2013 London charity shop CD landfill

i've gotten enjoyment out of far worse records than that travis one

Wake Up by The Boo Radleys should be on this list. Monster is probably the only album on here I could listen to and get any kind of enjoyment from.

No Born To Do It or Jagged Little Pill or Mark Owen's Green Man, then?

Bubbling under! Along with The Coral's first and Dig Your Own Hole.

I actually cut Blur, Pulp and Outkast to level the playing field somewhat.

ha, Speakerboxx/The Love Below!

I'll be writing about a lot of these records on Then Play Long. Don't know what that says about the British record-buying public that they're so easily found these days, and in such numbers.

Feel like I always see Gorillaz albums in charity shops here, Delays too. Might consider buying the Coral album if it was <£1 and in good nick.

the darkness, duh

there's about half a dozen of these that i f/with to some extent: Coldplay, Travis, Spice Girls, REM, Simply Red, Fatboy, Moby, The Darkness have all got good stuff on. no flawless victories here that i can see tho.

probly gonna vote Simply Red cos the boy can sing

What about the vinyl boxes (not every charity shop still has these, but enough do) with their recurring records you never see anywhere else, including on CD - Aznavour Sings Aznavour, or You Do Something To Me by Mario Lanza?

sometimes a 10 album boxed set of The Ted Heath Orchestra Has It Large or something makes me want to get a turntable

Sometimes I think that maybe all these albums should be cleared off the shelves and incinerated just to clear the decks cos I'm so fed up with them stinking the place up, but then I think they do serve a purpose in providing useful cover for the good stuff, maggot-ridden dogshit to hide the diamonds in.

I still maintain that Dodgy need some sort of official recognition for the staggering terribleness of their album title, I'm still in awe of that one.

The R.E.M. and Oasis albums are both decent enough, 7/10-type records, I went with Monster

I think a good proportion of them could be recycled and be of some use.

The trouble is, when charity shops get good CDs in, they're usually spotted and snapped up within a few minutes, or at least on the day they're put out, thus all the average punter is left with is the standard stuff that can't be shifted.

Hate the vile title track from Stars with all my heart so I would never touch that one, but I do love Fairground off the next Simply Red album. That also has Hugh Masekela and Bootsy Collins and Sly & Robbie playing on it so I maybe I might give that a go if it was the last CD in the world, even without a gun to my head.

My wife's actually got a few of these albums in a box that no-one ever looks in that's clogging up the house and I just can't wait to get shot of it. Also in there: Fun Lovin Criminals, Sheryl Crow, KT Tunstall, that horrid Ray Charles album with all those duets on it that she bought on a whim in Asda, Morcheeba, Stereo MCs, Magnolia OST, Beth Orton, some free Uncut magazine shite (mine), some lol Pavement CD singles (also mine). Would gleefully burn all this in the garden were I not such a conscientious greeny sort.

ouch, that's a box of horrible alright

Nah, take them to the charity shop where they at least have the chance of raising some money. But not the Uncut stuff 'cos it's illegal for charity shops to sell freebie magazine/newspaper CDs and DVDs (not that most notice, and put them out anyway, but they shouldn't be doing it).

"Stars" is a lovely swoony song gdammit

Spice = 1st album I ever bought, moby & fatboy are ok, everything else wants drowning. No bluetones? I've never knowingly heard them but I see their album all the time in these places.

carp all you will but the Dodgy record has a few really good songs on it and quite a well-executed 70's art-rock concept w/segues, outros borrowed from other songs, cracking hongrotastic melodies, clear and apparent songwriting and *musicianship*. don't judge it on 'good enough' which was unfortunately the hit single as well as being the worst track on the album and totally anomalous to the style of the remainder

i'll pass

I do love In A Room by Dodgy, it's true

they were just about passable when doing their Who-lite thing. Also comedy fat drummer!

A couple of tracks on Monster, and 'Build It Up Tear It Down' from the Fatboy Slim album. All the rest can go to landfill. Especially Toploader, who are reserved a place next to the ground up remains of Jimmy Savile's headstone.

