“It’s alright to say things will only get better.  You haven’t lost your brand new sweater.”

RECORD STORE TALES PART 135:  Back In A Tracksuit

Way, way back, in Part 15, I talked about a band called the Sultans Of Ping F.C.  (F.C. stands for Football Club.)

Their album, Casual Sex in the Cineplex, was discovered in-store by T-Rev and quickly spread to the rest of us. It was Irish punk rock with hilarious lyrics!

My brother knows Karl Marx
He met him eating mushrooms in the public park
He said ‘What do you think of my manifesto?’
I like your manifesto, put it to the testo   – (“Where’s Me Jumper?”)

That album spread line fungus among us.  One problem:  there was just one copy in the entire chain of stores.  And all of us wanted it.  So, the CD went on hold into a “store play” pile.  Anybody could listen to it on their shift, but it stayed in the store.  That arrangement lasted a few months.

But T-Rev remembers this much more clearly than I do.  I’ll let him take over:

Here is the official “Sultans Of Ping F.C.” story! We stumbled across this album, as Mike has said, completely by happenstance, put it on, laughed our heads off…history was made!

So, none of us wanted to put it “on the floor” for sale, fearing it would be gone forever, so I put it in my “pile” and there it sat for probably 3-4 months. Other staff members would listen to it (even when I was off) and just put it back in my pile at the end of the night. They didn’t want me to buy it either, as that would mean it would leave the store and enter my collection…which meant we couldn’t listen to it at the store (obviously), and I enjoyed the laugh occasionally. So it kind of became a sort of “store copy”.

One day, the boss came in and it was playing. He hated the album from the get-go (as he got a taste of it shortly after we discovered it) and he made a comment about it still being here in my “pile” and said “if you are not going to buy it, then put it out for sale!” so I did, reluctantly (thinking it would never sell anyway, and i’d be able to snag it later “unnoticed”). That same day, just before shift change, Matty came in and perused the new arrivals (as he often did prior to starting his shift).  He found the “Sultans” in said area and looks at me and says “You’re not buying this? Fuck, I will!!”…and the boss sold it to him right in front of me.

That’s the last time I have ever seen an actual copy of that album (although I have a downloaded copy of it now) – not the same!

Should’ve put it in the “Saskatoon pile”!

“Back In A Tracksuit”…”Two Pints of Raza”…”Where’s Me Jumper?”…”Give Him a Ball and a Yard of Grass”…all great tunes, funny yet insanely catchy and quirky!

I remember that we could barely understand the words, and “Indeed You Are” sounded to us a hell of a lot like “Konnichiwa”!

I know that Trevor did once locate a CD single from the Sultans.  Was it “Japanese Girls”?  Trevor adds:

I have 2 CD singles as well!!

Coincidentally, I have EVERY OTHER Sultans album except Casual Sex…

I have never seen an actual physical copy of Casual Sex again either.  A guy in Ireland burned me a copy and mailed it to me, but the sound’s not that great, and the speed sounds a little off.

Still, great songs.  Anybody got a copy?  You could have a bidding war between me and T-Rev!