Memories of a Long-Defunct Record Shop

Most people of a certain age have fond memories of a record shop from their youth. The fondness of these memories is not always in proportion to the reality of the retail experience, but nostalgia has a way of smoothing off the rough edges and presenting the past in flattering soft focus: that old 'the war-years-were-the-happiest-days-of-my-life' syndrome. In common with all teenagers I believed my home town to be the dullest place on the planet and, as commuter-belt towns went in the 1980s, Berkhamsted must have been a serious contender for that title. Woolworths and W.H. Smith both had record departments, but they were staffed by people who wore uniforms and looked like my parents. One day these people would be selling LPs, the next they might be on the pick 'n' mix - music was just another commodity to them. Thank God then for J & J Records.

The site of J & J Records today

If I close my eyes I can still taste the carcinogenic, metallic tang given off by all those sweating PVC sleeves in that tiny space. And it was a tiny space. The shop-front itself gave the illusion of a normal-sized store, but some architectural brain-fart had resulted in a premises that was not much more than a corridor; a tapering, almost triangular one at that. When you opened the door to the shop you could pretty much start rifling through the record racks on the opposite wall without crossing the threshold. The widest point housed the counter where two surly staff members took it in turns to be unwelcoming in the small space by the till. Tetchy, condescending and unhelpful: yes, they satisfied all of the traditional record shop personnel character traits! I remember returning a copy of Rose Tattoo's Rock 'N' Roll Outlaws twice because of a pressing fault and being accused of only returning it because I didn't like the music. I did eventually prise a third and playable copy from them which I still have some 35 years later. How I persuaded the patronising git behind the counter to exchange the LP again, I don't know. Perhaps I threatened to get my dad onto him.

To the left of the counter, along the back wall stood a rack of largely ancient 7" singles, mixed in with a handful of new releases. I remember a Canned Heat single that seemed to be a permanent resident. Periodically, I would pick it up, study it and wonder what strange sounds it contained. It never occurred to me to buy it and find out, but then those were the days when my pocket money limited me to just a couple of vinyl purchases per month: I couldn't afford to make mistakes. The staff could sometimes be persuaded, albeit reluctantly, to dig out a notepad and a sheet of carbon paper if you wanted to order something they didn't have in stock. This is how I got hold of my cherished copy of Blitzkrieg's Buried Alive 7"; a record that left me reeling when I heard it on Tommy Vance's Friday Rock Show. Sadly, I missed a trick, as it was Lars Ulrich not me who, inspired by the flip-side, Blitzkrieg, formed Metallica using that track as a sonic blueprint. Above the singles hung a black velvet-covered pin board filled with badges, many of them miniature, lapel-sized versions of those mirrors you could buy in the Seventies and Eighties with a band's photo and logo printed on the glass. I'm pretty sure I bought one of these with the ELO spaceship printed on it in red and black.

For a small shop, J &J certainly managed to cram a lot in. There were racks of LPs against the window between the counter and the door, beyond the 7" singles along the back wall, and inhabiting the shop's narrowest point at the end opposite the counter. I don't recall the stock being split up according to genre, but it must have been alphabetical at least. The staff didn't seem to differentiate between new and used records as they were all racked together. It was only years later that I was studying my copy of Kate Bush's Never Forever which I had bought thinking it was a brand new UK release, only to discover that it is, in fact, a Greek pressing.

No doubt there were albums in the racks that, if I had a time machine, I would snap up in a heartbeat given the opportunity. Surreptitiously, I always had my eye on a copy of Electric Ladyland which to this day I remember had a £4.99 price tag on it, but I was never brave enough to pick it up, let alone take it to the counter as I couldn't face the inevitable humiliation that would come from being accused of only wanting it for the sleeve which, being a UK pressing, happened to be plastered with a gatefold's-worth of naked women. My thirteen year-old self often thought that this album, with all those worldly-wise, confident, intimidating women staring out from the cover, not Hendrix's debut, should have been the one called Are You Experienced?. I sometimes lie awake at night wondering if I was shamed out of buying an original Track label pressing.

Despite the ritual humiliation, I loved that shop. Neither the misanthropic staff nor my pubescent awkwardness could diminish the joy of being surrounded by the vinyl treasures that I was starting to discover. Every record sleeve had a story to tell, some nugget of information waiting to be unearthed. Names, faces, studios, instruments, producers: I absorbed them all, and the more I learnt, the more I wanted to know. I spent many a school lunch hour at J&J, topping up my education. I was in heaven.

