Thank You For the Music (or at least some of it)

Perhaps it’s because I’m fed up with the cold weather, or maybe it’s a result of losing weight – 14 pounds in four weeks since you so kindly ask – but I’ve decided to do a Spring clean and tone up of my record collection.

Having been in radio for so many years you can imagine the amount of excess vinyl weight I’ve accumulated, but it breaks my heart to throw some of the old stuff out. My kids watched me work while looking down their noses, as if I was clearing out a collection of rusty cannon balls, or anti scurvy medicine, or old copies of the Magna Carta. For them vinyl is as prehistoric and unwanted as a Sky TV football host.

Mind you, my daughter Annalie loved hearing the original Broadway album from Dreamgirls and told her sister that she wants a track played at her funeral. She chose the song I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.

Why I’ve kept some of the stuff I will never know. If I list some of the records I’m throwing out I risk my image going down quicker than my waist line. I was embarrassed to come across an album by Aneka who had a brief fling with the charts many years ago. Mary Sanderson changed her name to go with the image on her number one hit Japanese Boy which is featured on the album alongside embarrassingly titled songs like Tu Whit Tu Whoo and the crassly named Ooh Shooby Doo Doo Lang. Mary had been singing Scottish folk songs pretty successfully, but now here she was dressed like a geisha in my mum’s dressing gown with chopsticks in her hair and a look put together by the Fortune Cookie takeaway.

I also found an album by Dollar, a duo who made a couple of good singles and an awful lot of bad ones. Even worse it was placed next to an LP by Guys And Dolls, the band they once featured in alongside Bruce Forsyth’s daughter Julie. On the album Julie looks about twenty years old. Today, the baby she had while in the group, is thirty one years old and Julie now presents anti ageing reports for TV’s This Morning. The album’s got to go, right?

Well, no. I made the mistake of looking on You Tube and saw their reunion gig from 2008 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd1pG_ChaqA&feature=related ) and it made me nostalgic and want to hold on to it. But The Aneka album went to the binmen, didn’t it? Well, again,no. There’s a fun song on there about a backing singer so I kept it.

And this is the problem. I keep finding reasons to hang on to stuff I should throw out, although I definitely binned the Boney M album, the double gatefold LP from Milli Vanilli and everything by Barry Manilow and Julio Iglesias. I also tearfully bade farewell to a collection by a band called Jigsaw who had a few hits despite sounding like falsetto choir boys who have had their undercarriage nailed to the pews.

I’ve also discovered some rarities I’d forgotten I had. One album is filled with an interview by Paul McCartney recorded in 1980, and another discovery was a collection of conversations between John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded for Playboy magazine. Basically they talk rubbish, as you would expect, but I’m not going to part with it. Then there’s Paul Simon’s gig in Central Park featuring on the cover the worst wig this side of Julie Forsyth’s dad. And how about a vinyl copy of Sinatra singing New York on a record shaped like an apple?

I also came across a collection by a guy called Bryn Haworth called Grand Arrival. I’ve hung on to this not because it’s a great album but because it reminds me of how gullible I can be. When I interviewed him, Bryn told me it was the best interview he’d ever done and he couldn’t wait to meet me again. Next time he visited the radio station I walked up to him all smiles, to be asked “and who are you?”. He had no recollection of me at all.

So I’m now faced with a pile of stuff to throw out including The Nolans, Paul Nicholas, Kelly Marie, Stars On 45 and the ones above. You name it, I’ll shame it. Problem is, I’m too embarrassed to take them to the charity shop in case anyone sees me.

If you tell anyone about my shame I won’t just send the heavies round, I’ll do much, much worse. I’ll say I’m looking after them for you.