memoryshare

For some the romance has gone out of the world of record buying. Despite the big rush to the world of digital downloads, there was some thing quite magical about buying real records. By that, we mean big unwieldy things that didn't offer a great deal in the way of playing time considering their size, but represented a sizeable space in a teen or in some cases pre-teen's bedroom.

Long gone are the days when the high streets were full of shops selling vinyl LPs and 45s with people tipping the albums forward, one by one, looking for an album cover to catch their eye, sliding the black disc out of its protective sheath to examine the surface for scratches. Although it's fair to say in some places they're making a comeback.

We still have racks of CDs in our homes and possibly boxes of LPs in our lofts. Some are collectors' items. Others are there for purely nostalgic reasons A memory of youth. Can you remember your first album, single or CD? What did you rush to the shops to buy with your pocket money? Why buy that particular record?

Radio Humberside's Steve Redgrave recalls buying 'Baby Love' by the Supremes on a 7" single sometime in the sixites. He said: "I recall going to Woollies on King Edward Street in town with my mother and taking it home to play on our Dansette. It had cream coloured plastic parts and it's vinyl covered outer shell was bright red. They were all the rage once you know. I recall it had a 'tone control'.

Later on I used to trawl the market stalls in the centre of town outside of Holy Trinity in Hull buying singles that had once lived in jukeboxes in pubs. They (the records not the pubs) had a huge chunky hole in the middle and were often worn out in one side of the stereo channel.

The replacement middles you used to stick in the holes so they could be played on record players with a tall slender central spindle, rarely seemed to fit properly. This gave them a 'wow' factor that was more mechanical than to do with the artist. I also used to visit Sheridan's Records at the town end of Anlaby Road and picked up some real bargains from the likes of Yes and Pink Floyd. Cast-offs from university students who needed the money or probably had moved on to something more trendy."

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