Seems that life takes precedence over humble blog writing and my impetus to follow up on my initial enthusiasm seems to have stalled. Anyway here I am to tell you about where it all began...
I like to say that 'Ghost Town' by The Specials was the first single that I ever bought. However the unseemly truth is that it was 'Can Can' by Bad Manners. I was obviously on a bit of a ska trip back then. Is 10 years old fairly young to be buying records? Anyway, before that I'd bought a few cassettes (tapes), one of which being 'The Best Of Showaddywaddy'. I believe they were popular at the time.
Just recently it has become clear to me that I pretty much just followed the musical styles of the day and flitted from genre to genre.
Obviously for anyone raised in the 80s you will hear the usual mantra of 'Top Of The Pops' was the best and that the charts "really mattered". If you really liked music then this was the case. I have a sister, four and a half years my senior, who seemed to like music. She would want to watch TOTP and because everyone sat in the living room watching TV together, I watched it too. I also had to listen to Terry Wogan in the morning at breakfast as he was my Mum's favourite. This would change later as my sister and I got older and would tune the radio in to Radio 1 or Radio Caroline (her choice, not mine). Plus we both used to come home from school at dinner time and would listen to (ooh) Gary Davies. So as you can see the beginnings of something were right there.
I remember my parents had an radio/cassette player which had been handed down to them from my Grandad and this become my pirating device of choice. At some point, I remember that I would listen to the chart rundown on Sunday and record all the songs onto cheap tapes. Instant record collection :)
I was pretty lucky in that I would get quite a bit of pocket money. Don't get me wrong, we were not well off at all. But I would get money off my Mum and Dad, my Nan and Grandad who lived just down the road and my other Nan and Grandad who visited every week on Wednesday. So I ended up with a few quid each week, which would rapidly end up being put in the Space Invaders or Galaxians machines in the amusements, but also start to fulfill my ever growing need to buy music. When I first started buying singles I used to ask my Mum to get me them when she went into town. She said at some point "I don't know where you're getting all the money from". I wasn't really going to tell her that I was spending as little as I could on school dinners in order to save money to buy records :) Anyway after that brush with being found out, I stopped asking her to buy them and stuck to getting them myself at the weekends.
After The Specials and Bad Manners, the single that I remember the most is 'Mad World' by Tears For Fears. This, I believe, was when I started to buy singles a lot, or as much as one's pocket money would allow. That single got played A LOT! When you're starting out your collection you don't have much choice right, so you play that same record over and over again. The b-side was a bit rubbish, but even it got played a few times.
