Unboxing Day

This blog was intended to be an on-going journal of records as I buy them.

Thursday wasn’t a day that I bought records, but was a day when a fairly decent pile came back into my life after a prolonged absence. On Thursday, Crown Removals dropped off my record collection, which had been shipped all the way from the US of K.  

$2000 NZ, five months of waiting, 15 moving boxes (11 of which contained records) and one half days holiday (to receive and unpack, albeit not yet sort) this is what came out:

Vinyl records are a weirdly emotive thing for me. I think the perpetual motion of a record going round appeals to me deeply so it was strange to have one day that was so devoted to a collision of my old and new  lives.

The first box that I opened was this one:

I was so deliberate about how cool my record box looked that I actually planned the stickers well in advance. I’d been saving them for more than a year before I got the box as a Christmas present from an old girlfriend. Unlike a normal record box which is oblong and holds about 60 records, it’s square and holds 100. This means that it weighs as much as an adult human being and it nearly broke my collar bone every time I had to drag it up the gangplank to the Thekla .

The first book out of the gates.. I miss John Peel almost every day.

Mother and child reunion. The first thing I pulled out of this little cutie is my highly illegal ‘Bigger Than Jamrock’ bootleg. (A cut-up of ‘Bigger Than Hip-Hop by Dead Prez and ‘Welcome To Jamrock’ by Damian Marley - that can be totally relied on to quite simply “mash-up the dance”).

Roy Ayers 'Virgo Vibes' Atlantic LP

It’s amazing the things that you forget you have. I saw this in the background of an Amoeba Records ‘What’s In My Bag’ episode a couple of weeks ago and thought, “I’ve got that..”

Gat Decor 'Passion' Flying Nun 12" Single

A quid’s worth of passion. One pound (see sticker top left) from the Imperial Cancer Research charity shop on Gloucester Road in Bristol. Bought literally one week after my sister paid twenty pounds for an original pressing on E-Bay. She was not amused.

Bring on the filth. A weird time capsule of what I was playing the day that I left the UK four years ago. Darker than I remember, actually.

London Philarmonic Orchestra 'Star Wars OST'  LP

I totally forgot that I had this. Jockeying for position as silliest record in my collection.

Curtis Mayfield 'Super Fly OST'  Curtom  LP

Jockeying for position as the best soundtrack that I have on vinyl. ‘Pusherman’ is an absolute belter of a tune.

Iggy & The Stooges 'Raw Power' Elektra LP

Best record cover of all time. Iggy’s clearly from/in outer space here.

There you are old girl. You might not believe this… but (forgive the high E and B strings) still in tune, despite more than six months in a container. I must have played twenty of these before I bought one and was originally desperate for a sunburst one. When I saw her on the wall, it was love at first sight. That was fifteen years ago. We’re working hard on rebuilding our relationship after some time apart seeing other people.

I’d like to say that this sudden influx of records; lots of which I don’t remember (but sort of do), which also include records that I bought online from New Zealand but sent to my record collection rather than to myself, weirdly, and as such have never listened to; will mean that there is actually a hiatus in my purchasing – but I’m not convinced.