brochure at the excellent Old Omegas site :

That scan identifies it as a 166.010 model. I've also seen it referred to as a No. 44 model in a 1965 catalogue. I've been digging around and I now suspect that my watch is a bit of a frankenwatch - some of its story doesn't ring true:

• The inside of the caseback says 165.010.
• The movement is a caliber 565 with serial number starting 257xxxx, which dates it at 1967. 
• The crown seems a little too chunky compared to old catalogue pictures.
• The endpieces on the bracelet don't seem to sit flush to the case.

So it seems we have a 1967 watch - but 1967 brochures don't feature a Seamaster with this case design - by then they'd moved onto thinner, more angular lugs. So perhaps a 1967 movement in a 1964 case?

Well, whatever it is, I still love it. I think the curves on the case are beautiful, the face and hands are really classy, and the original 1036 "beads of rice" bracelet is stunning. I can't believe a 45-year-old watch can still look so good and work so well.

The best Teen movies of the 80s

• Ferris Bueller's Day Off
• Heathers
• Class
• The Sure Thing
• O.C and Stiggs
• Teen Wolf
• Weird Science
• Back To The Future

Ferris got the most votes. Back To The Future is allowed even though it was also a very mainstream movie, which most Teen films weren't. It does have that warm 80s soul.

Sorry, no room for Pump Up The Volume - because unbelievably it was made in 1990, even though it's undoubtably 80s to the core.

The Joy of Tape

They had been nagging for a while, in moments when I really had nothing better to do (apart from real stuff like cleaning windows).

The tapes. The comedy tapes, once revered, now relegated to a cardboard box in the loft. Blessed radio comedy, recorded from the radio in the 80s and 90s. Listened to again and again on my Aiwa boombox, played on my Sony Walkman when I rode my Emelle mountain bike to the shops. I listened to them to go to sleep.

And then they were neglected. I went to university. House moves pushed them to the back of the cupboard, and CDs rose to replace the medium. One day I realised that there wasn't a single cassette recorder in the house any more. But those C90s have been sat there all this time, waiting to be heard again.

I had forgotten the rite of the radio show tape recording sesh, the same every time, be it for comedy, the chart show, or even Andy Kershaw's Ghanaian Banjo hour. It is a lonely ritual. It cannot be performed in company. The ideal time to do it is late at night. The later the better - you are a disciple of radio. Nobody is as dedicated as you to this task.

• Cue the tape (wind it past the clear bit to the rich brown ferrous oxide, or gun-metal grey chrome if you're posh). 
• Press record and pause. Wait for it - wait for the continuity announcer to stop waffling - got to be perfect when you release that recording head onto the virgin stream of plastic.
• Unleash! And listen. This is not a fire-and-forget process. You have to be present when you record off the radio. Especially, you listen for the tell-tale change when with lightning reflexes you flip that baby out of the soft-eject and turn it over, missing valuable seconds of precious airtime. It's a very specialised martial art.

When it's over, you might have 15 minutes of space left to fill. The choices! Leave it running - record half of Loose Ends with Ned Sherrin, or some groovy John Peel. Or just put some random Hendrix on there. Fill the void. 

And then the labelling! The little set of stickers. They must be filled in carefully. You'll wish you put the date on when you find them in 2011. Look at the handwriting, that was you. Not a care in the world, just this tape. And the track listing to be filled out precisely on the inlay - so you have to listen to it all again! Judicious use of the FFWD. No problem if you have a swanky deck with fast seek.

So now the choice is to let them decay in that box, or once more set your nose to the grindstone and rip them to MP3? Good luck, this will take an investment in technology. This is where the New You will shake your head at the patience of the old. To rip tape to digital takes dedication anew. The cueing. The waiting. The godawful slowness and fuzziness of it all. Is it Dolby B? C? Is that tape counter counting is seconds? If not, why not? Do I really have to sit here in real time? Crazy. But you do it for the content. Those nuggets of your past laid down so conscientiously. Transmuted from the spool to your iPod. 

Now you can throw that tangly old plastic crap away and forget to backup your hard drive at your leisure.

Et voila: http://soundcloud.com/zootius/victor-lewis-smith-radio-1