Rare Record Price Guide 2018 reviewed

Rare Record 

Price Guide 

2018 edition 

now available.

One new book published in October is, without any doubt, the best resource for the latest information about the state of the market for used vinyl records. Its a huge book with over 1,400 pages, listing one hundred thousand (100,000) of the rarest record releases in the UK. Better than just a cataloguing of the A & B sides, the catalogue number and artiste, the book also puts a fair valuation on the records' prices, based on actual sales and opinions of many of the UK's top record sellers.

Each artists has their own listing which chronologically runs through singles, EPs, LPs, etc, as can be seen herte with this very short exceprtt from the Beatles section, which tells how to accurately age the many issues and re-issues of their releaes. A 'First Pressing' is worth far more than a third or fifth repressing, that will proably have been contracted out to another company, as the Beatles were selling so many records in the sixties.

Editor Ian Shirley, of the world famous Record Collector monthly magazine,  assesses the business with the help of some of the leading experts in the field.  The RRPG is now in its 14th edition and covers all kinds of pop, soul, dance, rock and many more sub genres. Singles, albums, even CDs and 8 tracks are included,  where these are appropriately rare. 

Rare Record Values 

The guide shows 'mint' values, and has the necessary grid to track how to assess the comparison of your copies - is it Very Good, Fair, Poor, etc and so arrive at a reasonable valuation for items in your own collection.  The book lists every UK single worth over £5 mint,  every EP (ask your dad!) over £10 mint, each CD single with a value over £8, Album (LP) worth over £12 and CD album over £18

Sometimes it s not only the vinyl thats of value, but the correct sleeve; much is put on a record being in its correct 'birth sleeve' and to help be certain that these are correct pictures of the right ones are shown for the most valuable records. 

No matter how obscure your taste you'll find the most sought after items here whether your particular obsession is 50's rockabilly, 60's MOR, 70's jazz funk, 80's post punk, hip-hop, reggae, Northern Soul, British Jazz or today's indie bands. If it is collectable, and it was released in the UK, then you'll find it in the Rare Record Price Guide!

2018 is the latest edition 

The book comes out bi-annually, and previous year's editions still sell for quite hefty prices, ullustrating what a valuable work of love this book is. Constantly revised and updated, no self-respecting record collector or music fan should be without a copy. I am sure you will be using it for many years and it will give many years of enjoyment, for you and, once they realise you have a copy, for all your friends. too. They will all be popping around regularly to 'just check one record oiut' and will probably stop for hours leafing through!

The book can be obtained via Amazon who offer next day delivery for just £29.99 including Post and Packing, or there are some offers  where you can get a copy for around £20. (Take care to be sure you are ordering the right year's edition). The 2016 has already been out for two years - its the 2018 one thats the latest and most up to date. 

Favourite TV Advert, and favourite music.

Favourite TV adverts  

I took part in a radio discussion recently and was asked my favourite radio and TV commercials.   I thought that I might share this with you, as they are probably very unique and not ones that many would share with me!

Most haunting tune ever for me would be the Skol International beer commercial aired on Radio Veronica in 1968 and 69 (it may be what started me drinking - that was 1968!). I think not was also used on TV in several countries, maybe even the UK too.  

It was sung by the amazing Patricia Paay, who also coincidentally recorded several jingles for my favourite radio station then, Radio Veronica.  She later had great success in the Netherlands as a singer and made many hits, as well as becoming a well known TV presenter and pundit. 

I also confess to loving the TV jingle that most people find "cringing" for Johnsons 'Shake and Vac'. It starred an little known actress called Jenny Logan doing a manic dance around a suburban lounge with her vacuum cleaner. I'm still not sure if I find it erotic or the song is just a very clever earworm.  

For pure comedy the TV ad that really cracks me up is SMASH - the one where the aliens are sat around a space ship console laughing at the primitive way we cook our potatoes: "Then they smash them all to bits." Sheer Brilliance! 

Favourite Music 

For many years I kept a note of which my favourite music tracks were - its around 400. Tunes that just have a certain magic for me and which i could never be without. If I'm feeling a bit low I just pop on a few of these and they really are like medicine. Who needs drugs? 

Music can really make you feel so good. Many are landmark tracks from kye moments in my life, although strangely there are few from my first radio broadcasts (on Radio Caroline in 1973) although there are many that bring back memories of Radio Veronica, the leading Dutch station in the 60s and 70s.  

