I spent the years between 2000 and 2020 without listening to vinyl. It sounds a little weird, but I shall try to make it clearer as I go on. Don’t get me wrong. I still heard a lot of music during this period. Both from new emerging bands and old classics. Just not on vinyl.

Let me explain: I moved from Leeds in January 2000 to live and work in a parochial Irish town called Athlone. It’s situated about halfway between Dublin and Galway, as the crow flies, and sits right on the River Shannon. The music scene (what there was) consisted of Led Zeppelin cover bands and Irish trad groups in various guises. Foster and Allen had a pub in Moate, about ten miles down the road. That just about sums it up. Music from elsewhere consisted of performers accidentally stumbling across the place. Either through maverick Entertainment Secretaries at the local Institute of Technology booking them for the local Rag Week shenanigans, or else mistaking the place for some romantic Irish parish heard about in books of yore.

Music-goers in the town were a fickle bunch and a generally disinterested lot on the whole. Venues were quite small, excepting the larger hotels which usually held the old showbands or occasionally Daniel O’Donnell would appear to his adoring crowds. Oh, I forgot to mention the locals were mad about modern Irish Country Music too. Don’t get me started on that either. It’s woeful and I shall move on swiftly...

There were a few exceptions to the rule: a version of Stiff Little Fingers played a barnstormer of a set one miserable wet Monday night in November. Ziggy Marley performed at an ‘alcohol-free’ temperance hall one year and The Wolfetones descended upon the town for their brand of rollicking Pro-IRA songs from time to time. Anything more eclectic and you would have to travel to the big smoke in Dublin or down the road to Galway. It feels like I am getting away from the crux of the story but I am just trying to set the scene. Honestly!

Most of my Irish friends would have an interest in music but were, on the whole, a few years younger than me, and had little idea about some of the bands I would often rave about. Groups such as The Fall, The Raincoats, Josef K, The Velvet Underground, Martha Reeves and Girls at Our Best would receive a puzzled look at their mention and a nonchalant shrug of the shoulders.

Well anyway, I should have probably mentioned earlier that when I first moved to Ireland it was on a temporary contract with my job for six months. This later developed into a permanent working arrangement. My employers helped to fund accommodation for me as well as assisting in the transportation from the UK of my personal belongings. Including those pesky records that I have neglected to mention for a while. God! This is all over the place! Apologies for meandering a bit. Don’t worry. I’ll get there in the end. I had some friends ferry a load of my gear over and they stayed for a week enjoying the hospitality, Guinness and other things on offer. However, despite loading up my vinyl (seven boxes of the buggers) they neglected to bring my turntable. To be fair, it didn’t really bother me as I had amassed hundreds of CDs at this point. That brave new world of musical technology we were promised that would leave all other forms of listening in its dust. Eating syrup and pancakes off ‘em or using the discs as tea coasters were both false promises. Nevertheless, they made do. At that time, the vinyl industry had taken a few steps backwards and the few music shops in the area were selling less and less vinyl. Even new releases were predominantly CD only versions.

Anyway, I ended up living at various houses and flats during my time in Athlone. Either moving because of terrible landlords or terrible neighbours or terrible housemates. Sometimes all three. On each occasion I would lug my 7 (SEVEN) boxes of records to the next abode. Some days I wondered why we had agreed to live in a 4th floor flat and carry my vinyl (which incidentally would never be played whilst living there) up the four flights of steps. I did get stronger but that is beside the point.

At some point, perhaps after three or four years of residing in Athlone, I found myself unemployed so decided to move up to Dublin for work. I was currently in a relationship, but the missus was from the town and did not wish to move with me. We were living together at her place and all my stuff (including “those fecking records” as she delightfully called them) were at the gaff. We agreed that I would be back down every weekend and she up to Dublin as often as she could so we could still see each other regularly. The writing, alas, was already on the wall. It wasn’t long before we decide to split up but fair play to the gal, she said she would mind the “fecking records”. As fate would have it, she moved house herself. The new tenants were luckily friends of mine who said there was no point moving the vinyl as I could pick the records up whenever I visited. I’m not certain why I’d not brought them up to Dublin in the first place. Most likely my lift taking the rest of my gear told me where to go when I mentioned 7 (SEVEN) boxes of records in the back of his Fiesta.

Moving on several years I had the opportunity to relocate back to Athlone for work. My vinyl had since moved house four times. I had only moved on three occasions during the same period. It was beating me by one! Drat! When I looked over at the boxes of vinyl everything seemed to be in order but on closer inspection there were some omissions. My Piper at the Gates of Dawn original mono release and This Boy Can Wait (A Bit Longer) 12” with wrongly pressed label were both missing. As were Up For A Bit with The Pastels LP, the sleeve (!) of What’s the Matter Boy by Vic Godard (the record was still there bizarrely enough), Revolver by the Beatles, Out of Our Heads by the Rolling Stones and (most annoying of all) The Fall – Early Years 77-79. I will give ‘em their due, the thieving buggers had good taste but in fairness it wasn’t a massive shock. Five years of parties and unsupervised general mischief was always going to have its casualties.

More years passed and I finally decided to move back to dear old blighty. This would have been around May 2020. Twenty years had passed without listening to (what was left of) my vinyl. My brother came over on the ferry on his own to help transport my stuff. He only stayed for a night on this occasion before we headed off into the sunset. We had a big party on my arrival. The first present I received was a turntable.

Let the music play.