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IN WHICH… I ASK: COULD CDs BECOME THE ‘NEW’ VINYL?

Megan Page, who speaks on behalf of Record Store Day, agreed with me that CDs seem to be becoming an almost forgotten aspect of hard-copy music collecting. ‘Despite the vinyl revival, new CDs still outsell new records by five to one,’ she said, as we agreed they are an economic entry point to collecting for those who might ultimately aspire to the vinyl versions, but whose budgets may not yet reflect their preference. Yet, it appears to have become the accepted wisdom amongst many that CDs are virtually worthless in terms of collectability.

John Peel doesn’t appear to have been a huge fan, once recalling that: ‘Somebody was trying to tell me that CDs are better than vinyl because they don’t have any surface noise. I said, “Listen mate, life has surface noise.” I guess Supergrass’s Gaz Coombes would agree with Peel. He once observed: ‘My CDs are in boxes in the basement and they’ve all got scratches on them and cracked cases, and it’s almost like we’ve never cared about CDs. But vinyl has the inbuilt need to look after it, and even with the odd scratch it will still play. And records are full of memories.’

I walked into a local charity shop recently and spotted a solo album on CD by Graham Coxon, the Blur front man, which I had never heard of. It looked intriguing and the reviews I called up on my phone suggested it might be worth a listen. The shop was selling CDs at ‘99p for 1, £1 for 2’. This is a much more subtle sales technique than it appears at first glance. I would definitely have bought the Coxon CD on its own for 50p, but even at the less than expensive 99p I’d have thought twice – but once I realised I could chuck in a copy of Blur’s second album to make up the quid it was a no-brainer, and I made the purchase of music I just would never have even considered buying on vinyl.

You will struggle these days to pay more than £1.50 for a CD in charity shops. Another of my local haunts is now happy to offer ‘3 for 99p’. One or two may charge an outrageous £1.99. And, yes, many of them will be the CD equivalent of the LPs we are all familiar with that have to be flipped past before getting into the serious buying propositions. But whereas it is the case that it is difficult to find vinyl worth buying in charity shops, this is absolutely not true about CDs. Many charity shops now employ ‘experts’ to go through the vinyl they are gifted. These ‘experts’ probably own a copy of the Rare Record Price Guide – a publication whose CD equivalent is long overdue – which they flip through when the donations arrive, and price accordingly, very often, it seems to me from long experience, grading every disc they look at as if it were virtually mint in condition. So what occasional gems there may be on offer are usually overpriced. That’s if they manage to get through the checking system to be displayed in the shop!

Yet CDs are almost invariably lumped together and priced up as though they are all worth exactly the same. This is a little like the situation which all of us of a certain age recall a couple of decades or longer ago, when records were being regarded as imminently redundant, and shops were desperately marking down the prices of all the stock they had left on the premises in an effort to clear the shelves to bring in CDs, which were regarded as ‘the future’. It can’t be right, can it? Quite clearly some CDs are more equal and more desirable than others.

CDs are one of the few products which are often more expensive to buy online, because of the blanket postal charges which are levied on them, making them even better value from charity shops where they can be priced at less than their postal cost. At the moment few CDs have very high sell-on values, but that will come in time as the desirable ones, produced in relatively small batches, become scarcer and therefore more collectable.

I recently found a copy of a CD by lower division 1960s psych group The Attack in a Twickenham shop for £4. Even if I was desperate for a vinyl version of this album it could only be a ‘new reissue’ version as, actually, there never was an original vinyl one, so here it is the music that’s important, not the format. The cheapest copy of the only two available from Amazon was priced at over £70. Discogs had more copies but only from overseas sellers and, with postage, the least expensive worked out at £22.76. Of course, I recognise that the higher Amazon price was probably a try-on and would be difficult to achieve, but anyone interested in late 1960s psych and wanting this scarce CD would probably be prepared to hand over up to 20 quid for it. If I chose to offer my £4 copy online, I am very confident I’d get rid of it quickly at a very handsome profit of at least 300 per cent.

A post on a Facebook group to which I belong was singing the praises of a record of which I had no memory or knowledge. Sinister Morning was by an artist called Denny Gerrard on the Deram label, from 1970. More importantly, I was reading that the backing band on the record was High Tide, one of my favourite 1960s outfits – and I’d never even heard of this album. A quick check on YouTube to see whether I could find the record, and I was soon listening to, enjoying it, and thinking it was right up my street. A dash over to Amazon where the cheapest CD version available was 17 quid, followed by an online sprint to Discogs where I found a CD ‘very good’ copy for sale at a mere £5.99 and promptly ordered it. When it arrived two days later it was clearly a mint copy and was still sealed. The original LP was being offered by two or three sellers for amounts varying from £101 to £528 and in various conditions. Is this the sort of money anyone is prepared to risk without actually looking at and touching the item before handing over the dosh? Time from discovering the record to ordering the CD? About 11 minutes.

Once I stopped working full-time and suddenly had time to devote to my record collection that hadn’t been available to me since its very early days, I soon realised that I was of an age at which, if I wanted ever to own something, now was the time to achieve it. There would be different ways of acquiring it. I would very much enjoy the time-consuming but rewarding method of visiting record shops to buy things which as I walked through the door, I was entirely unaware at that moment even existed – like the Denny Gerrard album. But once aware I then had the option of paying as little as possible to own it on CD or to search out an original copy which might cost a three-figure sum. Other posters to the Facebook group had already noticed that the cheapest vinyl copy of the Gerrard record available on eBay would set them back £350. Another member of the group assured me that he had a copy of the record up on the wall in his record shop. I didn’t even ask him how much he wanted for it.