My favourites cover many genres, the whole spectrum of music almost and while there are a lot from 1966, a quick run down revelas I am still bvery much "into the music"  right through the 80s and 90s, even into this century. My children will be so surprised to see that!  

One of the most dominat rooms in our home for many years has been the Record library, the singles alone numbering tens of thousands.  One of the reasons we only moved house very rarely! 
Click here for a listing of Paul Rusling's favourite music tracks (mostly singles!) 

Vinyl is booming

VINYL IS BOOMING

My first visit to a record pressing plant.

Vinyl records, they seem to evoke a certain magic in many of us music lovers, and I cant really work out quite WHY this is.

Ive been collecting records since the 1960s. AT first they were simply a tool, if you wanted to work as a Disc Jockey, you simply had to have a decent collection.  My first DJing was in clubs in early 1968, and I can well remember borrowing records from friends at school - William Rosenberg, and Steve Foster were my main sources. God Bless them, they had such impeccable taste. 

(Eventually I built up my own great collection which was either soul, or out and out rock music - always on singles.  We had to have a special room for my collection which went to "several tens of thousands" items, mostly singles. I rarely got chance to play any and got tired of getting offers for individual items, so last year I sadly sold the lot.  But my interest in the things seems to have grown even stronger if anything!)

I was never interested in the actual vinyl itself though - after all, it was just a disc of plastic stuff, i didn't even understand how it was made and remember my excitement at seeing the first pressing plant I encountered in London in late 1969.  But records were not really that attractive - the EMI and Decca group ones had very uninspiring labels. EMI's labels were mostly black, and they often had scant information on them - in fact they printed more nonsense about the "recording rights being protected" than they did about the song or the artiste.  In the UK in those days there were only very occasionally a unique picture cover, unlike our friends in the USA where they tried hard to market the records in shops by enfolding them in a nice colourful jacket (sleeve) often with a picture of the artiste.  Made it worth paying the Dollar and 50 cents.

Prices of Singles

The price of singles in the UK for most of the 1960s was 6/8d, or three for a pound!  I think it was about 1970 that the price began edging up - 7/3d, and 7/6 I remember. or if you were prepared to wait until the record had dropped out of the chart, you would find the hits of the day were often available from market stalls for about 2/6d. They got their supplied from Juke Box operators, who seemed to believe that once out of the Top 40 chart, no one would want to pl;ay a record any more. How wrong they were on that count!

By the 1980s the UK record companies had caught on to the picture sleeve idea and about half of releases were issued in one, though often it was only the initial batch of about a thousand or two.  Suddenly someone hit on the crazy idea of several different picture sleeves for records. Same record, just a different sleeve. the avid fans of certain artistes would order a copy of each one, which gave a good sales push and resulted in the record entering the chart in a high position. Then it escalated into having slightly different pressings of a song, and thing up to 6 different versions of a song might be issued. The fans had to shell out more and more. Different format too became much in vogue, coloured, vinyl, an extended mix on a 12 inch disc, and even the artiste's image pressed into the vinyl.  Different shaped discs; it worked for vinyl (but a nuisance to store them) but not for cassettes. They 

still made up about 15% of single releases as late as the late 1980s.

Advent of the Compact Disc

When CDs came in (1983) record companies were able to sell their entire back catalog again,  with alleged better sound, no scratches, longer playing times and in a smaller, more practical format. The public fell for it and consigned their precious record collections to the skip. Literally millions ended up being off loaded at boot fairs. The cost of a CD was about 14p , compared to a 45 which was nearer 50p. The record companies couldn't believe their luck! 

The CD soon replaced the cassette releases, and for a while the pundits claimed that the 7inch vinyl single would die out too. Around 2000 it looked like it might, as the record business struggled to come to terms with the concept of downloads.  They soon realised that they had to "sink or swim" though and embraced the download MP3 idea, which brought down the cost of music to the consumer. After all, there was no tangible product to press or manufacture, much less distribute.  thats what caused the wholesale demise of record shops. Well, almost.

In 2009 the demand for decent vinyl pressings bagel to rise and was soon over a million pieces a year. Not matching the peak enjoyed by the Beatles and others - in the early 1960s you needed to sell a couple of Million to have a number one hit, more recently its been around 30,000 downloads in a week. The biggest CD and DVD producer are Optimal Media in Germany. They recently installed new presses but still cannot cope with the demand from their customers.  They work three shifts a day and all weekend, but still cannot keep up with the demand.

