This story goes back a long time ago in Easter Europe.

I grew up in Lithuania where the most famous local band FOJE was also my favorite. My dad loved music so we had all of their albums. Sadly, he was quite progressive so at some point we got cassettes and then CD’s when records were still available. But there was one particular record my dad had on the wall in his office.

And here is the interesting story about that. The band released a limited edition concert record without a sleeve, just the B side of the record looking like… a pizza. Public wasn’t impressed. So many of those records were turned into lamp shades for one of the first pizzerias in my hometown. Yep. Pizza was a bigger novelty and more interesting than records back then. But as a fan I always wanted that record. Then one day my dad gave away our old record player (of course, CD’s! The progress!) and records to my cousin. We played them. We were pretend to be DJs and scratched them. We grew up, records ended up in aunties basement. I picked some of my favorites as a memento to keep.

Some time later another cousin asked me if I knew where the pizza record was. Nobody could find it. Meanwhile I picked some of my rescue records and took them with me to Australia. Once I wanted to listen to some nostalgia. I picked a record, removed it from it’s sleeve and guess what it was! The pizza record, hidden in some random sleeve!

Then the singer from the band visited Australia and had a concert in Lithuanian club. And I asked for an autograph. He was mildly surprised to see this record here in Australia. “It is quite scratched and does not play well” – I said.
And he replied “It wasn’t made for listening in the first place”. Whatever it meant 🙂

My father’s record collection consisted mainly of James Last and Mrs Mills LPs. I think my uncle felt sorry for me, so when I was six he gave me a copy of Please Please Me. That album changed my life. I played it over and over, much to my father’s disgust (“that music won’t be around in 50 years”). Well, more than 50 years later, I still have that record, although like me it has seen better days! I will be forever indebted to my uncle for his gift, which led to a love of vinyl that has continued to this day.

I was at my grandmothers house, and I found a collection of her records. She then came in the room, pulled this record from the shelf, and told me that she was never going to give me up, let me down, run around, or desert me.

Once upon a time, 4 years ago… My audio enthusiast husband tried to convince me to purchase some vinyl for myself and I wasn’t very convinced but looked around until I found something I liked. He left most of his collection back home in the US when he moved to Australia several years ago and we hadn’t even purchased a new turntable at this point so had nothing to listen to our music on if we bought anything.

I purchased what I thought was a plain black vinyl edition of Drink The Sea by The Glitch Mob. It finally arrived from overseas and it ended up being a beautiful RSD 2014 edition and I fell in love instantly. I’d never seen anything but plain black vinyl previously and this was it. I’m all in now. It even came with a bonus EP which I wasn’t expecting let alone a colourful rainbow explosion of beauty .

We now have over 300 albums in our collection, I make sure to look for fancy coloured versions and see them as artwork.
I like modern music so don’t have many actual “old” albums although we have some classics in our collection.

We did eventually go back and bring a bunch of his vinyl back here, we loaded up our carry on luggage to the maximum limit and lugged it all back on the plane with us a few years ago. 😀

Trawling record stores in San Francisco in 2019, you know when travelling the world was normal 😫😩 Always wanted the first press, and found a good sounding version in a tattered cover.

I bought this back in 1975, when I was in primary school. I saved up my pocket money to buy it. This is when my obsession with collecting vinyl started. Also my obsession with Abba! I am still a crazy Abba fan, to this very day!

It’s certainly no Top 10 record, but it’s my very earliest record memory.

Released in 1968, and gifted to me for my birthday, as a very young child I loved playing and listening to this over and over again. I remember my dad showing me how to carefully place the needle down correctly and I would play and read along with it over and over again. I can also vividly remember the narrator’s voice –

“This is a Disneyland Original Little Long Playing record, and I am your story reader. I am going to begin now to read the story of HEIDI. You can read along with me in your book. You will know it is time to turn the page when Tinker Bell rings her little bells like this…(*bells ringing*). Let’s begin now.”

Reading the book now, it seems quite a bizarre storyline – times sure have changed, but the memories remain. 🙂

We bought a box or records from an auction house because it had a signed copy of the Monkey Magic soundtrack. Herb Alpert came in the box.

As a 90’s kid who only really knew of cassette tapes & cd’s, a “cool/delinquent/black-sheep” uncle of mine introduced me to vinyl records and rad music. Up to that point i’d only known them as those things i’d find on peoples verges and toss around like frisbees (*hangs head in shame*). Before he passed away he gave me a couple from his collection, and included The Dark Side of the Moon & A Night at the Opera by Queen. Both which I ended up loving. Sadly they didn’t have covers due to water damage, but I have no intention of ever selling them given he specifically gave them to me and we’d kind of bonded over them and his love of music. Which then became mine.

I went to see a friends band perform at their album launch, and afterwards purchased some merch to give them some support, unfortunately they only had the record still available, so I purchased that even though I did not own a turntable.

I then needed to buy a turntable, naturally, and then needed more than just 1 record to justify the cost of the turntable. 4 short years later and I now have over 350. Showing a friend’s band some support has turned into a $20k addiction!