Due to 'issues' in my teenage years, on and off, I lived in Croydon with my cousins. This availed me of Beano's ('Europe's Largest Second Hand Record Store). I'd spend hours in there. Croydon also had some great independent record shops like Bonaparte's (where Kirsty MacColl worked) and H.R. Cloake. Plus the ubiquitous Our Price, Virgin, Woolworths, Boots, Smiths etc. I could do a full day in them, no problem. The lay out of Beano's, with its extremely dodgy flooring upstairs (singles only, albums downstairs) is as clear to me as any memory. Now, it's a pet shop and where Bonaparte's was is an estate agents or something equally awful. Occasionally, I find myself killing time in a charity shop or mooching in Camden Lock, where I end up buying some rockabilly or doo-wop stuff...but it ain't the same.
So you're the reason my local charity shop had a copy of Take That and Party fo £5.75 when all of the other discs were 99p
The shop never proceeded with my offer (too much like hard work for them) . Sad really, as there are always a few quite valuable CDs sitting in the creates of chaff. The charity org shops allegedly are more smart on books (the staff spot rare books more often than not) .
Some of them don't get clothes at all. I've bought a few biker jackets for the £20 mark, that I've then sold on ebay for up to £100. On the advice of my eldest daughter, I paid £15 for a Stone Island jacket, which I got £150 for on ebay...but they are starting to catch up on clothing. Mrs B's mate used to make a good deal of money on trading on ebay from charity shop buys. It's a lot less now.
Mrs Conn volunteers in a charity shop and often comes home with tales of high end clothing sold dirt cheap because the manager has no idea of the value but her real hate are certain types who go in and blatantly steal from the shop knowing that the staff will do nothing
This would never happen at the charity shop near the V&A There's nothing more dispiriting than seeing what they charge for second-hand Gucci or Prada
Well I've got 3 of those LP's. The TVP's, Half Man Half Biscuit and The Monochrome Set as well as singles by another 2, Fischer Z's The Worker and The Rumour's Emotional Traffic, on green vinyl I might add, but I'm not entirely sure what that means or if it really does mean anything!
You have impeccable taste is what it means! Is the Worker a Picture Disc? Emotional traffic is a great song. I bought that Album in Boots for 50p, and it was possibly the best 50p I ever spent! Though there was a shop in Canterbury that used to put all the singles that had dropped out of the charts into a 50p bargain bin and I picked up quite a few over the years, though it was slightly annoying that they used to sellotape the sleeve so that you couldn't pinch the record!
Unfortunately mine was just the bog standard picture sleeve although I did come across a picture disc copy a few years later for a tenner but didn't bother as I wasn't a Fischer Z collector I just happened to like that single. There did seem to be a lot of singles around 79/80 that were released on coloured vinyl or picture disc that I just happened to like but didn't pursue the band in question past the actual single. A couple of obvious ones for me were The Tubes' Prime Time which I've got on red vinyl although there was a very rare picture disc as well and Bill Nelson's Revolt into Style on blue vinyl. Even now when new bands I like release coloured vinyl records I do get all misty eyed and as a rule grab the vinyl version as well as the CD. The last one being Josienne Clarke's latest LP which was released on clear vinyl with orange and blue streaks! please log in to view this image
News yesterday from Hazel O'Connor's brother that she is in recovery in a French hospital, but like my brother, the effects of the stroke are having a significant effect on her at this early stage and she remains in intensive care. He's asked not go into too much detail, as these matters are personal, which is understandable and again, all too familiar. Best wishes to her and hers.
After the weekend's discussion of why some stuff ends up in second hand/charity shops and other stuff doesn't, I went into a charity shop on Sunday. There's a lot of CD's of major selling albums - your Travis, Dido, Robbie Williams kind of thing. These albums were probably bought in a supermarket, played in the car and eventually discarded. Most people don't listen to their music in the way that they did when they had less alternatives. It's bought as a casual purchase and listened to in the same way. Today, kids don't listen to albums. Many struggle to listen to whole songs.
I don't have the same connection to CDs that I have for vynyl, due to house move and building work my vynyl was put in storage then during the first lockdown I had time to get it out and set up the system again , a record to me has a special place, I love the look of the covers ,liner notes, artwork and the anticipation as the stylus hit that groove I so nearly sold off my record collection but could never do it , CDs to me are music on the move but the cases always break and feel cheap ,artwork and liner notes too small to bother with and they just feel disposable Streaming is all to easy to skip tracks or cherry pick albums , listen to playlists , it has its place in modern life when on the move or pottering about the place but when it comes down to it nothing can replace vynyl for me , glass of red and a favourite album, needle down volume up to 11 and thrash about to your favourite punk or rock tracks Sundays as the dinner is cooking to some blue note jazz , BBQ to classic Reggae I think you can guess I love my records
please log in to view this image Released 40 years ago today. It's a sad indictment of this country that it remains as relevant to life in Britain today as it did when it was released in 82.
So many songs released by bands at that time have relevance today, they had a lot to kick back at , sadly bands are not producing songs like it today
