Generations, Teenagers and Record Players Revisited

After writing this article about Record Players last week I thought I would follow it up with what actually happened.

Many of you were in favour of buying said Record Player, and today I succumbed to it. Of course, after yesterdays trip to the local junk market and our acquisition of a boxful of 45’s I had to follow it up.

Speaking of junk markets, aka car boot markets, what has happened to these? It’s was a lovely sunny day and yet the amount of sellers has radically diminished. Has everyone figured how to use eBay?

Nevertheless, I found a reasonable looking seller who had a boxful of 45’s.

‘How much are these’?..
‘50p each’..
‘OK thanks’.. (attempting to look disinterested)

We walked around the entire market which only took us around 15 minutes, it was that tiny. Returning to the only record man, I asked, ‘How much for the whole box’?

‘Make me an offer’..
‘£10’..
‘I need a little more than that’..
‘£15’..

After some deep thought, he agreed and we were walking off with a goodly sized box of singles and my £15 had parted my pocket. To be honest, I was intrigued as my excited daughter was.

You see I had a quick look through the records and spotted a LOT of Elvis. Whoever’s collection these were, they were quite obsessed by the man.

I am not an Elvis fan but we could have worse songs. Many had picture covers and some looked like the original prints. Could we have grabbed something valuable?

We counted them out and got to 167, not so bad for £15. The diversification was quite good, 50’s through 80’s. The former consisted of being mostly from ‘The King’.

I saw Soft Cell, Tears for Fears, Madonna, Sister Sledge, Elton John, Cliff Richard, Milli Vanilli (remember the fake band!) and Mr Blobby.. yes, someone bought this abomination and now we did too!

She tells me ironically she LIKES the Mr Blobby song, but the B-side wont play as it’s a little warped. What a shame!

I compromised with the Record Player and got the £80 one. The cheap one looked just that, cheap and plastic. Modern records players have a USB port and you can ‘rip’ the songs to files. What kind of files, I don’t know yet but presumably .mp3 or .wav.

Holly had to ask me how to place the needle on the record, or more pointedly where! Things I take for granted are unknown to someone at 14 years of age. She has taken well to the Record Player and is happily going through each one.

I found an old cleaner cloth that used to belong to my father, the non-abrasive type, and showed her how to clean vinyl as well as how to handle it.

With this particular deck, you need to manually put the needle on the record. Where’s the start button we used to have? When the song finishes, the needle just stops at the end of the record and sits there! Again, is this a very BASIC deck?

Some of the records are quite warped and only one side plays. I can’t remember this happening too often. Is this the quality of the modern decks I wonder?

‘Love Kill’s by Freddie Mercury is playing now. I can hear it from her bedroom. She loving going through all these!

I’m thinking this was an excellent exercise. She’s learning about music from the past and the limitations that we used to have when accessing music.

Now I’m getting, ‘Can we visit a better junk market next time’ and, ‘I’m playing all the B-sides too’.

We have had a few conversation about B-sides, ‘you get a record, so you get 2 songs!’ she tells me!

Did we ever pay B-sides? I rarely gave them the opportunity.

Elvis will be left until last as there's so many to play. I wonder if she will like the sound of one of the most successful artists ever?

All photographs were taken by myself.