It's truly amazing how many albums Toploader sold back in the day. I wonder if anyone actually buys them second-hand, or are we just seeing the same copies mouldering away in the racks?

I've yet to meet anybody who has a Toploader album at all, but maybe I mix in the wrong circles.

No bluetones? I've never knowingly heard them but I see their album all the time in these places.

Good call, their second album with the desert on the cover crops up a lot.

i've never heard it but i'm assuming since their hit was a cover people bought the album and found out that their self-penned songs were terrible and then threw it out? i'm speculating, obviously i'm not going to ever listen to the thing.

An old cycling friend of mine sent round a bragging email once cos he'd got a bit part in the video for the follow-up single to Dancing In the Moonlight.

I wonder if anyone actually buys them second-hand

Shopping centres all across the country need a copy of 'Dancing In The Moonlight' to regularly play over the PA system and piss everyone off.

Any thoughts on Cowell-created classical singing sensations Il Divo, anyone?

a woman i work with is a massive fan, she follows them on tour, and she's great so i have no bad feelings about them at all

The Louis Walsh corner: Boyzone, Keating, Westlife (including the punchline-provoking "Unbreakable") and, by extension, the Corrs (anyone ever seen a Talk On Corners in charity shops which ISN'T a "Special Edition"?).

They Have Also Served : David Gray, All Saints, Lemon Jelly, Texas.

But not the Uncut stuff 'cos it's illegal for charity shops to sell freebie magazine/newspaper CDs and DVDs (not that most notice, and put them out anyway, but they shouldn't be doing it).

Ours gets round that by having them on the counter, for you to take if you put an unspecified donation in the collecting tin. That said I think an Uncut CD in a proper jewel case has a 50/50 chance of going on the shelves; the basket on the counter is mainly full of Mail on Sunday DVDs in card sleeves.

Of the ones I've heard, Monster is the only decentish one. If I had to pick one I hadn't heard with a gun to my head, it'd be the Simply Red (or Lemon Jelly from the new selection, don't see that one so much outside London I suspect). And if I felt like buying one to stamp on it repeatedly as a way of raising £2 for charity by cathartic release, that'd be the Stereophonics.

which particular Stereophonics album though? There are so many to choose from...

no no, she meant the band itself

I WAS going to ask...

best one features the song about how mean music critics are, really a subject more bands should write songs about.

I can't honestly remember ever seeing a Lemon Jelly CD in a charity shop, but then I'm out in the sticks. Journey South, now you're talking.

What no Turin Brakes?

This is the Lemon Jelly album I always seem to see :

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/21/Losthorizonslemon.jpg/220px-Losthorizonslemon.jpg

You forgot Manic Street Preachers - Lifeblood, whose album cover was designed for the CD bin.

It's true.

Sometimes the third Lemon Jelly album - the one no one bought - turns up here and there but I don't think I've ever seen the first one in charity shops.

Suede - Head Music too.

the verve is the best here

I've never heard it, but I reckon I could probably tolerate Moby best out of this bunch.

I'd be kind of masochistically curious to hear the Toploader CD, just to peer into the abyss.

Suede's Coming Up and the eponymous 'Wheatus' are omnipresent round my hood

The charity shops round my way are a bit less oatmeal than this list. Avril Lavigne, Michael Buble and Ministry of Sound and NOW! comps, that sort of thing.

Charity shops are a bit of a wasteland now. The CDS are just junk, as per this thread, and I don't even bother to look through the vinyl nowadays. Nobody has kept decent vinyl up to this point just to give it away. I guess we are waiting for people to die. Even then, it gets funnelled into Oxfam Music or whatever, who like to price up tattered, unplayable copies of The Beatles' red and blue albums at £10+.

it's always worth a glance through the vinyl IMO. I picked up an original pressing of Quadrophenia with the booklet still attached to the gatefold sleeve for £1 last summer, though admittedly that was a bit of a one off!

