1987 - WTF

It is the summer of 1987 and, for a twenty-one year old undergraduate, life is pretty good. I've passed my second year exams and I'm back home for three months, eroding my overdraft by working at Oddbins in Shepperton, where I have met comics artist, Glenn Fabry, who is a regular customer. In exchange for a case of Special Brew, he has agreed to draw a cover for my band's new collection of songs.

Indeed, the band is one of the reasons that I'm so happy. An introduction to a keyboard player called Simon Foster last autumn has, despite its unprepossessing beginnings (we don't agree about anything to do with music), led to the recording of an eight track tape called 'Tereschenko' at Easter, with which I am very, very pleased. Now, with the addition of two of my school friends - Danny Wheeler on drums and Stu Boa on bass - we are writing and rehearsing a collection of new songs for a tape that I'm planning to title 'Bizarre Fathers'.

One particular day, which I expect was a Wednesday, I was sat at the dining table in my parents' house. The reason that I think it was a Wednesday is that I was reading one of the music papers - probably Melody Maker - and that is the day on which they were published. Back in those webless days, the music press was the principle method by which we gained information about the vinyl which was still music's true currency.

Leafing through its pages, possibly sipping a cup of tea or instant coffee, I come across an article on the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu's album, '1987 (What The Fuck Is Going On?)'. I am in the early days of my crush on Bill Drummond, so early, in fact, that I'm not actually sure whether I like him or not. I'm also not sure about sampling, which he and his partner in crime, Jimmy Cauty, have embraced with extraordinary enthusiasm, taking large sections of Abba's 'Dancing Queen', for example, to use in their track 'The Queen and I'.

Abba, clearly unimpressed by this theft of their magnificent pop, have, via their lawyers, decided that the album must be withdrawn from sale and the legal powers that be have agreed with them. Copies of the album, which would have retailed at £3.99 are already selling for far more, perhaps as much as £50. 

Suddenly, I am keen to get a copy. Not because I want to turn a profit or because I think one day it will be worth a lot more but because I am A Record Collector. Mostly this expensive but harmless habit of mine is limited to collecting rarities and bootlegs by the bands that I love so this urge to get hold of '1987' is a little bit of a departure.

I go out to the hall and get out the Yellow Pages. I look up the 'phone numbers of the record shops in Kingston - Our Price, Beggars Banquet and the prosaically named The Record Shop - and ring them in turn. No one has a copy. I realise that I don't really know any other record shops, apart from those up in Liverpool, so I return to the Yellow Pages, calling places that are, I think, reasonably nearby.

Eventually, I find myself calling Our Price in Farnborough. In those days, people who work in record shops both command and demand respect from us, the record buyers, by dint of their position. (The excellent film 'High Fidelity' captures this with depressing accuracy.) Thus, once it's clear I'm a punter and not someone calling from head office, I have have to cajole the chap at the other end into checking the racks but eventually he does and, to my delight, confirms they have one copy. Next I have to convince him to put it to one side for me without giving away the reason that I'm so keen to get my hands on it, which I also manage to do.

It's about thirty miles to drive to Farnborough, which will take about three-quarters of an hour. I spend the entire journey worrying that someone else will go in and ask for the record, which has now taken on a whole new level of desirability. In fact, I feel sick when I imagine the expression on the face of the man behind the counter as he tells me that I wasn't quick enough and that he's sold it to someone else. I fear it will be gleeful.

Eventually I arrive. I have to find somewhere to park and then I have to find the record shop itself, so I'm getting flustered. Walking in, though, I find myself suddenly feeling a little calmer. This is familiar territory for me: the racks of vinyl, the music playing, the guy in the t-shirt behind the till, this is an environment in which I'm very comfortable. Plus I'm looking pretty cool: I can command a bit of respect myself here.

I approach the counter and the young man gives me the slight upwards jerk of the head that indicates I am indeed in receipt of some kudos. "Hi", I say. "I rang earlier about the JAMS album". Will he, I wonder, realise that I'm referring to the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, or embarrass himself by thinking that I mean The Jam. Such jousting is all part of the record buying process.

My swagger evaporates instantly, however, as I reach the counter: he is reading  the music paper and the page he has open in front of him contains the article that started my quest, this morning. It's a little way down the page and I wonder if he's got that far yet. I look at him and he looks at me.

"Oh yeah, I've got it here for you" and, as he pulls the album out from under the counter, so I move towards the till, away from the music paper. I produce my five pound note, resisting the urge to push it into his hand but he's still working the album into a bag. Eventually, though, he takes the fiver, rings it through, and gives me the change and the album. That's it; it's mine now.

Now. 

Now, it's 2015. Nearly thirty years have passed. Long enough for me to make the connection with Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On?' and for all my vinyl to be located in the garden shed, unplayed for maybe twenty years. Over these two decades, the majority of these albums have been replaced on CD, remastered mostly, at least once. I can't bear to get rid of the vinyl, though. 

God, I can't bin them, nor can I sell them. 

However, I have found a friend, a real music lover and, crucially, someone who is passionate about vinyl, who will give them a good and loving home. So now I'm in the shed with Charlie, Dan and Abi. Charlie is 24, but I doubt I've ever played her a record. They are ferrying the records up to the car for me, while I sort through them one last time. 

I tell them stories as we go along: why there are five copies of Simple Minds' 'Sons and Fascination'; how the 'Blue Monday' 12" lost Factory Records money; what a 'promotional copy' is; about the time I bought my first bootleg album (Simple Minds' 'Selfluminous') from the record stall in Kingston's Apple Market'; of the time when I impressed a sixth former by recognising the song he was singing was 'Pleasure City Avenue' by Girls At Our Best. So many, many stories.

In the end, there were maybe thirty or forty records that I couldn't give away, ones I'll never play again but which have an insurmountable sentimental value, like first 12" I ever bought (Depeche Mode's 'New Life'). These records, including a copy of each Kraftwerk album and Gary Numan's 'Replicas', will stay in the shed a bit longer. 

It's a stressful experience; I'm giving away a good ten years of my life. This here is a collection assembled through nothing more complicated than a deep, abiding love of music. It is three or four hundred stories, all intertwined. And tomorrow, I will give it away.