This record has come up in conversation a few times over the years, but not for the music but more for a reflection on how recent technology has made life simpler.
2003 was a collision of two things: my eBay addiction and my Pop Will Eat Itself collection. This record arrived whilst I was away for a couple of nights looking at universities. I returned to Winchester to find seven parcels waiting for me from eBay sellers. It was a good day (combined with a trip to Nottingham the day before and a surprisingly fruitful trip to Lancaster the day before meant I was swimming in new music). eBay was particularly great back then, as it was just people getting rid of things (rather than professional sellers) meaning there were great gems to be found for very little; one man's rubbish, etc. That was particularly true for bands like PWEI who most people didn't care too much about anymore (unrelatedly, it was also good Laserdiscs, another habit of mine in the early 2000's).
The downside, however, was this was era before PayPal, eBay's online transaction platform. This meant the only way to pay for your eBay purchases was to post a cheque (or cash). I've never used cheques as much as I did back then. For younger readers (ha), the reason why cheques are the worst are as follows: after winning the auction, you'd have to write a cheque then post it to the seller; you'd then wait for the seller to take the cheque to the bank (not always convenient to do - lord knows I'm terrible at remembering to cash cheques these days) and then wait up to 10 days for the cheque to clear and the seller to see that the money is in their account; only then would they post you the thing you'd bought. It would be weeks before you'd receive your purchases. How eBay survived that painful process as long as they did, I'll never know.
In the case of this record, I'd found a bargain, but evidently thought it was even more of a bargain than it was; the auction came to £3 (including postage!) but I'd somehow thought it was only £2 and duly wrote a cheque for that amount and put it in the post. On receiving this, the seller emailed to say that I was £1 short (!) so I had to write him another cheque and post that too. Eventually it all cleared and he sent the record. I can see it from his side, you shouldn't let people underpay you, but £1 when you're only getting £3 in total (minus postage) makes it all seem a bit pointless. On the other hand, as a percentage of what he was actually getting for item, it was quite a lot. I routinely bring up this story when complaining about the bad old days of slow-eBaying. PayPal has made life much easier in that case. You can't pay the wrong amount and you definitely don't have to post two cheques to get your dirt-cheap record.
The record itself is little to get excited about (after all that) - there are three surprisingly similar remixes of X Y and Zee from their Cure For Sanity album. It's a song I have a lot of time for, but already have in many much more distinct mixes in various places. The bright yellow record looks great, but is very thin and has knifed the sleeve over the years. Still, it looks nice.
Format: 12"
Tracks: 3
Cost: £3 second hand
Bought: eBay
When: 21/02/03
Colour: Yellow
Etching: Side A: "Ssshhh...don't wake Milky" Side B: "Take your pants off"
mp3s: no
