So what with the rebirth of vinyl buzzing around for the last few years, I finally found the time and space to drag down the boxes of records in the loft, dust them off and find the inclination to spin some discs. I'd inherited my parents' record collection which had been muddled with my own. Thus there were kooky mixups such as the Jam's Sound Effects nestled in with Nana Maskouri and Rachmaninov. Aztec Camera next to the Paint Your Wagon soundtrack. Sifting out the crap (cover albums of Bert Bacherach and ABBA, Sesame Street-The Hits) and getting rid of them on Freecycle, I was left with a bunch of records whose covers took me straight back to being nine years old: pampus grass in vases, casapupa rugs, smoked muscles on jatz crackers, lemon cordial, boredom. God bless my dear Dad who had numbered and catalogued every single album in a ring binder, listing all tracks.
There was just one problem, no record player. Not wanting to shell out on some expensive bit of kit, a quick search found me a Chinese made device (quality item, not) which arrived a week later and does the job just fine.
Oh the joy, the memories, the having to drop what I'm doing every five seconds to turn the record over (that sucks). They just don't cut tracks like Swinging Safari any more! Then again Save a Prayer by Duran Duran sounded pretty good too (that might have been later in the eve when a few vinos has been consumed).
It's said smell is the strongest memory jogger, but for me it has to be records, even more so record covers, that take me back. Gold.
