Penny Farthing

Release July 12

Not for sale

Promotion copy

The Flower Pot Men

Let’s Go To San Francisco

The promotional copy of the 1967 single is still in its original black and white paper sleeve. 

Who was it that more than forty years ago received a free copy of the record and where did they play it?  Radio Eireann? Hardly!

Anyway, the record label is overstamped “Capital Radio Record Library”, so for at least seven years it must have lain somewhere until Capital began in London in October 1974.  Where has it spent the forty odd years of its life?

The first seven years must have been gentle enough, or it would never have been good enough quality to have made it into Capital’s library.  Did Penny Farthing records send promotional discs out to dance hall DJs and to pirate stations?  If it had been sent out to one of them, they mustn’t have played it much.  Where did Capital Radio buy a disc released seven years previously?  Maybe it had been lying in the record company’s own storage for that time.

And after Capital dispensed with their vinyl?  How long ago would that be?  Fifteen years? Twenty years?  Where did the record go then?  Who has played it in the intervening years?

Who picked up a redundant 7″ single in London and brought it to Dublin?  Who decided they no longer wanted it and sold it, and for what?  A few cents amongst a job lot of records that were accumulating dust?

How long did it lie in a box on a stall in a Dublin arcade until being pulled out on a sunny April morning? €2, £1.50, 30 shillings. How much would it have been in 1967? Two shillings?  Not that it was for resale anyway.

The story of the record will remain unknown, but I bet today was the first time it was ever played on a 1965 Dansette!