By the time I was sixteen, the VCR was king, and J&J wanted in on some of that video rental action. Somehow they managed to squeeze what seemed like a huge selection of titles into that tiny corridor. No doubt much of the vinyl was edged out to make way for Back To The Future, Weird Science, Porky's and Risky Business, but I can't say that I noticed as, by that time, a gang of us were making regular trips to Virgin, HMV and the Record & Tape Exchange stores in Camden Town, Notting Hill Gate and the Goldhawk Road, our horizons having expanded beyond our mundane little town. J&J was still an important part of our lives though. Where else were a bunch of sixteen year-olds going to get their hands on the soft porn and splatter movies that made up the bulk of our viewing when our parents were out of town? Of course, the writing was on the wall for J&J Records once it ditched the vinyl, lured by the easy money promised by the video rental boom. Funnily enough, even as a video outlet J&J managed to further my musical education. During an evening of teenaged drunkenness accompanied by a screening of yet another Electric Blue movie, I found myself transfixed, not by the soft focus, soft porn on screen, but by the pulsing musical accompaniment to a ridiculous fantasy sequence involving a naked woman, a bike and a long drop from a cliff. What's this music? Does anyone know who this is? Anyone? My friends all drew blanks. Realising that I couldn't hire the tape every time I wanted to hear it, I had to find out who was responsible for this amazing music. Fortunately, a few clues in the lyrics eventually led me to Steve Miller's Gangster Of Love: one minute and twenty-four seconds of stoned, throbbing, funky, head-nodding, west coast weirdness.

I have vague recollections of another J&J Records bricks and mortar shop on the edge of Hemel Hempstead market. I'm pretty sure that's where my copy of Prism's See Forever Eyes came from - a steal at 99p. From the little I remember, the Hemel store was little more than a broom cupboard, but sometimes there was a stall on the market selling vinyl which may have been a spill-over from the shop. J&J Records was best known locally though for its stall on Watford's Charter Place market. It was manned by the two Js (Janet and John Lang) who gave this modest business empire its name. As market stalls go, it was huge; certainly much larger than the two shops combined. I began my music collection in earnest here, picking up second hand cassette tapes for small change: Thin Lizzy's Live & Dangerous and Deep Purple's In Rock. Clearly first loves make a deep impression as I still rate those as two of my all-time favourite albums. Once I came to realise that tapes are a bit crap, I graduated to vinyl, digging through the market stall's many records for gems such as my original UK pressing of UFO's Obsession (complete with poster).

There was something almost other-worldly about buying records from a stall in a covered market, the air thick and funky with the smells of ripe fruit, dog biscuits, fish food and bacon butties, but despite that and the surly service in the Berkhamsted shop, my fondest memories are of that cramped, inhospitable space.

Click here for a local newspaper report on the demise of J&J Records and here for a website that archives information on Britain's record shops.

The Best Music Of 2014

Despite constant doom-mongering in the press and amongst music lovers in general, I can't help but think that the business of making music, if not the business of selling it, is in a pretty robust state of health. The sheer quantity and variety of new music has arguably never been greater. True, much of what comes out today owes a debt to music from other eras, but the best new artists take familiar ingredients and cook up something fresh and exciting with them, and so its been since the birth of The Beatles and The Stones. Part of me mourns the days of my early teens when discovering new or unknown music was restricted to digging through a friend's older brother's record collection, scouring the pages of the weekly music papers, or tuning in to Tommy Vance on a Friday night, but nostalgia is a disease that can leave the sufferer in limbo, in a state of musical dementia, grasping at fading memories of the familiar, whilst stumbling confused and oblivious through the here-and-now. My format of choice may be due its telegram from the Queen, but my means of discovering new music is decidedly 21st century. Give me the internet over Melody Maker and Sounds any day of the week!

A friend quizzed me recently on my favourite albums of 2014. Here's what I came up with; a potent mix of youth and experience, including albums that I would never have discovered without a broadband connection and an undiminished hunger to hear something new. In no particular order then...

* David Crosby - Croz

My five year-old saw Crosby on the sleeve and asked if Father Christmas had made an album. If he had, it couldn't be any more magical. How can a man who's been recording since before I was born still produce music of such beauty and vitality?

* The Dowling Poole - Bleak Strategies

I've long been a fan of the curmudgeonly Willie Dowling, from his days fronting The Grip, to playing alongside the Wildhearts' C.J. in Honeycrack, and his under-appreciated efforts knocking out bitter and twisted power pop with Jackdaw 4. Let's hope The Dowling Poole are similarly under-achieving. I'd hate to see how success and contentment might fuck with the man's artistic muse.

* Morgan Delt - Morgan Delt

Song structure is pretty thin on the ground, but as a psychedelic mood piece Morgan Delt's LP is a corker, combining hazy, swirling, effects-saturated drone with Piper At The Gates Of Dawn whimsy and Hawkwind-esque lysergic paranoia. What a trip!

