From my local area’s BBC online news pages.
City of London Police said it discovered more than 6,000 fake records worth an estimated £260,000 at a large warehouse in Luton on 22 April. Police are working in conjunction with the BPI on this.
“Vinyl has seen a strong resurgence in recent years, increasing its commercial value – as ever criminals are quick to exploit emerging trends for profit,” said police sgt. James Kirk.
I for one hope that Sgt. James Kirk gets a promotion to Captain for this bust (assuming his middle name begins with T).
Which, in turn, would provide an opening for constable Edwyn Collins..
…but exactly how many..? We won’t know until the vinyl countdown.
Oh I say! 👏
I saw this last week, they’re all crappy picture discs.
The “worth an estimated £260,000” assumes they’d all sell at £40 each. Good luck with that…
Made from recycled dog poo bags by the look of them.
The headline says “fake” so you’d assume they were cunning facsimiles of “official” releases. But from that pic they’re clearly crappy bootlegs, not “fakes” as such. Plod mithering about depriving artists of legit income would have a point were they cunning fs instead of these dodgy boots heading for Camden market
That figures, I hate Camden Market with a passion.
I was up there on Saturday prior to a theatre visit with my son (a play about Brian Espstein at the Kiln Theatre in Kilburn High Rd) so we thought we’d have a look around. I hadn’t been there since about 1989. It did used to be pretty good for getting old leather jackets or bootleg tapes etc. My goodness it’s changed! The council have very successfully managed to suck any of the appeal out of it whatsoever by making it a ludicrous tourist hellhole that only sells extreme tat and overpriced crappy “street food.”
What did you think of the play? I was thinking of going to see that myself.
Ditto – keen to hear what the play was like
I’m not a regular theatre goer by any means, (this was an early Father’s Day present) so please excuse my rather inept review but I enjoyed it. Very much an onlookers study into Epstein’s point of view, from early homosexual prejudice to becoming more and more Beatle-like himself. The only Beatle ever on stage was Lennon, and the play centres on the trip to Spain that he and Epstein took where it was rumoured they had a one off “fling.” The play seems to very strongly make the suggestion that they did. With only 5 actors involved in playing a larger number of characters I was very impressed with how this was done. My only criticism would be that it wasn’t miked up in any way. I did have to try really hard to hear some of the dialogue, even in this very small theatre.
I guess a lot of your enjoyment of the play would depend on how much you are prepared to accept the likeliness of Lennon and Epstein having a one night stand.
In truth, professional ( if they were) actors in a very small theatre shouldn’t need miking up.
Agreed. Actors should be able to Pro-JECT!, dear boy.
My experience of putting radio mics on am-dram actors is it makes them become reliant on the technology, and so they mumble onto their chests rather than projecting to the audience. I often just fit them as a prop, then turn them off without telling the actors.
Just before I got my hearing aids for the first time we went to see the Mousetrap (BIL’s birthday).
Good seats and much mumbling (a small village in the Cotswolds) from the cast I had difficulty hearing what they were saying.
As we left I said how much I’d missed by not hearing the cast at times “Oh” said the others in the party “We missed bits with the mumbling”
I agree about projection.
You would think it wouldn’t be a problem with the top theatre companies.
A few years ago we went to The Barbican in London for a RSC production of King Lear.
No problem with Anthony Sher, but some of the others, especially Cordelia, could hardly be heard. We were in the stalls. I can’t imagine the rear of the circle could hear anything.
In rehearsals it might have been useful to have someone sit at the back who could shout “Can’t hear you!”.
There was a pretty good film about that trip:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hours_and_Times
Milli Vanilli?
Milli Vynilli
The serious side of this is of course that the people behind the bootlegging enterprise are the same criminal gangs selling drugs, unsafe vapes and cigarettes, stolen phones, counterfeit cosmetics etc. etc.
I recall a news story from some years back about a Trading Standards raid on a massive Sunday market in East London. The TS inspectors were violently attacked by various stallholders and had to flee for their lives. A later return visit with police found no counterfeit goods and half of the stalls empty and abandoned.