LIVING FOR COLOUR

I haven’t written to you before, but as a longstanding record (and occasional CD) enthusiast/hobbyist/ collector, as well as an avid reader of RC, I thought I’d write to you.

I’ve been collecting records for – ahem! – decades, and something I have never done in the art of buying records happened last week, so I thought I’d share.

I’ve been helping a colleague from work, Paul, to get some records with interesting sleeves for a section of his lounge wall. You know how it is: water damage, rebuilt lounge, wants to add a bit of a feature wall near where the records and stereo are, why not some arty 7” single covers? We’ve all been there. So, having helped secure some with modern art covers to his taste (Stiff Little Fingers’ At The Edge and New Order’s Fine Time, among them), I had suggested we both go to a record fair to see if there were sleeves he could find himself (while I could peruse various stalls myself – obviously). So, we decided on a Friday, when the London Spitalfields market was on, and decided to use our lunch hour to go to find vinyl wall art (and records for me).

Arriving at the market, we quickly found a bargain box of 90s indie singles. I hadn’t heard of the majority of the artists, and I expect many had only ever released one single. Some of the sleeves were good, though, and within a few minutes, Paul had a small pile. He then noted that some records were coloured vinyl and found this interesting.

Paul is not a newbie to vinyl, but I gather his collection was primarily album- and 12”-based and pretty bereft of coloured editions. He had avoided the recent trend to release variant editions on coloured vinyl, metal, splatter, zoetrope, and whatever you call with the liquid in the middle.

After a couple more stalls, Paul had decided his wall was going to be an “Art Installation”. I’m sure you can tell where this is going… but he had decided the installation was going to be of different coloured vinyl 7”s. He had, by then, red, yellow, blue (and black) coloured records. He asked whether I thought it would be possible to collect all the colours of a rainbow?

I didn’t see why not. That meant finding orange, green and purple. So, with my apologies to vinyl purists, we then started to search all the stalls for the remaining colours. I didn’t want Paul to buy expensive or collectable records, only low grade or unwanted

ones if it was just the colour involved.

Before long, we had collected two orange singles, one opaque, the other clear. A purple one was found next. We had real problems locating a green one. I didn’t think green was rare, particularly, but we just couldn’t locate one. We all but decided to give up on it, but on the way out, we checked the first stall, just in case, and there was a green one that we had missed. Just the one! Paul was amazingly happy, and the dealer was a bit surprised and didn’t really know what was going on.

But we paid and left, and now my colleague has records that match the colours of the rainbow. I don’t think that he has had time to start the installation yet, but I’m interested to see what it comes out like.

The next day, I went to a local recycle and reuse centre to make a donation, only to find that it had several boxes of records. The vast majority were the ones you find in charity shops that don’t ever sell, but I did find one or two to buy. It happens. When it came to pay, I was surprised to find that I had to pop them on scales and pay by weight! Never done that with records before, either.

Nick Davey, email