The source of a substantial part of my music collection in recent years (particularly since starting Club 30-80) has been charity shops and market stalls. The town I live in has four or five along the main street and there is a market nearby every Saturday and Sunday and I sometimes work my way from one end to the other, picking up bargains as I go.
The other day, I popped into the local British Heart Foundation shop to rifle through their discs and was stopped dead on the spot! There, in the vinyl baskets were the whole back catalogue of Japan albums. Japan were my all time favourite band growing up, I was so obsessed by their sound, the aesthetic of their record sleeves and the image they portrayed to the point where my mum once said “I think you love David Sylvian more then you do Jesus Christ!” and actually, thinking about it, yes, I did! Anyway, all the albums were present, from Adolescent Sex all the way through to their live album (which I never really liked) Oil on Canvas! I don’t normally buy second hand vinyl but I never owned either Adolescent Sex or their compilation album Assemblage on vinyl and I suddenly felt that I really NEEDED to buy them. So I did.
I tucked the albums under my arm and continued my way up Bedford Street and stopped in at the YMCA shop to continue my scavanging. I picked up three or four CDs there and took them to the counter where I made a point of telling the young woman behind the counter that it was just the CDs and that I had bought the albums from the shop down the road.
She stopped and did a kind of double take at the records under my arm and said “Oh my God, where did you get them from? I was obsessed with David Sylvian when I was younger!” So I told her, and when I went back into the British Heart Foundation shop a few days later, the remaining Japan albums had all gone!
Club 30-80 