* Rival Sons - Great Western Valkyrie

I'm not sure any artist has a hope of being world-straddlingly huge in a world of Spotify and panicky, rabbit-in-the-headlights record companies unless they are Simon Cowell-marketed, lowest common denominator, disposable, ring tone fodder, but if ever any band looked and sounded capable of defying the odds, it is Rival Sons. Commanding on vinyl, captivating on stage and far too envelope-pushing to warrant that lazy 'retro' tag, in another era Rival Sons would have had Led Zeppelin looking nervously over their collective shoulders.

* AC/DC - Rock Or Bust

There's nothing new here, but then that's never been the point with AC/DC. If it's reinvention you want, bugger off to Bowie. Rock Or Bust gives you more of what you love with song titles sourced from the most limited vocabulary in rock and a selection of choruses that you can't help but shout along to. The real beauty of this album lies in the fact that despite losing Malcolm Young to Alzheimer's, the band sounds like it's having so much fun. Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

* Lionize - Jetpack Soundtrack

Incorporating elements of funk and even dub into their hard rock sound without ever sounding contrived, Jetpack Soundtrack is my entry into a band five albums into their career. Hammond organ and Fender Rhodes make welcome appearances throughout the album, lending warmth and texture to an otherwise very 21st century record. Kind of how Reef might sound with keys, better songs and some of Clutch's attitude.

* Messenger - Illusory Blues

Fronted by the very fella who reunited me with my Jellyfish LP when it went astray, Messenger are a band thoroughly deserving of the plaudits being heaped on them for their folky, melancholic, psych-infused take on progressive rock. Illusory Blues is an album that fans of both Incredible String Band and Wolf People will find many reasons to love.

*Pink Floyd - The Endless River

Many a naysayer, even before they had heard it, poured scorn on this album made up of leftovers from the Division Bell sessions. How churlish and disrespectful to the memory of Richard Wright! This is an album that grows with each listen and its ethereal, meandering quality provides the perfect tribute to the late keyboard player. I prefer it to The Division Bell in many ways, not least because, for the most part, it's instrumental. Never have Roger Waters' acerbic lyrics been so sorely missed as on Floyd's 1994 album. No disrespect to Polly, but Roger's shoes were big ones to fill.

*Bend Sinister - Animals

I discovered Bend Sinister after reading that they had supported Bigelf on their UK tour late last year and had, by all accounts, given the headliners a run for their money. YouTube reveals a band in thrall to Queen, Supertramp and any number of unfashionable Nineteen-Seventies rock bands. Confident lead guitar work, an adept rhythm section and a vocalist whose voice sometimes brings to mind an over-excited Robert Smith, combine with grandiose arrangements built around melodramatic piano cascades, but never at the expense of a killer tune. Imagine what Ben Folds would sound like backed by a proper rock band and rushing his tits off on Haribo and you get the picture. Check out this fantastic footage of the band, in reflective mood, accompanied by the Vancouver Academy of Music Student Orchestra.

* Agusa - Hogtid

Like a game of Chinese whispers I was led to this band by a series of Amazon customer recommendation links. What we have here is superlative progressive rock that recalls Camel and early Wishbone Ash at their most pastoral, laced with Hammond organ, wah-wah guitar, hypnotic elements of raga and Krautrock and an infusion of Scandi folk. I've seen Agusa described as a jam band, but despite being predominantly instrumental, nothing here sounds off the cuff or unrehearsed. Undoubtedly my album of the year.

Drowning in Jim Reeves!

Yep, Jim Reeves made (and sold) a hell of a lot of albums and, briefly, I seemed to own pretty much all of them. Them and a bunch of Top Of The Pops cover version LPs as well as albums by Dolly Parton, Barry Manilow, Leo Sayer, Showaddywaddy, Jive Bunny, Roger Whittaker, Bucks Fizz and Val Doonican. My taste can take unexpected turns occasionally, but trust me, none of those got anywhere near my turntable. Thing is, I lucked out again a few weeks back when I responded to one of those all too rare ads for a record collection offered gratis on Gumtree and managed to get my reply in before anyone else. And yes, despite the Jive Bunny LP I did get lucky because, amongst the hundreds of diabolical 'as advertised on TV'-type compilation LPs and other landfill favourites, there were some vinyl gems.

I did wonder about the quality of the records in the collection when I turned up at a modest West London address on a rainy October evening to find the records all boxed up and ready to go, stacked and packed in such a way as to offer little chance to idly flick through them. The couple offloading them couldn't get them in the back of my car fast enough. The collection, described in the advert as being a mix of styles including Sixties and Seventies rock, reggae and punk, had me fantasising about pristine first pressings of The Beatles, The Stones and Hendrix, with a smattering of Sex Pistols rarities. When Mr Offloader let slip that the collection contained a lot of his mum's old records, the Songs From The Emerald Isle LP that drew my gaze suddenly looked to be a harbinger of doom. Still, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, even if that horse is of the Trojan variety and covered in thick dust and the odd stray pube.