Problems with Pressings    

"The real problem is not in the pressing – the bottleneck is in the electroplating," explains Silke Maurer of Handle with Care Records. Electroplating is the process of coating the master lacquer in a metal layer to produce stampers. It is time-intensive and requires highly trained personnel.

As well as the lawyers only being produced by two companies, the actual stylus that cuts the record is made by only one company, Apollo in the USA. 

A trip to a pressing plant really opened your eyes.  Many machines look like they are from a museum.  They spit out a records that are either automatically placed in a sleeve or put on a spindle so they can be sleeved by hand.  Its the lacquers that are the big problem now, only two companies in  the world are still making them. 

Shedules are very difficult to predict, and this too is forcing up the value of vinyl discs to unheard of levels. The older material too on original labels is regarded as much superior to new releases. They command silly prices when they are sold, which I will talk about next time. 

How does one become a Disc Jockey

How does one become a DJ?

The most common question that every DJ gets asked all the time is, "How to I become a DJ?"  In my case, I have been spinning the 45s for so many years I have a bit of difficulty remembering. Did I get born playing records? Of course not, although as my love of music emerged when i was only about 10 years old it WAS quite some time ago.

That was late 1963; there was very little music on the radio and maybe I was lucky as my family were pretty poor and we didn't have a television, but night times were spent huddling around my Mum's old Bush listening to Radio Luxembourg. One Saturday morning I went to the Locarno Ballroom in Hull with a friend, where they hd a two hour disc session for kids - I was hooked. It became a major part of my life for the next few years, and eventually I got chance to do a guest DJ spot by one of the DJs, and would help hims sort his records out etc.  By the time I was 12 or so I found that there were all kinds of strange radio stations popping on and off the dial - pirate radio ships, which played my beloved pop and soul music all the time, unlike the BBC which was pretty turgid and boring at the time.

Within a few years I was involved in that world of watery wireless too, but in March 1968 I began playing the records at a local club.  The first one was a tiny little place in Hull called MUSIC BOX. I remember at the time thinking that there was NOTHING more satisfying than someone coming up and saying they enjoyed the music you were playing.  (I don't think I had discovered girls yet, far too busy with the music!)

I had also become quite keen on the technical aspects of audio and music, but especially of radio engineering. I decided that radio and music had to be my future career, though I had no idea how. Radio was simply the BBC, hundreds of miles away from Yorkshire. The pirate radio ships had been put off the air - who could I combine the two? The local college had a large marine radio section, but there were no such thing as grants, so I had to find a job to "work my way" thru college and support myself. Working as a DJ in clubs was THE obvious solution. I had lots of training courtesy of some of the best showmen in the business, in particular other DJs on the Mecca circuit; we were trained and encouraged to be showmen. I even worked on the fairground for a thrilling week, spinning the records on the waltzer, and extolling the girls to scream if they wanted to go faster. I still love to wander the fairground  fifty years later and reminisce about those days but its my only DJ gig to which I would NOT want to ever return!

What I was getting was the hands-on experience of actually DOING the work of a DJ, and the technical knowledge of how a programme was assembled, what was possible, and how to make it sounds as though you knew what you were doing. Later, I was offered my first proper radio gig on Radio Caroline, hosting the breakfast show. I got that simply because I had those important essential ingredients - expertise with equipment, and showmanship, or rather just raw enthusiasm.

And that's the key - get the experience and have more than a modicum of enthusiasm.

The DJ world is much more competitive now and DJs are expected to have many more skills such as mixing, scratching and Beat Matching, none of which were even possible with the primitive equipment we had in the 60s. To get the skills is important and one source I would recommend is the course run by How to DJ Fast.  
You can go from being a beginner to mixing like a pro, impressing your friends and packing the dance floor in just two weeks!

Click that link to take a look, and you could be DJing yourself REALLY SOON. All the instruction is done by video, so you can work so the course work in the comfort of your own home. There's a money back guarantee, and you could start in the next ten minutes, wherever you are, no matter what the time is. 

Getting a break into radio is now so much easier nope that there are around 600 radio stations in the UK alone, although few of them want real DJs these days at all. I will look at how to get a break into radio in a future blog; I'm going to to try and talk someone else to write that article if I can!