Entertainment For Lively Minds
Free to good home: the best years of my life
Is anyone interested in acquiring a big pile of old music papers? It’s mostly NME and Sounds, but there are maybe one or two Record Mirrors or some such caught up in there too. 1980 through to about 1987, I’d reckon, although the bulk will be from 1982-1985. There are, I think, five or six boxes in total.
My mum spent the best part of 25 years nagging me to clear them out of her loft so I finally did and now they’re sitting in my garage, where they will slowly be reduced to mulch unless someone gives them a new home. I could probably flog them off one at a time on eBay, but that sounds too much like hard (almost certainly poorly paid) work and quite honestly I’d rather them go to an appreciative member of the massive who might savour them as I did.
My only conditions are that you must come and pick them up and that you must take the lot. I’m in Gateshead, a few miles off the A1, halfway between the Metro Centre and Consett. Hot drinks and sandwiches will, of course, be provided to weary travellers.
Just promise me you won’t look back as you drive away or you’ll see me crying for my lost youth.
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Hmm
Sounds like a great opportunity to research, and have a good laugh at, all those extremely dodgy and completely off base David Hepworth reviews over the years. Alas, I have better things to do though. But thanks for the offer.
If you were in London
I would bite your hand off.
Damn.
Mr Yorkio
I tried to send you an e-mail last night, but I'm not sure if it got through (I asked for a copy to be sent to my own address but never received it). Please drop me a line either way, thanks.
Incoming
Check your messages, Douglas.
I had a huge pile of them
1977 to 1982 MM, some NME & spunos, and New Music News which briefly appeared during a journalists strike. A lot of parochial opinions and some shocking journalism (Paul Morley, Ian Penman, Chris Bohmn an dJon Savage used to make my heart sink) but all in all a pervading air of fun and an amazing amount of good bands and world-conquering trends
My parents binned the lot 20 years ago after putting an ad in the local paper - in the wrong category - for a week.
Can't really blame them for junking them mind but I would have certainly wanted to keep a few if they'd warned me. I remember the first MM I got had Howard Devoto on the front page (as opposed to a cover - it was a newspaper then. And the ink came off all over your hands). I also have a memory of various dodgy ads of the type beloved by the music industry in the unreconstructed seventies - Cherry Vanilla and a hairbrush springs to mind (insert own joke here)
One a week
I've managed to keep hold of one music paper a week from 1976 to about 2000 - some Sounds and MM but mainly NME. They're all in the loft and I have to defend their presence at least twice a year. I like to think that I'll be able to read them again, one or two a week when I retire. I'd rather have some scans of the lot though, a hard drive takes up a lot less space and is less stress on the joists!
I contend that flicking through a copy of 1976 Sounds is more entertaining than watching the equivalent week's TOTP on BBC4.
I still have the 70s
I still have a lot of "inkies" from the mid 70s thru the Punk Years up to the very early 80s: mostly NME and Snouds (sic) and Record MIrror (with Marc Bolan's weekly column!). They've been packed away for years. Is there much demand for these things? there seem to be loads around on ebay with very few offers.
Not much
Not a great deal that I could see, hence my decision to look to rehome them en masse rather than flog them off one by one. I don't doubt that there are some individual issues that are more valuable than others, and the odd handful which are even very collectable indeed, but that still didn't seem to amount to more than a couple of quid a go at best.
I was kind of surprised myself, as I remember the prices that old copies of Oz and IT and the like used to fetch at the vintage magazine shop in Brewer Street. I'd already binned my stash of old glossies – The Face, i-D, Blitz, Jamming, Zig Zag etc – as they seemed equally unwanted but much bulkier to store. I must say, that was a real surprise. If, in 1985, someone had offered me a huge pile of fashion and music magazines from the Fifties and Sixties, I would literally have walked from one end of the country to the other to pick them up.
That's what I've been thinking
You're confirming my suspcions. I suspect my stash of NMEs et al (which haven't seen light of day in 20+ years) will, if/when I get around to exhuming them, be sold for tuppence as a job lot, or more likely given away to someone prepared to come and collect them.
Calling Douglas
Check your gmail spam folder – you've got incoming!