As I drove home with records filling every last nook and cranny in my car, each red light offered the chance for a quick flick through the crate of vinyl on the front passenger seat. Black Lace's Party Party featuring Agadoo. Oh Jesus! Max Bygraves' Singalongamax. Noooo! Then, my fingers walked their way to a copy of The Open Window album on the Vanguard label. Not so long ago I got outbid on this LP on eBay. Result! I decided at that point that even if there was nothing else worth hanging onto - the rain, the dirt, the heavy lifting, the inevitable trip to offload everything else at the charity shop - this album alone made it all worthwhile. The blurb on the rear sleeve attempts to sum up the bizarre and intriguing music on the LP:

"The Open Window has been described by reviewers as a chamber-rock-jazz trio, a pop-classical ensemble, and a folk-rock-raga group, and all the names fit, except that they leave out the honky-tonk piano rolls and the Russian chants."

The release date (1969) and the cover art should give you some idea that, intentionally or otherwise, the Juilliard School of Music-educated musicians on this LP find themselves paddling in the murky, indistinct edges of psychedelia. Perhaps drugs played no part in the creation of this music, but it would most definitely provide a suitable soundtrack to the ingestion of perception altering substances.

It wasn't going to be easy hiding a car-load of vinyl from the missus, so I didn't even try. I think she was just so relieved that I hadn't come home with another pair of speakers that she barely passed comment. Forgoing the surgical gloves and chemical warfare suit that the job demands, I immediately set to work and began searching for gold amongst the crud. At least 200 LPs and as many 7" singles found their way into the charity shop pile without a second glance, but soon I started to find the odd interesting item. The promised punk materialised, albeit not in any great quantity. Apart from a pair of Clash singles and some punk-lite from Toyah, I discovered a couple of Oi! LPs, an Angelic Upstarts album and two Sham 69 albums, both of which have been signed by Jimmy Pursey.

Jimmy Pursey autograph

When not in the mood for Jim Reeves, it seems that Reggae, ska and 2-Tone were the order of the day at Mr Offloader's pad: Specials, Bodysnatchers, Selecter, Madness, Desmond Dekker, Judge Dread and various Trojan label releases, as well as a few interesting soul, funk, beat and folk albums.

I was chuffed to find both stereo and mono US pressings of Deliver by The Mamas and the Papas as well as their If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears LP.

Another US pressing is this album by Spanish band Los Bravos. The title track is one of those that has been aired so often that it's impossible to listen to it objectively, but the rest of the album is surprisingly good Beat / Garage Rock.

The most interesting finds came from rooting through the singles. Amongst the Eighties pop dross and Seventies novelty tunes were lurking some beauties, including South African pressings in picture bags of seven inchers by The Tremeloes and The Square Set. Despite having the same title, they are completely different songs. These don't crop up every day, especially in the UK.

The real treasure in the collection though, has to be an advance promo copy of the ridiculously rare 7", and sole release, by Canadian garage band The 5A.M. Event, who can lay claim to being the only Canadian band to have played at The Cavern Club in Liverpool. According to Popsike, the cheapest copy of this to sell on eBay made £220.

Out of the 400+ albums and 500+ singles in this haul, I've saved about 50 LPs and 150 seven inchers. Of those LPs there are about a dozen that'll find a place in my collection, the rest I'll either sell or trade. One of my local charity shops has gladly taken everything else. Surprisingly, the none-more-metal Mrs Shelf-Stacker asked to keep The Very Best Of Barry Manilow to file alongside her Iron Maiden and Anvil albums. She's full of surprises!

Maniloi! Part of an eclectic collection

Nagaoka MP11 Put To The Test

A couple of weeks ago I installed a new cartridge. The Ortofon MC Vivo Blue was getting a bit long in the tooth, so when I got the chance to buy an unused Nagaoka MP11 Permalloy cartridge for under £40 including postage, I grabbed it with both hands. I wasn't kidding myself that the MP11 would be in the same league as the Vivo Blue, but I had heard that it's a very well regarded cartridge.

Crucially, the Nagaoka is a breeze to install and set up. Even the fiddly little nuts and bolts that secure the cartridge to the tonearm's headshell didn't present too much of a problem once I stumbled on the idea of lightly pushing the nuts into a blob of Blu Tac to hold them steady while I tightened the bolts. Fingers are not made small enough to get a grip on these things, and I don't trust myself with tweezers so close to a delicate cartridge assembly. I have a selection of cartridge alignment tools, all of which leave me bellowing expletives like a scalded Wookie with Tourette's. They piss me off royally! All of them that is except my simple, laminated paper, Audio Origami protractor designed by someone called Seb. If you ever read this Seb, thank you! More info on which set-up tool might work best for you can be found at vinylengine.

