The May issue of Uncut includes a feature on crate diggers, those fanatical souls whose mission in life is to track down and purchase the most obscure of the obscure vinyl and the piece mentions a man who had just bought 35,000 soul and R’n’B LPs from Japan and whose next stop was Cuba, where he intended to add another 50,000 records to his collection, while Brazilian entrepreneur, Zero Freitas, also gets a mention as the owner of several million vinyl albums.I’ll repeat that: the owner of several million vinyl albums.Is this a record?

Record Store Day hype still seems to be on an upward curve although criticism of the event has also been gaining momentum in recent years.

Buying records (or CDs, DVDs, magazines, fanzines etc) from small independent shops has to be a good thing and RSD still strikes me as an inspired idea. But not one that I’m very interested in taking part in myself – yeah, the old ‘every day is record store day’ argument.

Would Metallic K.O. sound any better on metallic vinyl than it does on my plain black copy? And as somebody that already owns Station to Station on vinyl and on CD (twice actually, having picked up a copy of the three disc version a few years ago) do I really need a picture disc of TV15?


Saying that, I would like to get my paws on a number of the releases.

I did say I liked bongos in my last post and incredible bongos are even better so part of me is tempted to set my alarm for some ungodly hour so I could maybe just get my ass down to Mono or Love Music Glasgow in time to nab a copy of the 5 x 7″ box set of Incredible Bongo Band singles, even though it was snowing earlier today (honestly) and my local forecast says that temperatures will drop to -1 during the early morning at which point I would be overdosing on Red Bull while on my not so merry way to join a queue of vinyl enthusiasts.

Other releases that caught my eye include The Adverts, Sue Tompkins and The Limiñanas, who I featured before here and whose new album Malamore is released today.

Me? I’ll be lazing around tomorrow, likely nursing a tequila hangover and listening to Crab Day, the latest album by the wonderful, wonderful Cate Le Bon, which is out today. And after hearing it once, I can tell you it’s as entertainingly offbeat and magnificently wonky as anything she’s put out before.


Commenting on lead single Wonderful on YouTube, somebody calling themselves clamda claims: ‘If you play Madness ‘driving in my car’ backwards it would sound like this’ which is surprisingly accurate and doesn’t even make the near obligatory reference to Cate’s vocals resembling a certain German singer who was also a dab hand with a harmonium.

For more on Love Music Glasgow, click here. For more on Monorail Music, click this here link.