At a particular party at a friend's house when I was 18, my friend Nick was trying to remember the names of all the substitute teachers we had at school. Between myself, Nick and Ben we recalled a few of them, but there was one that none of us could remember. Ben and I gave up but Nick was determined to find the piece of information, hidden somewhere deep in his brain. I thought this was a stupid task because we'd long left school and it was very unlikely that I'd ever need to know these names (ten years have now passed and I've not needed them once, but that's not the point). Anyway, Nick argued the point that it's important to remember these things because "no one else is going to remember them for you"; to this day, Nick has no idea of significance that sentence would have for me. I hadn't seen Blade Runner back then, but in my mind that event plays like a more pretentious and slightly-drunken take on the "tears in the rain" monologue.
I spend a lot of time in record shops, buying and listening to records and I'm very fond of my memories of doing so. I love putting on a record and remembering how exciting it was to find it in the racks and play it for the first time, or thinking about what strange series of events caused me to discover a band. I like these memories and it would be a shame for me if one day I could no longer remember them, because that would be one part of the enjoyment I get from my records gone.
Hence this blog. The goal is to write about and photograph all of the records in my ever-growing collection. The internet certainly seems like a safe place to store all of my vinyl memories. Not all of the records will have exciting stories, or fancy sleeves to look at, and very rarely will I have anything insightful or grammatically accurate to say in the sense of a normal record review (I tend to be overwhelmingly positive, but that's because I like at least 95% of the records I own. Otherwise I wouldn't have bought them). But if you enjoy reading about other people's record collections (like I do), please feel free to have a browse and a read - the page called The List has links to all of the records I've written about so far.
The List - all the records I've written about on here so far, alphabetically.
End of Year Lists - Top ten albums of the year, top ten albums from previous years, top ten gigs of the year (for 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016)