I won't go into all the tedious detail of how to install and set up a phono cartridge because other people are better qualified than me to bore and baffle you with all that VTA and azimuth stuff. If you make sure your tonearm is parallel to the surface of your records when you play them, check that your stylus is perpendicular to the vinyl when it sits in the groove, and ensure that your tracking force is set somewhere in the middle to the upper end of the recommended range in order to minimise record wear, then you won't go far wrong. No piece of expensive kit is as essential to successfully setting up your cartridge as your eyes and your ears. If it looks out of whack or sounds like crap, tweak it until it doesn't.

Whenever I install a new cartridge on one of my turntables, I have a selection of go-to albums that  I use to put it through its paces. Obviously, when choosing your go-to LPs you want records that you know really well otherwise you'll have no idea how well the cartridge is presenting the music in the grooves. You will also want to chuck a few challenges in the cartridge's way to see how well it copes. I sometimes use my Shure Audio Obstacle Course LP to see how well a new cartridge acquits itself, but with the best will in the world, it doesn't exactly make for an enthralling listen. Here then are some of the records that I use to test my cartridge set-up:

Roger Waters - Amused To Death

This is a beautifully produced album with a three dimensional soundstage. Apart from the wealth of musical talent on show, the cartridge has to cope with presenting everything from quietly spoken narration and the distant barking of a dog to the sound of a cataclysmic explosion. I always forget when the explosion is coming and it scares the beejesus out of me every time. Even with the demands that it places on a phono cartridge, it's terrifyingly realistic.

Queen - The Game 

Inner Groove Distortion (IGD) is your worst enemy. In an ideal world every side of vinyl would end with a nice mellow acoustic instrumental number so that your cartridge never has to break into a sweat during those cluttered side-ending grooves. Save Me can sound shrill and distorted at the top end with a poorly set-up or underperforming cartridge: those high-pitched, massed harmony vocals are a real test. John Deacon's bass sound is magnificent throughout the album and is reason enough to give The Game a spin.

Ted Nugent - Ted Nugent

Robin Trower - Bridge Of Sighs

Ted Nugent's solo debut and Bridge Of Sighs are always early visitors to the turntable when I install a new cartridge because, for me, they perfectly encapsulate that warm analogue sound that a digital set-up has no chance of replicating. These albums are a perfect complement to a vintage system, especially one that features a tube amp and British speakers.

Pollution - II

Confusingly, this is the band's third album. Pollution's lead vocals are generally handled by Dobie Gray (best known for his solo hits The In Crowd and Drift Away), but Foolhearted Woman features the soulful Joplinesque shriek of Táta. That banshee wail, high and hot backing vocals that tip well into the red, a slab of vinyl that has seen years of hard service, and the fact that this song is a side-closer all conspire to make this a bitch for a cartridge to track. A good cartridge, well set up, will dig through any record wear and find the undamaged portion of the groove. The MP11 is clearly a good cartridge.

Billy Joel - The Nylon Curtain 

Much like Queen's Save Me, Joel's Goodnight Saigon, coming at the end of a side as it does, and featuring a massed chorus of vocals, can sound like an indistinct mush if your cartridge isn't up to the challenge. The Ortofon cart treated this supposed challenge with contempt, sounding as sweet on the inner grooves as on the opening track. I wasn't expecting the Nagaoka to emerge from this particular challenge with its dignity intact, but it copes admirably. It's possible to make out the individual voices that make up the football terrace chant of  "we'd all go down together".

Fleetwood Mac - Rumours 

Christine McVie's vocals on Songbird can be a real test for a cartridge, often falling victim to sibilance and distortion. The MP11 pretty much avoids this pitfall and does a fine job of picking out the subtle acoustic guitar underlying the piano. Apart from anything else, this is an album that has continued to rise in my estimation over the years. It's such a beautiful collection of songs. I really can't pick a favourite between the Peter Green and the Buckingham / Nicks eras.

Godley & Creme - Consequences 

This is a weird and, at times, wonderful album. I'm not sure that I've ever got through it all in one sitting, but one track pulls me back in time and time again. The Flood is like beautiful, sonic water torture, building from a single repeated drip to the titular inundation, with some heavy guitars along the way. When I think I have my cart set up just right, I sit back and let this track, quite literally, wash over me.

