Today I did something I’ve been considering for a while now but never actually got round to doing it. No, I’ve not not taken early retirement (at least not for now…) but I HAVE finally brought my dusty old vinyl record collection out of retirement and it is now proudly on display in the house again after spending the past 20+ years in various garages, spare bedrooms and of course, attics!
I guess the real reason for my hesitancy to do this was that I wanted to be 100% certain that I had approval from ‘the management’ here at Music In The Attic HQ before taking the plunge and dragging my collection out of its hiding place and into the lounge! 😜 I bet she can’t wait to get her ears blasted by Motörhead and Metallica… 🤣
Joking aside, most of my records were purchased in the 1970s and 1980s – a period in my life when I mostly listened to hard rock and heavy metal. Infact I didn’t own a CD player until 1989 so was a bit late to that party, but that’s when I really started to broaden my tastes in music. Unfortunately Caroline isn’t a fan of rock and metal so, unless she wants me to get all of my old CDs down from the attic (of course I kept those too!) I’ll need to be selective with my listening hours when I come to play some of these classic platters. This neatly brings me on to my next point…. I don’t actually have anything to play them on yet so if anyone has any top turntable tips and the best ways to hook one up to a SONOS speaker network please drop them in the comments below or on the Music In the Attic social media channels, cheers!
Upon first inspection my records appear to be in fairly good condition considering some of them are now over 50 years old. My biggest regret is that I used to store them in a spare room many years ago, a room where our two cats would secretly go to sharpen their claws…. and usually on the spines of my records! Unfortunately this ‘CATastrophe’ (sorry) resulted in many of my album covers looking a bit tatty around the edges, literally. Apart from that though they still look great and just looking at them conjures up many happy memories of my youth. I am really looking forward to revisiting some of these albums whilst staring in awe at the incredible artwork and reading the sleeve notes again, just like I did back in the day and before our music became so ‘consumable’ on our laptops and mobile phones…
So far I have literally just lifted my records out of storage boxes and put them onto shelves. I’ve not yet gone to the trouble of alphabetising them or putting them in colour order like teenage me would have done. I might not even bother to be honest – it’s probably more fun to to just close my eyes and pull out a random vinyl album to play! I also intend to catalogue my collection over on Discogs and to get an estimation of what the records are worth (but I may not tell the wife or they could be gone again just as quickly as they resurfaced!) 🤣
Needless to say, you’ll be hearing a lot more about my vinyl collection over the coming weeks and months, here on the website and over on the social media channels so if you’re a vinyl enthusiast please stay tuned. There’s some real bangers in the collection along with a few ‘quirky’ little numbers which should bring a smile to your face…
Watch this space!
My ’70s Glam Rock Childhood
See more of my old vinyl here!
Should Management ever force a reduction in your vinyl inventory, please let me know. 😊
Haha! Will do 🤣