Right now I’m listening to Spotify’s Discover Weekly from this past Monday, but I haven’t yet put anything on my playlist. I added several songs earlier today just from listening to the radio which I only ever do when I’m riding in Anders’ car. Otherwise I’m always listening to my own playlist. Music has been on my mind a lot lately because of the record albums.
I piled all of our albums on the dining room table and went through them to see if there was anything I really wanted to keep, despite the fact that we don’t have a turntable and have no plans to get one. I ended up keeping the album my high school choir recorded in 1982, The Parachute Club — Small Victories, Glenn Yarbrough — Baby the Rain Must Fall (which was my dad’s) and Mac Davis — Baby Don’t Get Hooked on Me, just because. I can’t find The Parachute Club songs I like the most on Spotify, and the others were for purely sentimental reasons, as I DO have some of both Glenn’s and Mac’s songs on my playlist.
Altogether, between my collection and Anders’, we had nearly 150 albums and another fifty 45s. And we haven’t had a record player for nearly 30 years. Since we don’t listen to our CDs either (of which we have at least 500), we should probably consider selling/purging those, too, at some point. Maybe.
I checked with Martin and Karin first, of course, and each of them took a few. Martin’s choices included all 3 of my David Bowie albums and Stevie Nicks, and Karin snapped up Journey, Queen, The Police, and The Go-Gos, among others. I asked my sister and brother if they wanted any as well, and Sarah and Danely asked for about 15 of them (Prince, Yaz, and some of the really old albums that belonged to dad). I warned her that I would only carry 5 or so on my upcoming trip, since they weigh so much. She’ll just have to come back to Sweden to get the rest. 😀
Since two of my teammates were very interested in checking out our albums, I ended up offering the pile to them after that. But before I did that, I did quite a lot of research on discogs.com to see if anything we had was potentially worth a lot of money. Only one (New Order — Substance 1987) fit the bill. Hard to find, and ours was in excellent, mint condition. A couple of others seemed like they’d be worth a bit more than the usual as well, though only around 10-15 dollars.
I separated all the albums into pile by price, most of them 20 or 50 kronor since there were only 5 LPs that I thought were worth more. There was also a pile of free stuff: missing covers, very worn, or unsellable (Jane Fonda, Primetime Workout, anyone?) The 45s were harder, as I couldn’t really judge if they were worth anything at all. The record store in Malmö was selling some of the ones we had for only 5 kronor 15 years ago, so doubtful. Then I wrote up a list of everything we had to offer, in price order. And finally, I checked all the ones I thought we could sell, pulling the albums out of their sleeves to check for scratches. About 15 albums went into the garbage. And I found this:
It’s Alice Cooper’s School’s Out. The cover was chewed in a couple of places, the sleeve was ripped and torn. And look at the record itself! I took it out to Anders in the kitchen and asked him what had happened. “Oh, hmmmm, he said. “I think that was our dog Molly.”
HAHAHHAHAAH!!!
They had Molly the dog (a border terrier) when he was a TEENAGER. He’s turning 63 in a few months, so that means he has kept this beat-up, super-scratched record album for at least 40 years! Moved it to the US with the rest of his stuff, and back after he met and married me. WITHOUT A TURNTABLE. I brought my American stereo system with us when we moved to Sweden, but we couldn’t use the record player here.
There were a couple of other similarly-scratched albums but this one was the worst. Guess Molly really objected to Alice Cooper. Can’t say I blame the dog. 😀
Anyway, this story is getting super long. And now I don’t know if it was just to show you that hilarious photo or what. I sent the list to my team and two of them immediately sent me back their wishlists from it. I’ve been working from home since Wednesday because I had a bad head cold, and even though I was better yesterday, I had already planned to work from home that day as we were receiving the delivery of our new fridge and freezer. Emelie and Louise decided they wanted to SEE all the albums instead of waiting for me to bring in just the ones they had originally listed, so they ended up leaving work at 2:15 (fika time) and driving to Flyinge. They brought Helena as well as my favorite Swedish fika pastries from work with them (vanilla hearts, cuz Valentines Day, even here) and I made coffee. They also brought 4 home-baked heart cookies for me from another colleague who had made them for the entire team. LOVE!
So we had fika and then spent a good hour going through the albums, talking about music, playing snippets of stuff on Spotify, and reminiscing over songs and memories around concerts, albums, and music in general. Emelie took 6 albums and a handful of 45s. Louise took at least 20, maybe more! She took New Order as well, and then said she didn’t know why she wanted them all when she didn’t even have a record player yet! HAHAHAHA. Crazy kid.
The rest are bagged up and ready to take to a record store and then the remainders to charity, but that will be a trip for another day. 😀
Mood: happy
Music: The J. Geils Band—Centerfold
I could take any reggae ones off your hands. Put them with the rest of my stuff in the attic. They would be a great present to Simones Brother, who does have a record player and uses it often. I should have thought of that sooner….
or am I too late?
Lovely as always to talk with you, and even better that you took some more records off my hands. Oh wait, you didn’t. Come and get all your stuff! 😀