Pentangle - The Pentangle

Folk music has to be sufficiently far removed from its hey-nonny-nonny, finger in the ear, Morris dancer-soundtracking norm to find favour round here, but something of the quality of Pentangle's debut album has an open invitation chez Shelf-Stacker. If you want to know what it would sound like to have Danny Thompson playing his double bass in your front room, get your cartridge properly installed, drop the stylus on the last track on side one (Pentangling) and prepare for your jaw to hit the floor. You can almost hear the calluses on Danny Thompson's fingers. Gobsmacking!

Once I'm feeling suitably smug and contented with the sounds being conjured from the grooves by my newly installed cartridge, nothing can beat prolonged immersion in Pink Floyd, The Alan Parsons Project or some early Sabbath.

If you purchase a Nagaoka MP11, one thing you will notice is how much the sound changes and improves after a running-in period of thirty hours or so. After this time there is an almost immediate smoothing off of any rough edges and a general improvement in the over-all refinement of the sound. Any harshness is tamed, the bass becomes more defined, and you stop listening to the cartridge and begin losing yourself in the music - which is how it should be. So, how does the MP11 compare to the Ortofon that it replaced? Well, the first thing you notice about this cartridge is how bleeding beige and ugly it is. It reminds me of an oatmeal-coloured Lada Estate that my mum used to drive. Its unsexy blockiness does however make it very easy to align. The MP11 provides less detail in the mid-range and is not as forward in its presentation as the Ortofon, but apart from that I'm struggling to find any glaring flaws in its performance. It tracks beautifully and is forgiving of less-than-pristine records. I certainly don't feel like I'm slumming it with this highly affordable cartridge and I doubt it will be the last Nagaoka cartridge that I buy.

Buyer Beware: eBay Vinyl Horrors

"Excellent condition" Beatles LP

I'm rarely happier than when the tips of my fingers resemble those of a 30-a-day smoker. If you are in the habit of digging through crates of filthy vinyl, you'll know what I'm talking about - that nicotine-like, digit-coating grime that turns the act of eating a bag of Doritos into a life-threatening experience. You'd think I'd be grateful for the internet and the opportunities that it affords me to sit in the comfort and comparatively squalor-free surroundings of my own home, scrolling through a seemingly endless menu of vinyl tasties that are just a wine-fuelled, caution-to-the-wind bid away from being mine. And yes, I doff my hat to the online auction houses for their ability to liberate me from my cash, but, to my mind, the hands-on experience of rooting through a box of real records is not only more fun, but less likely to result in disappointment. 

I won't pretend that, on occasion, I haven't failed to spot a game-changing edge warp or a stylus-wrecking pothole in my hurry to hand over the readies for a used LP, but on the whole, if I take my time to thoroughly inspect a piece of vinyl, then a record shop or a car boot sale - the REAL PHYSICAL WORLD - is the way to go.

On eBay, sellers seem to fall into one of three main categories:

1) THE CHANCERS.

At the bottom of the heap, and best avoided, are those who have most likely fished a bunch of records out of a skip and are selling them alongside commemorative chinaware, super-sized women's clothing and the front, nearside wing of a Mk II Ford Escort. Buying from these vendors is as risky as having Stevie Wonder set you up with a blind date. They usually provide, at best, one blurry photo of the sleeve and a single line description that inevitably employs the meaningless phrase "good condition for age". Diminishing condition is not an inevitable consequence of age. If a record has been cared for it makes no difference whether it was pressed in 1969 or 2014. The methods for assessing its condition are the same: look at it and listen to it. Sniff it if you must. On the odd, rare occasion, you, the buyer, might get lucky and get a pristine rarity for peanuts, but chances are that you'll receive a record that looks like that same Mk II Escort has been performing doughnuts on it. Even if, by some fluke, the record was in decent condition at the time of being listed, by the time you receive it wrapped in a wafer thin sheet of brown paper on which the vendor has carved your address in green biro (exerting enough pressure to permanently etch the details of your residence into the LP's sleeve and possibly the surface of the vinyl too), you will wonder what ever possessed you to buy from a seller with the eBay ID 'pitbull-luvver69' in the first place.

2) THE PROFESSIONAL DEALERS.

They have a feedback score of 24,538 and a 99.9% positive rating. Impressive ! Well, not especially, as the flipside of those stats is that 245 people have been sufficiently pissed off to leave them negative feedback. However reputable a dealer is, they do not have time to listen to the records they sell and, in my experience sometimes barely glance at the vinyl to assess its condition. They know that with their huge volume of sales, your timid neutral feedback and comment that the 'Near Mint' record that you received was covered in greasy fingerprints and sounded like the soundtrack to a chip pan fire, will get buried under the daily avalanche of 'Top seller. A+++++++++++' comments.