I still love that Fatboy Slim album to death

Another two albums that seem to pop up a lot are International Velvet by Catatonia and Version 2.0 by Garbage. Probably one of the late 90's Beautiful South albums too.

As for Stereophonis it seems to be J.E.E.P that I see the most these days. When Handbags & Gladrags came out that album would just not stop selling for a while.

Overall Robbie Williams is the king of the charity bins. A lot of the artists mentioned so far in this thread seem to only have one or two albums that always appear but I always see plenty of copies of everything he did from 97 to 2005, that's eight albums! His swing album is probably the one I notice the most and everytime I still think to myself, how does that exist?

I don't look at the singles that much these days but whenever I do amongst all the Steps/Spice Girls/All Saints singles I always seem to see at least one copy of Cliff's Millenium Prayer.

Gone are the good old days of Sydney Devine and Max Bygraves lps.

the charity shops in cambridge are good for books. I don't own a turntable but I often see vinyl I would be tempted to buy if I did. Hardly ever look at cd racks

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/70/Back_To_Bedlam.jpg/220px-Back_To_Bedlam.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7a/Onka
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/de/Damien_Rice_O_album_cover.jpg/220px-Damien_Rice_O_album_cover.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/de/Travis_-_The_Man_Who_album_cover.jpg/220px-Travis_-_The_Man_Who_album_cover.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c7/Paul_weller_heavy_soul.jpg/220px-Paul_weller_heavy_soul.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/65/R.E.M._-_Monster.jpg/220px-R.E.M._-_Monster.jpg

and so on

SPICE. Monster isn’t too bad either.

I quite often pick up dance stuff in charity shops for a £1 which would have cost £20 on Discogs. Although I quite often buy a load of rubbish stuff on a whim and most of that goes straight back to a charity shop eventually so I’m probably actually no better off, but at least the money is going to a good cause, I hope.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

xp I found a David Mancuso Loft compilation that's now out of print, and Optimo's How to Kill the DJ Pt 2 in charity shops. Good for mixes occasionally!

Also copped that Mancuso one in a charity shop. Missing the first disc sadly.

I found my copy in a shop in Lewes, of all places. The Optimo one was found in Soho, which seemed a bit more appropriate.

Also copped that Mancuso one in a charity shop. Missing the first disc sadly.

oh this always makes me sad. I have a charity shop copy of Ambient Whatever: Isolationism with one disc missing, and the last record of the 3-LP set of that 90s Can remix album plucked from a record shop bargain bin.

Most unexpected charity shop find was when I found the Spectrum / Jessamine split CD in one in the tiny market town I grew up in. It wasn't very good though. (Also found a couple of 70s reggae 7"s in the same 99% white town a decade earlier, which were good.)

erm, what charity shop in Soho?

actually Covent Garden now I think about it, the Oxfam there.

Oh yeah, the one with the aged carpet.

it seems to get some decent paperbacks and vinyl/CDs, though I was surprised to find a mix CD that I'd been looking for for about 5yrs!

Bought a Bill Callahan CD for a quid in a charity shop. 100 miles away and 6 weeks later, I finally go to put it on and find that the case in fact contains two discs: Fun Lovin' Criminals and Rizzle Kicks.

This is slightly bemusing on a number of levels.

You know, if I can find that Vampire Weekend record again, that I passed over while searching fruitlessly for Interpol, I'm going to go back and buy it. I give up.

Three copies of 5 by Die Antwoord and a Noxagt Cd in my local Oxfam today, weird

I only just now realised that Dodgy album title is a pun

VW CD is gone. :(

However, in my neighbourhood at least, most common CD that is missing from this list = Texas - White On Blonde.

Not sure if this is just a Streatham quirk, but wow, I saw a lot of copies of that record.

OK. As of Saturday, i.e. two days ago, my vow is now never to set foot in a charity shop ever again.

