Vinyl fetishes

As Ornette Coleman once remarked, ”when you like music, you like a lot of music”. And such is certainly the case with Lord Bassington-Bassington. The record collection here at Bassington Manor is of such a variety that it is bound to have some of your favourite music, and things that you will consider sonic horrors beyond imagining.

In many ways, Lord Bassington-Bassington's life revolves around music. Music serves as inspiration for success and comfort in failure, repositories for memories and emotions. In short, one of those things that make life worth living.

As many who have this obsession with music, Lord Bassington-Bassington prefers to own physical copies of music, and for the last few years that has meant vinyl. CDs are practical carriers of sounds, and can sometimes be nice objects in their own right, but vinyls are cult objects – fetishes, if you will. And as such very covetable – and collectible.

Watching the documentary Blood, Sweat and Vinyl the other day sparked a moment's self-reflection in the long-eared Lord.

Vinyl looks great, sounds great, and is fun to collect. As a result of this one easily obtains quite a bit of it. In the picture above can be seen a selection of His Lordship's recent aquisitions, and below a small slice of the huge collection of some of the finest music ever made, bestowed by the elder Bassington-Bassington onto his offspring. All in all there's quite a lot to listen to, and let's not even mention the whole wall covered with CDs. Or the cassettes.

So yes, even if one isn’t a completist, collecting can get out of hand. But even if Lord Bassington-Bassington does spend a bit of his time stalking record shops and various online vendors, His Lordship is luckily not as seriously afflicted as the people one can meet in the film simply entitled Vinyl.



This documentary comes highly recommended. You might expect it to be a bit like High Fidelity, but honestly it is a lot more like Trainspotting.