Euan McColm: The vinyl reckoning has come but ruthless record collection cull turned out to be easy

Euan McColm's record collection cull brought back memories but it turned out parting with much of it was not such a sorrow. Picture: Mirko Popadic

It was when I discovered collectors were paying more than £400 for a Morrissey album I hadn’t played in 30 years that I decided I’d made the right decision.

And then I started getting ruthless.

In December, 1979, at the age of nine, I bought my first record from a little shop on Jamaica Street in Glasgow. It was a second-hand copy of the recently-released Message In A Bottle by The Police and I played it relentlessly until I found a new obsession in Too Much Too Young by The Specials.

The purchase of that second single (actually, an extended play) meant I now had a collection. A small, carefully curated one but a collection, nonetheless.

Soon, other shiny 45s joined the little shelf beside my bed. Dog Eat Dog by Adam and the Ants sat alongside Mirror In The Bathroom by the Beat and I Could Be So Good For You by Dennis Waterman.

Forty-seven years later, that collection had grown, considerably. A rough count last month had it at around 2,000 LPs, 1,500 CDs, and more than 1,000 7” singles.

That’s a lot of music.

Over the years, some things fell by the wayside – that Dennis Waterman single went to an Oxfam long ago, while others went in rent-covering sales or were lost in moves or break-ups – but, until Friday morning, I owned a remarkable recollection.

It stood out not just for its size but for its quality. I bought freely down the years but I also bought well, picking up scarce early editions of records by artists who’d go on to be huge (if you also bought a clear vinyl copy of Radiohead’s Creep EP for a quid in 1993, then well done), and finding gems for buttons in charity shops in the pre-eBay era (an original copy of The Stooges’ second album “Funhouse” for £2.50, if you want to know).

Among my most vivid memories are of buying records as a child. I was an odd, solitary boy and we moved around a bit, which made making and sustaining friendships tricky. This meant a lot of Saturdays tagging along with my mother who’d send me off into Listen on Byres Road with a pound while she enjoyed one of the bohemian lunches popular at the time, an open sandwich, perhaps, or a mix of coleslaws.

I recall with clarity not only the moments I acquired coveted records – the actual handing over of the money – but the colour of the sky outside and the smells in the air.

My feelings of lovesickness on the day I dogged school to buy the singles White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It) by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel and Song To The Siren by This Mortal Coil return to overwhelm at the sound of either song. As powerfully as if it were yesterday, I recall the excitement of returning home with a perfect double – The Smiths’ Meat Is Murder album and a 7” of Dead or Alive’s You Spin Me Round (Like A Record).

But not every record can matter so much, not when there are so many. In time, it just becomes stuff.

And I need less stuff in my life. I need fewer books, fewer pairs of shoes, fewer things to worry about.

So, a month or so ago, I started flipping through the shelves, asking myself whether I really needed this LP or that single?

The answer, female readers will be unsurprised to learn, was frequently “no”.

I made up my mind that (almost) everything had to go.

It makes one honest, filtering through almost five decades of singles and albums. It tells you a lot about what really moves you. If the purpose is to retain only that which matters – only those records that, to mangle William Morris, are either bangers or heartbreakers – then it is pointless trying to act the sophisticate or pretend that one is, in some way, cool. Especially when one is a 56-year-old man with what has become a profoundly unchic number of LPs.

The keepers are an eclectic mix. Alongside my cherished Smiths singles, I’ve retained a number of “essential” 45s, from Starpower by Sonic Youth to Wot by Captain Sensible; my Nick Caves and Kate Bushes remain, beside albums by Neil Diamond and Peggy Lee; I could never part with my copies of Too Drunk To F*** by The Dead Kennedys or Stop The Cavalry by Jona Lewie.

But the number of records that I found far from essential kept growing.

There was nothing on the shelves that I thought anything but excellent but, if it didn’t provoke some emotional reaction, then it went into the “for sale” pile.

A first sweep produced around 1,000 that I’d part with. A second, more rigorous one, upped that number considerably.

After three days, 1,500 LPs, 1,200 CDs, and 800 7” singles had been set aside to sell.

A record-shop owning pal visited and offered an opinion. This was, he reckoned, the best collection he’d seen on the market in Scotland in the past five years. This was dumb luck on my part. I just bought what I liked and it turned out to be worth a little.

We struck a fair deal, me and the buyer, who’s building a reputation among collectors as someone who has records other people don’t.

I used to be someone who had records other people didn’t and, for a long time, those records made me very happy indeed.

Now, someone else may enjoy Morrissey’s Southpaw Grammar (near mint, w/booklet and hype sticker) and I will stick with those things that truly move me. Works of real genius like Arvo Pärt’s Te Deum and Bananarama’s Deep Sea Skiving.