Now don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against charity shops; they are noble and wonderful things. I have been buying things out of them since 2001. My wife even helps run a charity shop, for heaven’s sake. Finding something there that you’d never expect to see – and ten times out of ten these things turn up when you’re NOT looking for them – is part of the indescribable joy that doing this sort of thing brings. Not to mention the key role they’ve had to play in my locating hard-to-find, out-of-print, never-released-on-CD number one albums for Then Play Long purposes.

But probably for the same length of time I have been aware of what I shall call the Charity Shop Locusts. You know the type. The ones who hang around the music section, block anybody else from getting there and end up buying all the good stock – sometimes as soon as they get put out on the racks - not even to listen to it but to stick it on eBay for inflated prices or in their crappy out-of-town second-hand record store. You see these people sometimes and turn on your heel – there’s no point going in that shop because when that happens it stops being fun (and it obscures the fundamental purpose of charity shops in the first place, namely to help others rather than help oneself).

I’ve never done that. I’ve never been like that. When I find and buy something it’s because I want to take it home, listen to it, enjoy it, play it to others, maybe even write about it. Sometimes it’s the wonder of finding something again, something you thought had been lost forever. I remember when I was a widower in Streatham, and in one charity shop this old guy kept coming in, ostensibly browsing through classical cassettes but really to have a chat with the woman at the counter and regularly burst into tears – he had also been widowed recently, and I never said anything to him but I knew exactly how he felt and why he was there. Trying to piece his life back together again (I’m not going to go into greater detail here, but enough to say that sometimes you have to let go of a lot of things and then try your best to get them again and put them together again, one thing at a time). I have never gone in and got something and derived satisfaction from the knowledge that I am denying somebody else the happiness and surprise in finding it. If I find something, I want people to know about it; hence all the writing in CoM etc., which was usually about things I’d found, or re-found, that day.

But Saturday was the limit. To be fair I should have known this moment would have come around sooner or later. It was only a matter of time. But nothing truly prepares you for the oleaginous little middle-aged creep, toting a knapsack and looking like he should he helping the police with their enquires, who comes up behind you and says: “Oh, I’ve taken all the good stuff – I think there’s a good Ken Dodd LP down there still.” Sneering. Laughing. Taking the piss. “Winning” his stupid little game.

I really wanted to cause him serious pain. I was beyond angry. “Is THIS all it means to you?” I wanted to thunder. “Just so that YOU can walk out of here and think: I’VE GOT THIS AND YOU HAVEN’T, because I’VE GOT ONE UP ON YOU? Do you realise how sad and pathetic that makes you?” I really wanted to tell him where to get off.

But then I realised, like Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, sigh, I’m too OLD for this shit, and that I wasn’t going to waste my time or indeed what is left of my life on some stupid argument. Why? Because – and please forgive any hint of arrogance here as it’s not what I’m intending – I thought to myself, I’m better than you. I’m BETTER THAN THIS.

I realised what I probably should have realised decades ago, that my relationship to “record collectors” is about the same as the wine critic of The Observer has to winos sipping Carlsberg Special all day. Maybe I should have been tipped off by the jerk in MVE a few months back who bragged that he bought up cassettes but NEVER PLAYED THEM – he only COLLECTED them, like petrified butterflies. But Saturday, like I say, was the end of it as far as I was concerned.

Because this is always all it seems to boil down to, record collecting and being a Charity Shop Locust – not to share or spread knowledge or wisdom, but to hoard it for yourself, for no greater reason that you want to be ONE UP on the rest of humanity, because it makes you feel better and you can go about the rest of your day (and apologies if this is over-generalising but over the years whenever I’ve seen this sort of thing it has always, but ALWAYS, been men). And I don’t want to be associated in any way with this sort of thing. I don’t even want to BREATHE THE SAME OXYGEN as that wanker on Saturday.

So from now on it’s going to be buying proper new records in proper record shops – for as long as they continue to exist – and buying old stuff online. Why do Amazon etc. continue to prosper, despite everything? Because being sneered at by an oleaginous little Charity Shop Locust – fucking up your day, your free time, precious time that you’re never going to get back again - is the alternative.

