Vinyl Countdown
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Graham Sharpe’s vinyl love affair began in the 1960s and since then he has amassed over 3000 LPs and spent countless hours visiting record shops worldwide along with record fairs, car boot sales, online and real-life auctions. Vinyl Countdown follows his journey to over a hundred record shops across the globe - from New York to New Zealand, Walsall to Warsaw, Oslo to Ozstralia, (old) Jersey to New Jersey - and the many characters he has encountered and the adventures he accrued along the way. VINYL COUNTDOWN VINYL COUNTDOWN celebrates the undervalued, misunderstood significant group of music-obsessed vinylholics, who always want – need – to buy… just one more record. • EXCELLENT BLEND OF MEMOIR, TRAVEL, MUSIC & SOCIAL HISTORY, WITH A GRAHAM SHARPE FOREWORD BY DANNY KELLY (BROADCASTER & WRITER, EX-EDITOR OF NME & Q MAGAZINE) • A GREAT GIFT BOOK FOR MUSIC LOVERS; COMPARABLE TITLES INCLUDE GOING FOR A SONG BY GARTH CARTWRIGHT, WHY VINYL MATTERS BY JENNIFER OTTER BICKERDIKE AND A FABULOUS CREATION: HOW THE LP SAVED OUR LIVES BY DAVID HEPWORTH • IN THE WEEK ENDING 18 APRIL 2019, VINYL SALES IN THE US WERE UP 193% YEAR- ON-YEAR, FROM 282,000 TO 827,000 (GUARDIAN, MAY 2019) GRAHAM SHARPE is 68 years old without any discernible musical ability; 60 years a Luton Town/Wealdstone FC fan; 57 years a keen vinyl record collector; 56 years a record buyer/record shop visitor; 51 years a journalist; 50 years a friend of the late Screaming Lord Sutch; 46 years a William Hill employee; 45rpm and 33rpm fanatic; 44 years married to Sheila; 39 years a Dad; 38 years an author; 23 years retired from playing football; 3 years a grandfather; 0 years a downloader of music. UNCORRECTED SAMPLER COPY: NOT FOR SALE 28th November 2019 Royal PB with flaps inc. 2 x 8-page colour plate sections 978-0-85730-314-1 | eBook available | Oldcastle Books | £16.99 Turnaround Publisher Services 020 8829 3000 PUBLICITY ENQUIRIES: BOOKS OLDCASTLE Please contact Lisa Gooding on [email protected] or 01582 766348 RIGHTS ENQUIRIES: World rights available. Please contact Hannah Whitaker at Rights People [email protected] OLDCASTLEBOOKS.CO.UK/VINYL-COUNTDOWN Vinyl-Sampler-cover.indd 1 8/28/19 10:13 PM Vinyl-Sampler-cover.indd 2 8/28/19 7:44 PM VINYL COUNTDOWN AN OLD SCHOOL RECO RD C O LLECTO R DISC-USSES MATTERS 33 & 45 RPM. VISITING 100s OF RECORD SHOPS FROM OLD ENGLAND TO NEW ZEALAND, GATHERING 3259 LPs, 64 SINGLES & 2386 CDs EN ROUTE Vinyl Countdown sampler.indd 1 29/08/2019 10:56 Also by Graham Sharpe A Gentleman’s Guide to Calculating Winning Bets 1001 Great Gambling Tips Dorothy Paget – The Eccentric Queen of the Sport of Kings (with Declan Colley) William Hill – The Man & The Business (with Mihir Bose) The Man Who Was Screaming Lord Sutch Free the Manchester United One – The Inside Story of Football’s Greatest Scam The Magnificent Seven – How Frankie Dettori Achieved the Impossible Vinyl Countdown sampler.indd 2 29/08/2019 10:56 GRAHAM SHARPE Oldcastle Books Vinyl Countdown sampler.indd 3 29/08/2019 10:56 First published in 2019 by Oldcastle Books Harpenden, Herts, UK www.oldcastlebooks.co.uk © Graham Sharpe, 2019 The right of Graham Sharpe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of the publishers. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978- 0 -85730 -314-1 (print) 978-0-85730-316-5 (ebook) 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Typeset in 11.75pt Goudy Old Style by Avocet Typeset, Bideford, Devon, EX39 2BP Printed and bound by TBC Vinyl Countdown sampler.indd 4 29/08/2019 10:56 To Julian & Helen, who run Second Scene and who not only made me welcome, tolerated my presence, answered my questions, and gave me discounts, but were happy not to demand to see in advance what I’d written about them. I thank them and really hope I’ve done them justice. Vinyl Countdown sampler.indd 5 29/08/2019 10:56 Redundancy after almost half a century spent working for the same company prompted Graham Sharpe to turn to his enduring first love to cushion the blow, sparking a unique autobiographical journey through his life via his ever-growing vinyl record collection; in the process forensically examining every aspect of record collecting; and launching him on an immersive, ongoing ambition – to visit every second-hand record shop in the land, perhaps, even, the world… Vinyl Countdown sampler.indd 6 29/08/2019 10:56 IN WHICH… Foreword 9 Introduction 13 1. I Count My Blessings 15 2. I Reveal How This Book Was Born 23 3. Jack White Denied Vinyl Was Dead 27 4. Vinyl Rises from The Dead 35 5. I Fear A Nightmare Dream 39 6. I’m Shaky All Over 44 7. I’m A Record Lover 46 8. I Ask How Much Mint Matters? 