What is the BEST record you NEVER bought ?

I seem to be unable to actually buy Love's 'Forever Changes', the re- issue is mid-price and is everywhere yet I just don't reach the counter with it. Always find something else, more urgent, more 2001. Supposed to be me my kind of record though :( Runner-up is Belle & Sebastian's "If you're feeling sinister". I really love 'Tigermilk' but there's an idea lingering in my head that another B&S album will spoil the magic.

Rain Dogs by Tom Waits. I got Swordfishtrombones after all of his 70s albums, I love it, I can see why it's great but it's just too intense. I KNOW I'll probably like Rain Dogs too and it'll do me the world of good to pick it up, especially since it's often in the sales, but... eh.

Slightly off topic maybe, but it upsets me that I don't really listen to albums that much anymore. When I could only afford one or two a month, and I had hours of free time, I would force myself to listen to the whole record over and over until I liked it. Now that I buy two or three albums a week and my free time has dramatically decreased, I usually only get chance to listen to them once or twice before I'm off onto something else.

So the real crime is that although there's plenty of stuff I've thought about buying and left on the shelf, there's also a lot of things in my collection already that I never really bothered to get into and have just... moved on from, I suppose. What a shame.

"Into The Moon" by The Puddle. 'Cause I didn't have a CD player at the time it came out & it only came out on CD...now you never see it.
Also every time I ever saw the Kinks "Village Green Preservation Soc." & "Arthur" i thought,That's too expensive, i'm sure i'll see a copy cheaper sometime soon...20 yrs later or something, still don't got either of 'em.

Am I the only person who buys everything I think will be good? I suppose I passed up on Destiny's Child this past week, and that's not really a bad album but I can't be bothered to waste $16 on it right now when I could be increasing my Manics collection. Or buying new jeans. Ooh, and shoes. I bought nice ones on Saturday. I need some more, because I have a coupon. So I reckon I'm not picking up a lot of good CDs right now, but I'll get around to them eventually. I've never missed an album that I "regret not possessing" - I just go out and buy it!

Ready to Die.

Ally, lemme a fiver till tuesday, petal ;)

Well, see, I would do it, but the problem is with the amount of time it'd take for me to get my money converted and mailed out to you, adding on the time it'd take to cross the Atlantic and find you, you'd no longer need the fiver. So therefore it'd be a useless loan and would probably cost more in the shipping.

Otherwise I would. Seriously. Next time you're in NY, ask me.

Jesus, I must be a freak. If I know of a classic/great record, I usually end up buying it. Oh no, I know... A Velvet Underground bootleg album because I didn't want to spend 35 pounds on it.

Re: Rain Dogs

Trust me, you need this album in your collection. IMHO it's a better album than Swordfishtrombones, considerably less depressing as well:) 16 odd tracks is possibly a little long, but it's worth it for songs like "Clap hands", "Hang down your head", "Tango till they're sore", etc.

Back to the topic, I never got round to buying "OK Computer" or "This is my truth, tell me yours". I used to borrow them from my sister but she's since gone to university and taken them with her. Also, I keep seeing "Marquee Moon" and "Trout Mask Replica" in the sale at my local HMV, but always end up buying something else instead.

Oh for me...I'd say "Guns 'N' Roses" Live Era, I got it for Christmas one year :)

Not to seem like I'm not hard and all, but the first ever LP I wanted to buy, then decided against, was METAL MACHINE MUSIC!!

This is TRUE! I'd read about it in the NME book of rock, and it sounded cool and weird, and I didn't want my first LP to be one everyone would have, and I toyed with MMM, then plumped for _Slapp Happy_ by Slapp Happy, on the grounds that Lou Reed was actually pretty famous, and probably lots of people actually MMM. I decided against it because (in my 15-yr-old's world) it was TOO POPULAR!!

Also of course it was a double LP and SH wasn't: so there was possibly a cost issue. But they were both in the Bargain Bin, so it can't have been a BIG cost issue.

