There I was, in the sixth form, having the time of my life. Living in a nice house in a pleasant city, gorgeous girlfriend, lovely parents, cracking bunch of mates. But constantly brassic. Browsing in record shops every weekend and sometimes at lunchtimes. Rarely buying anything, always wanting to.

I had a dog-eared copy of that little ‘Island Book Of Records’ thing you could pick up in decent record shops (remember them?) with personal notes recording which ones I desperately wanted to buy, eventually. They included albums by Nick Drake, Traffic, Stomu Yamashta, Amazing Blondel, Quiet Sun and many others. All ephemeral hopeless hopes. All acquired many years later in CD form, but unavailable to me at that time.

Anyway, there I was, still skint, wandering once more into the Virgin Records emporium by the entrance to the covered market at the bottom end of the city centre shops. At the time, Virgin were doing a roaring trade in cheap imports from the states and cut-out remainders from God knows where. And right there, on the counter, was a scruffy brown cardboard box stuffed with LPs. Scrawled on the side of the box in blue wax crayon it said, » Continue Reading.