Thank Christ I am not, nor have ever been, nor ever will be, a “record collector.”

yeah i dunno

i mean obviously that one guy sounds like an odious little shitbreath, but i'm not sure that buying stuff to sell is actually such a morally dubious act in itself

*sigh* It's not what charity shops are supposed to be about. Maybe it's what second-hand record shops are about, but I don't propose to go into any of these ever again, in common with millions.

charity shops are about selling stuff to raise money for charity. any secondary function they have as reasonably priced-resellers of hard-to-find dooleys' albums is indeed of great benefit to wider society but not their fundamental reason to exist. that "supposed to" exists mostly just in your head. i agree it's a nice thought though! bring back well-stocked record libraries imo.

i guess we have spotify though now

*whispers to self*

All right, take a deep breath and walk away. There’s no arguing with these people. They’re convinced in their mind that black is white and 2 + 2 = 5 and nothing you’re ever going to say to them is going to change that.

Walk away. Wait for humanity to evolve.

Remember. You’re BETTER THAN THIS.

NickB saw a TOTP rerun recently methinks.

ha no, i'm just still deeply affected by seeing the dooleys the first time around

All right, take a deep breath and walk away. There’s no arguing with these people. They’re convinced in their mind that black is white and 2 + 2 = 5 and nothing you’re ever going to say to them is going to change that.

Walk away.

had too google this to make sure you weren't quoting cast tbh

whilst i recognize the inherent wrongness in giving away people's creative work without their permission and without remuneration, i think this is one of the interesting things about the better music blogs. all those records that were changing hands for tens or hundreds of pounds a pop because of their scarcity - they were finally out there to be heard, and those of us who wanted to hear them were given a chance to do that without having to pay collector money, and of course the actual artefacts have not altered much in value because the collectors are an overlapping set with people who just want to hear that music.

digital distribution has been a great alternative to wrestling with those who want to fetishize or profit from rarity, even tho it has a lot of unsolved problems of its own.

as for the urge to fetishize or profit from scarcity, well, speculators are always going to find a niche within our economic system i guess

[completely a propos of nothing your initial post reminded me of the dudes who used to hang around pubs emptying quiz machines without having the common goddamned decency to get drunk and level the playing field]

whoever price the records in the oxfam in storrington is possibly smoking crack:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/birdnestsoup/image1.jpg

£6.50 and that was one of the cheap ones

haha holy fuck

Oxfam are greedy grasping bastards ime.

OTM

I feel quite relaxed that Oxfam are doing their best to maximise their income (the point of Oxfam is not to provide me with bargains after all), but I really, really don't understand how they're maximising their income by wildly over-pricing.

Don't all charity shops - and especially Oxfam - live in fear of selling off something 'rare' or 'valuable' for pennies? I'm guessing that half the time they arrive at their prices after a superficial Google or EBay search that leads them to put crazy prices on hot landfill garbage.

I don't object to Oxfam making a profit - and am happy to contribute to their income - but their dedicated CD/bookshops have the same kind of prices you would expect from a non-cheap secondhand bookshop or record shop, without being able to provide the same level of informed customer service you wld hope to receive from a specialist dealer.

I agree, though I think it's less true of books (you can quite often pick up decent things in the £1.50 - £2 kind of range, which definitely puts them in the cheaper end of secondhand bookshops, in London at least).

I assume that you're right about the fear of selling things below market value, but overall it works out as being unforgivably dumb.

The books vary wildly by shop. The one at the Angel seems to sell things at about 90% of retail price irrespective of condition.

My brother donated some books and they wrote him a letter a few months later saying thanks and telling him how much they had made from them (about £2k iirc) which was rather sweet.

i picked up a whole bwun of 7"s for 10p each in the chazzers the other day. ont he market though, someone was selling their dusty, broken 45s for 50p each.

I always remember seeing some Iain Sinclair book in oxfam that was only a few years old, but had gone up in price! In this particular shop the books are always crazily priced, so they just sit on the shelves forever till the staff decide to get rid of them in a sale, where they sell them for a song. AWESOME STRATEGY GUYS