So why Slapp Happy, apart from cost? Pfff, you tell me. You can't distinguish what gender two of the three people are on the cover, but I actually didn't take that in till someone else pointed it out years later — and anyway I didn't fancy either of them at any time, so this WASN'T a reason.

The cover that I remember of the MMM I didn't buy was (I'm sure) different from the one I now own: but I don't recall what it actually looked like, only that it was weird and electrick-y. This important distinction is what allows me to contribute to this thread: does anyone recall the original sleeve (ie not L.Reed looking blonde and petulant...)

sorry: "probably lots of people actually owned MMM"

Nuh-uh -- MMM's cover is as it always was. Part of the "joke" was that it looked like a live album cover. The back, on the other hand... that had the drawing of the thing that sort of looked like it was an organic compound but was really nonsense fake-chemical symbols.

The best record I never bought probably has to be the self-titled release from the band Iron Bacon. A classic.

You're probably right — and I only have a *negative* memory, really: i.e. "It didn't have all this stuff on it..." Except my feeling that it felt "electrick-y" (which I don't think the present one does). Maybe different territories carried different sleeves (sleeves in France to famous LPs were often completely different — not that I was in France).

AND the Amine-ß Ring is made up!! What next? Tori Amos sings on none of her own records?

i had a chance to get the new flesh for old album for six bucks used recently, and passed it up. then heard it, decided i loved it, went to buy it, and it had been snapped up. so i payed thirteen for it new. take that, robin!

'into the moon' is at the record store here, but i already have it. my answer would be seefeel's 'succour' my friend andrew insists it is brilliant but i am not sure.

I'm still beating myself over not buying the used copy of Grandmaster Flash's The Message LP that the store was selling for 5 $. I need to stop going into record stores when I can't afford to buy anything.

I never seem to get around to "More VU" by the Velvet Underground. Yes it's the dregs of the dregs of the tapes. But it still beats the pants off near anything.

Ethan, I was never denying that you liked a lot of UK hip-hop. Your liking for it just *initially* seemed to me like a jarring incongruity relative to your occasional outmoded peddling of received attacks on Britain.

well robin, for one thing (as tom can attest to), i'm a total fucking anglophile. i mean, i own 'village green preservation society' and stare at the green field on the back dreamily while i listen to it. hey, why can't you rural progessives be more like the kinks? 'we are the skyscraper condemnation affiliate / god save tudor houses, antique tables, and billiards', sigh. no but really, nice country you have there. cheerio.

eq - the graphic ep.

should have bought this when it came out. didn't get around to it. can't find it anywhere now.

thing is, i haven't even heard it in years. its only a distant memory now. if i was to find it and buy it, i'd probably be disappointed now.

guess who hasn't got napster/mp3 etc?

Hey Ethan, I *like* the Kinks. Well, half of _VGPS_ is great. The other half is, to be honest, whimsical shite, but the good stuff is worth it.

But it doesn't speak to me as a rural progressive, and it can't be the distance of time; it's just the over-emphasis on certain imagery that, to be honest, means fuck all to me. The Pentangle's "Light Flight", *now* you're talking ...

i don't know what the hell a pentangle is, but you know what the most british band i can think of right now is? gorillaz, man. that kinda shit could never happen over here-it's like the guy from blur found a box of old plans for mc skat kat's group of rappin monkey buddies, decided to put it out on the market, and then the brits BOUGHT IT ALL. that's some kind of genius right there.

Not all of us bought it ...

it hit number four or something, didn't it? over here we like our prefabricated groups to be HUMAN, at least. and to be created on tv shows!

Blue Hysteria by Rheostatics. I almost nabbed a free copy at their show a few years back, and ive seen it in the bargain bins 1ce or twice, but alas..

Records you think are great but don't own except on a taped copy: hm - THE CHARM OF THE HIGHWAY STRIP - plus WAYWARD BUS / DP TREES, come to think of it.

Records you think are great but don't own at all: hm - this is a curious one: oh, this'll do: REVOLVER. And THE FREEWHEELIN' BOB DYLAN.

beach boys - pet sounds