My recent experience of purchasing Eric Burdon and The Animals' Winds Of Change album neatly sums up the pitfalls of buying from high-turnover dealers. I bid on and won the first stereo UK pressing of Winds Of Change on the blue and tan MGM label in VG+ condition. What I received was an utterly trashed copy of Burdon's Love Is LP.

After he had accepted his error and agreed to pay my return postage, the LP winged its way back to the vendor who then sent me a mono pressing with yellow MGM labels. If it had played okay, I'd have cut my losses and settled for the mono copy, but it was in really shoddy condition, played with pretty much constant noise, intrusive clicks and heavy crackle.

That mono Winds Of Change LP

I did eventually get a stereo copy of Winds Of Change (not the UK pressing that I had won, I should add) and a postage refund, but only after weeks of chasing. Unbelievably, I left positive feedback, probably out of relief that the sorry episode was at an end.

3) THE DOWNSIZERS.

For my money, these are the sellers most likely to provide a satisfying online record-buying experience. They have decided that after years in storage it is time to offer their cherished record collections for sale. The downsizer's listings contain all the pertinent photographs to help identify the pressing and condition. They have done sufficient research to know what to put in their listings to grab a collector's attention, but not so much as to have unrealistic expectations of an item's value. There is usually the caveat in their listings that they no longer own a turntable, but that when put in the loft thirty years ago, the records all played well. A no quibble refund generally adds to the reassuring noises that the risk-averse buyer wants to hear. My purchases from downsizers have, on occasion, been accompanied by emails detailing their memories of when and where they originally bought the record that they have just put in the post to me, with sincere wishes that I enjoy the music as much as they have. This is as close to the experience of buying face-to-face as you will get in the virtual world of online auctions. When the record arrives it is packed so sturdily and with such care that getting into it requires the kind of tools that firefighters use to cut people free from car wrecks.

Some online buying experiences beggar belief. Perhaps I should have known better than to bid on a copy of Miles Davis' Agharta LP which was being sold by a vendor who deals primarily in books and comics. His listing contained two photographs; one of the front cover, the other of one of the record labels. Rather than provide specific details of each record he had for sale, he opted to use the following catch-all description, reproduced here from his listing, typos-and-all:

*****

I TAKE CARE TO LIST AS HONESTLY AS I CAN 

AND WILL POINT OUT IF THERE ARE ANY PROBLEMS WITH THE PLAYING OF THE VINYL.

UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED YOU CAN ASSUME THESE TO BE IN GOOD PLAYING ORDER.

THEY MAY HAVE HANDLING MARKS OR LIGHT SURFACE MARKS AS WITH GOES WITH THE AGE OF LP,S.

COVERS WILL BE USED AND SHOW SIGNS OF HANDLING.

*****

For those of you unfamiliar with the Agharta album, it is a double LP. Imagine then how thrilled I was to receive a cigarette paper-thin package containing just one of the two discs. As I pointed out to the vendor, even somebody unfamiliar with Miles Davis' catalogue should have been able to work out that a record with sides 3 and 4 printed on the labels is likely to be part of a two record set. As for taking care to point out any problems with playback, my photo below would suggest that there was a fault that was immediately apparent without the need to test-play the record.

To add to the joyful experience of receiving half an album, the gatefold sleeve opened with a gentle ripping sound as a result of a sticky deposit smeared therein. Needless to say, I procured a full refund. Don't ever let a seller's policy of not refunding the cost of postage put you off. I see no reason why a buyer should be out of pocket because of vendors who, through laziness, stupidity or dishonesty, fail to accurately describe the items they have for sale. I have always found that an email beginning "I am not in the habit of leaving negative feedback, but...." works wonders.

Car Booty

My local car boot sale has been kind to me recently. A couple of weeks back I picked up a mono first pressing of Cream's Disraeli Gears on the Reaction label for £2.00. It's sleeveless sadly, but somewhere down the line I'll pick up a trashed copy with a decent cover and all will be good.

Last Sunday I ignored the overcast skies, hoping that the sellers would follow suit, and headed to my favourite field full of tat. I'm not a morning person (to put it mildly), so dragging my corpse out of bed early on a weekend is not a decision I make lightly. Turned out to be a good move.

You see a broad cross-section of humanity at a boot fair: cosy families selling off the toys their kids have outgrown, blurry-tattooed shysters offloading bootleg electricals, herds of clinically obese take-away tourists mobbing the burger vans at 10am, hippie chicks trying to drum up interest in their hand-made trinkets and knick-knacks, enough people on mobility scooters to fill a multi-storey car park and guys like me, courier bag slung over the shoulder, trying to beat all the other predators to the vinyl treasures that are lurking somewhere in this sea of stone washed denim, Breville sandwich toasters, clapped-out Flymos and foot spas.

