“I always remember my mum putting on disco records when I was a kid, I always thought they were nostalgic and maybe a bit cheesy and didn’t really appreciate the great songwriting, the arrangements, and the vocal harmonies until later on. I especially remember liking the soundtracks for both Saturday Night Fever and Grease, they just made me want to get up and dance. C’est Chic by Chic is another album I distinctly remember being played a lot along with the early Michael Jackson records.”
“Later on in my life I rediscovered the art of buying vinyl and started off building my collection by searching eBay and charity shops. The first album I bought was Loaded by Velvet Underground which really got me hooked on the band. I once went into a charity shop and bought a bulk load of records and some of them turned out to be first pressings, like Please Please Me by The Beatles and The Doors’ self titled album.
Since getting into vinyl more and more I’ve really got into scouring various record shops, be it Sister Ray in Soho, Pie and Vinyl in Portsmouth, or Flashback Records in Shoreditch where I found my original copy of Bitches Brew by Miles Davis. Pie and Vinyl is such a great shop, who would have thought of putting Pie AND Vinyl together and it going so well?
Everywhere I go now, I’m always drawn to the mystery of what a stack of records could be hiding. It brings me huge satisfaction flicking through them and finding hidden gems or an album I’ve been after for a long time. There’s no other feeling like listening to an old record on vinyl, it has so much more character than any other format and it almost takes me back to that period of time.
—Ben
“I got into music in a world in of CDs, downloads, and Myspace. Whilst I would discover lots of music this way, something drew me toward my parents’ old record collection. My dad still had a handsome collection from his youth and would bring home hurls of vinyl he had picked up from the tip and charity shops. There was a lot of rubbish in there but it got me into flicking through stacks of vinyl to find something I liked.”
“I remember listening to a lot of his Jam, Squeeze, and Smiths records and also have vivid memory of putting on Thriller and dancing around our study listening to it. My mum had a few too. I would rinse her Beatles records, particularly Help and Please Please Me and we’d always dance to Elvis in the kitchen. The track “King Creole” was a favourite!
There was an element of wonder about the whole process of pulling the record from the sleeve and dropping the needle on, which I didn’t get from downloading music for my MP3 player. We recently won Record Store Day’s unsigned competition and will be getting our music pressed to vinyl which is a dream come true for us.
—Harry
Barbudo’s current single, “Secret Admirer” is in stores now.
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PHOTO: LPR AGENCY
