Going through records this last month, having a long overdue, very necessary clear out. One of those ‘do I REALLY need this anymore?’ kind of clear outs rather than just weeding the garden. Having had Serato as my playing out set up of choice since 2006 has meant that I’ve not needed to carry vinyl for a long time (thank god) save for the odd special set. It’s also meant that 12″s or LPs with one decent track can be transferred to digital and dispensed with.

Nothing makes it harder to dispense with vinyl than a nice cover or piece of packaging though and I have bought plenty for exactly that reason with little regard for the music. I found a whole raft of hand-painted promo sleeves which I will scan and put up here at some point, also this rather nice Runaways sleeve by She One.

A good length of time and some hindsight will also clear the unwanted guff though, as is normal when a new strand of music or scene appears, you hoover up all available product, regardless of quality, simply because there’s nothing else to compare it to. Years later the good is easier to distinguish from the bad or just plain average.

Not digging in the collection for a while can yield some surprises too; I was slightly horrified to find a Kylie record in my collection (the one with the Blue Monday/Can’t Get You Out Of My Head mash-up on the B side). But pleasantly surprised to find that a lot of the old Pussyfoot catalogue had stood the test of time – still full of undiscovered treasure and that the Richard X album was a pretty excellent pop record that had outlived the mash up genre that had spawned it. Another surprise was finding a 12″ of the follow up to ‘Play That Beat Mr DJ’ by Whiz Kid that appears to have been signed by him (long since deceased).