Think record collecting is all about dusty LPs and unhelpful sales assistants? You've been watching too much 'High Fidelity'.
Vinyl has seen a surge in popularity over the past few years thanks to initiatives like Record Store Day and a trend among even young musicians for putting material out on limited edition vinyl runs. Being able to hold your music in a tangible, reassuringly square format is something downloads and MP3 players can’t hope to compete with.
Another joy of collecting vinyl is the history that goes along with each record. Egg Records’ owner Ric Trevaskis knows all about this.“I have a copy of Australian garage band, The Missing Links’ ‘Driving You Insane’ album with Edmund Kuepper's name written on the back and scrubbed out in pen and Christopher Bailey's name written on top of it. Both of those guys are from The Saints and they covered ‘Wild About You’ on their first record so it would have been that very record that Chris Bailey learnt the song from.
"By dropping the needle on that record so many times, it was covered in scratches and jumped all over the place. I had to send it down to the ABC archives in Sydney where they put under a microscope and corrected the groove with a scalpel so I could play it.
"The story gets better because the record has price tag on the label for 99c from when Ed Kuepper bought that record at the market back in 1973. It must have then been stolen from Ed by Chris and then somehow managed its way into Rocking Horse where I found it many years later.”
As with any kind of antique hunting, there’s always the possibility that your purchase could be an undiscovered gem, too. “At the last Brisbane Record Fair, one collector a beautiful little 45 inch single of ‘Wild About You’ by the Missing Links. It's worth a couple of hundred dollars but he found it for about $10. It was the talk of the fair!”
While not every vinyl addict can be as lucky, the thrill of searching for that unreleased Smiths B-side or rare Otis Redding pressing is what makes record collecting such an addictive pastime.
“That’s what hooks people into collecting vinyl because those records are still out there. Rare things can still be found.”