51 9. I’m Out of Condition 57 10. I Tull You About Jethro 61 11. I’m Stoned 65 12. I Discover Psychedelia & Acid Rock… Man! 71 13. I Celebrate My Anniversary Alone 78 14. I Regret Selling My Vinyl Soul for Filthy Lucre 81 15. I Feel Sutch Melancholy 87 16. I Take on A Haunted Look 91 17. I Express My Disdain for Record Store Day 102 18. We Go Kiwi 109 19. Oz Is Wizard 116 20. I’m Hungary For Vinyl 118 21. I Recall Concrete Memories of Local Gigs 124 22. I Act Post Haste 129 23. I Decide Fairs Are Fair 137 24. I Punctuate Hendrix With Grammatical Grumbling 142 25. Addicts, Compulsives and Hoarders Appear 148 26. Mark My Words, I Consider Pathological Collecting 156 27. I Try to Come Clean 162 28. I Sniff Out Julian’s Problem 168 29. I Fail to Score 172 Vinyl Countdown sampler.indd 7 29/08/2019 10:56 8 CONTENTS 30. I Doubt A Bowie Blotch 179 31. The Show Mustn’t Go On 183 32. I Wonder What Comes First – Disc or Gig? 187 33. I Back A Real Winner 190 34. I Bet on My Future Career 194 35. Music Is My First Love 202 36. I Snap – Amen to That! 206 37. I Reveal Vinyl Suicide Techniques 213 38. I Enjoy a Pierless Experience 217 39. I’m Love-Ing It! 220 40. I Stand Julian Up 225 41. I Ask: Could Cds Become The ‘New’ Vinyl? 232 42. I Pose A Question of Moral Judgement 238 43. I Compliment Compilations 242 44. I Channel the Hunt for Record Shops 247 45. I’m Listing to One Side 257 46. I Wonder How to Make Money by Selling Vinyl 261 47. I Contemplate Devastating Loss 273 48. A Loss Is Dealt With, By George! 278 49. I’m Floating an Idea… 281 50. I Come Across Fake News 285 51. I Get Bladdered 288 52. I’m Beatling Along 295 53. An Anorexic Mannequin Is Proudly Regarded 299 54. I Date Julian 301 55. A Friend’s Pleas Don’t Please Me 305 56. I Realise – I’m ‘Record Guy’ 310 57. Vinyl Peeves Appear 313 58. ‘Mountain Boy’ Is Reborn 316 59. I Remember Bruce Langsman 320 60. There Are Deaths in The Vinyl Family 329 61. I Fear Record Shop Rage 333 62. I Wonder Wat’s Going On 338 63. I Sign Off 241 64. …And Vinyly 345 Epilogue 348 Bibliography 349 Vinyl Countdown sampler.indd 8 29/08/2019 10:56 FOREWORD by Danny Kelly (music fan, former editor of NME and Q, helpless vinyl junkie) You hold in your hand a miracle. What other word can you use to describe a book, published two decades into the twenty-first century, about the myriad delights of vinyl records? If, just ten years ago, you’d said that vinyl would now even still exist – never mind be the subject of widespread conversation, adoration and learned tomes – men armed with tranquiliser darts would’ve lurked outside your house, questioning your cognitive health. All of which goes to show just what a long, strange trip the whole world of vinyl has been on. For four decades, from the invention of the Microgroove some seventy years ago, to the coming of CDs, the plastic record (LP, single, album, 45, disc, platter, long-player, shellac, EP and 100 other variants) ruled the musical roost. Records sold in uncountable numbers, became fetish objects; radiograms, stereograms, Dansettes and stereo systems competed with televisions to be the centre of household attention. Every home had records and the means to play them. Discs became identifiers, cultural name-tags. When I was at school in the 1970s, the LP you carried under your arm – Deep Purple, Curtis Mayfield, David Bowie, King Crimson or Nick Drake – spoke of which tribe you belonged to, and broadcast a loud message of how exactly you saw your teenage self. Records were important. Records were loved. Then, with bewildering suddenness, it seemed over. Compact discs were the shiny harbingers of a new world of apparently perfect sound, less cumbersome playback gear and, for those with lots of music, fewer fears of catastrophic spinal damage.