I’d already made the personal mental stipulation that this was not a route I would be going down. Yes, I owned records worth that amount. Yes, I had profited by selling a few records worth that amount and more. Yes, at a pinch I could afford to buy one or two at that price if I desperately wanted to. But, if I was brutally honest with myself I didn’t much see the point. In a ‘blind’ challenge I wouldn’t bet a fortune on my ability to differentiate between a record and a CD of the same album being played to me. The urge to own the much more attractive cover of the LP is an incentive to shell out, but increasingly that desire can be satisfied by purchasing a reissue version at a more modest price. There are plenty of vinyl enthusiasts who seem to regard it as a mortal sin to accumulate CDs. I am not one of them.

Former band-mate and long-standing chum Martin Wilson will not bother himself to sort through records but will spend hours visiting market stalls and charity shops hunting for folk and blues CDs to remind him of visits to Les Cousins club and Cambridge’s Strawberry Fair,

He took some 50 CDs to sell to a local shop offering to buy them – only to be offered under 9p each for them. He flounced out, affronted.

CDs are difficult to damage, unlike vinyl, and although the format’s biggest disadvantage for collectors remains its size and consequently less attractive packaging, that disadvantage is, to many who are only interested in hearing the music, a positive plus point, particularly when it comes to storage and display. Taking everything into account, I am confident that future collectors will be able to command increasingly attractively profitable prices for collectable CDs.

However, a post on a Facebook group to which I belong, reopened the controversy in November 2018 with a ‘No way! Only vinyl’ jibe at CDs. It did provoke a reaction. Andre declared, ‘I enjoy listening to vinyl, but I never liked this attitude about CDs (when) growing up, don’t now.’ Ralf agreed: ‘Living with both options is definitely possible – don’t panic.’ One poster declared CDs were responsible for ‘a lot of money thrown at poor quality physical product’ but more reasonable contributors pointed out: ‘Vinyl will always be #1, but I can’t play it in the car so CDs can’t be ignored.’ The overall opinion seemed to be that vinyl is ultimately superior but that there is every reason to benefit from the areas in which CD has the edge, price and size. Then Ed K offered: ‘I record my records on to CD. I still have that unique sound of vinyl when I drive, and it helps to preserve my records.’

A few years ago I bought myself a TEAC LP-R500 ‘CD recorder with turntable/cassette player’ which enabled me both to record vinyl directly on to CD – and even to do likewise with cassettes. Perhaps the only drawback was that this had to be done in real time. This was a brilliant way of getting the best of both worlds, except that, to be brutally honest, the turntable and sound quality were not the highest. Yet, after a year or so of happy recording and listening, when I began to look around to upgrade to a better standard of turntable and recording ability, there was none to be had. I lost count of the hi-fi general and specialist dealers I contacted. All of them could suggest I bought the type of model I already had, but not one of them could give me any information as to how I might upgrade. So, instead, I upgraded my own vinyl system to upgrade my home vinyl listening, but the collateral damage meant the CD recorder with turntable had to be relegated to the shed as I ran out of space.

I’m surprised at the number of second-hand records shops which snub CDs. Even Julian’s Second Scene does so. Better Daze record shop in Northallerton, N Yorkshire is definitely a vinyl-only outlet, to the extent that they operate the ‘Betterdaze Format policy’: ‘We are a traditional vinyl-only Record Shop and we believe that, after live performance, the only way to hear good music is on vinyl. Therefore, any customer heard uttering the two letters found between “B” and “E” in the alphabet will be subject to a 50p fine. This will not be given to charity but will be spent on biscuits for the staff.’

If I think CDs have a future, I’m not convinced that cassettes will make a serious comeback. I’ve been thinking about the hundred or so cassettes I still have, despite having chucked away a good number I was pretty confident I’d never get round to playing again. Having nothing on which to play the remaining ones which I can’t bring myself to discard, I figured I needed to buy myself a new cassette player, if only to discover whether they even play properly so that I can endeavour to sell them on. More in hope than expectation I walked into the local Sony shop where both staff members were busying themselves displaying to best advantage, several vast television sets selling for two or three thousand pounds.

‘Don’t suppose you have anything so retro as a cassette player?’ I asked, already doubting a positive response.

‘Er, I think we have… one,’ I was told, and was taken across the room and shown it. It was marked up at £75. On the positive side and probably odds-on given the name of the shop, it was a Sony.

‘Can you play a cassette on it for me to hear?’

‘Yes, if you’d like to bring one in…’ Hm. He didn’t look old enough even to know what a cassette actually is. Or was.

‘Okay, I’ll think about it,’ I said, heading off on the three or four paces to the door.

I’d managed two when my arm was grabbed.

‘You can have it for £60.’

Reader, I bought it then and there. Two or three hours later, I was proudly demonstrating the wonders of the new cassette player to younger son, Paul, who promptly took me into the kitchen and showed me that his mother’s radio/CD player also plays cassettes.

If the CD/cassette discussion hasn’t been thought-provoking enough for you, I’ll now tackle another controversial matter…