To start off with, maybe I was too harsh on yesterday's single. It's been going round my head since then. Above this block of text is the video, which they apparently made inside an old apple mac.* Above that, if I've got the formatting of this blogging stuff right, should be a scan of my single. I never noticed until I was digging in the singles box for a candidate but while the title and artist are printed on the card, the other writing is by hand. "Pony" and "Peepee" are the designated noms de guerre for the two ladies pictured and Chris is another band member. The other two had to make do with signing it on the back. Wowser, a rare find.
A break now for some history. Recent history. The Chalets were from Ireland, they're not together any more and I don't know what any of them are doing now, although I'll hazard a guess that Pony and Peepee don't sign their credit cards like that any more. If they ever did. I suppose if anyone questioned it they could just take the single out of their handbags and show the sceptical official. Not this one of course, this one my memory tells me I got in Avalanche Records on Cockburn Street for 99p, but I know I was only aware of their work, so to speak, because I saw them support Art Brut in about 2005, (I've still got a poster with the exact date on it, somewhere, but I don't have it to hand.) so I might have bought it directly from the band themselves, which would explain the signatures, but I don't think I did. It wasn't a hit and they didn't have any hits, none in Britain anyway and only managed one album. They were good live though, even if the single doesn't really stand up 4 years later.
What I really wanted to address though was value - it always flashes through your mind when you see a signature. There can't be many of these around - 2005 was still the era of the cd single, with vinyl typically given one pressing of say 500 copies and not kept in print, whereas the cd single in this case at least, is still available from the record label's website, and typically received as many repressings as demand warranted. Of those 7s pressed, we can assume that most of them are unautographed. My copy's in excellent condition, so maybe I've got a goldmine sitting in my scanner.
It's a tempting thought, but it doesn't translate to reality. Yes, it's rare, but noone cares about The Chalets, not even their webmaster, who had ensured that their website is a sort of shrine to 2007. Value is driven by demand, not supply. Ebay is a good, though unscientific, barometer and illustration of my point. At time of writing you can buy a mint, unplayed 7inch for £2.49 and you can get a signed one, just like mine, for £8.99-or-best-offer, which is clearly a figure the seller pulled out of his or her bottom. (Incidentally, the seller seems to have put the wrong blurb with the listing, unless Paul Weller has changed his name to Pony) The reality is that the signed one is worth the same as the unsigned one, because the "Chalets Collector" market doesn't exist, unless it's old mother Peepee filling up her daughter's old room. Noone cares that 5 people you've never heard of have written the names of their choice on it and unless one of them wins X-Factor noone will. It's the transitory nature of fame illustrated in black plastic.
*I suppose it's not so bad. At least they don't look like Andrew Collins sat next to a sex doll.
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