The dealers and flippers are easy to spot. They're unsmiling, make no attempt at conversation with the stall holders and clearly resent their competition, that is, the people who buy records for the music contained in them, not for profit. Two weeks ago I had one of these low-lives take a record out of my hand while I was looking at it. I explained to him in unambiguous terms what I thought of his behaviour and he backed off. If he'd waited ten seconds I'd have put the record back in the pile and moved on. As it was I ended up buying a record that I didn't especially want just to spite him. Petty, but satisfying. Perhaps I'm a bit of a hypocrite as I do buy records sometimes and sell them if they don't do it for me or if they're not an upgrade on my existing copy, but they're not a commodity to be turned around for a quick profit. It's all about the music.

If I'm going to relieve a stallholder of a record that they may have cherished for years, I want to hear their stories. Some of the same faces are there every week: the guy who deals in jazz and dog-eared music biographies; the woman who is selling off her husband's vinyl collection in dribs and drabs to boost their retirement income; and the couple who used to be in a band and are offloading their blues records to help fund their next trip to Memphis. Then, this weekend there was a charming lady called Lynne who, hidden beneath the usual boot fair detritus on her stall, had an easily overlooked box of vinyl. As I pulled the records out of the box she became misty eyed as she recalled that her first boyfriend had bought them for her. Did she really want to part with them I asked? The usual story: nothing to play them on any more, and "at least they're going to a good home". I handed over £15 and walked away happy, clutching three LPs by Matthews Southern Comfort (first pressings on Uni / MCA), Procol Harum's Shine On Brightly (mono first pressing on Regal Zonophone), an Incredible String Band album and The Who's Who Are You. Some of them have inscriptions on the sleeve from Lynne's first love. These records have a history. I like that.

I've discovered the brilliance of Charles Mingus recently, so was chuffed to find a near mint copy of his The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady album for a fiver. Continuing the Jazz theme I unearthed a copy of pianist Andrew Hill's Point of Departure LP which was hidden under a pile of godawful hits of the eighties-type albums. It looked like it could be interesting as I recognised the names of some of his collaborators from other albums in my collection. At a quid it seemed worth a punt. As it turns out it's a typically essential mid-Sixties Blue Note album with stellar performances from all concerned. I'm sure that's not news to anyone with a deeper knowledge of Jazz, but Hill's name is new to me.

My interest in vinyl leans heavily towards the long playing variety, but I'm a sucker for a 7" picture sleeve and early singles by classic, or for that matter, obscure bands from the Sixties and Seventies. How could I resist a couple of German 45s by Elton John and Paul Simon each wrapped in a picture bag? A pristine Ray Charles E.P., Slade's In For A Penny, a brace of early Stones singles, the Small Faces' All Or Nothing and Queen's Seven Seas of Rhye are some of the highlights of the dozen-plus seven inchers that begged me to take them home.

I eventually procured a nice original copy of Ten Years After's Ssssh LP after ten minutes of trying to get the stallholder to commit to a price. He seemed uncertain what to charge for any of his stock and was clearly relieved when I made him an offer. He accepted without hesitation. At £7.00 I think I got a good deal. The afore-mentioned pension fund-boosting retirees let me take away a minty copy of The Beatles Live At the BBC double album for £13.00. A steal!

I was about ready to call it a day when a final rummage through what appeared to be another box of uninspiring, commonplace vinyl dross revealed the magic words Half-Speed Mastered - Special Limited Edition in an eye-catching yellow band along the top of an LP sleeve. I've been trying to lay my paws on a half-speed mastered LP for some time now. They tend to go for silly money, money that I'm reluctant to spend, but word is they sound vastly superior to a standard pressing. Or, as the promotional guff that accompanies the records states: "You are about to hear recorded music as you've probably never heard it before." A bold claim. I nonchalantly waved the LP in the vendor's general direction and disinterestedly asked how much he wanted. And so, for a quid I have a minty, half-speed mastered copy of 10cc's Greatest Hits 1972-1978. I have to say, in common with many of the titles given the H-SM audiophile treatment, the original pressings of 10cc's albums ain't too shabby anyway (it's not as if anyone's going to knock out a high fidelity pressing of Stormtroopers Of Death's Speak English Or Die LP anytime soon), but having said that... wow!!! There is a supernatural, inky blackness between tracks and a clarity of detail and imaging that kid you into believing that you are sat in the control room at Strawberry Studios listening to playback in the company of Lol Creme and Kevin Godley.

So many great records for the price of a night down the pub! And without any hint of a hangover or beer gut. Inevitably, this being England, the rain will set in soon and take up residence for the next six months, robbing me of my source of al fresco vinyl sustenance. Fingers crossed for another few weeks of fine weather!