No Rock And Roll Fun

UNCOLLECTED: Andrew Dixon comes home one day. Workmen are renovating the flat next door. Unfortunately, they've screwed up and cleared out his near-priceless record collection as well. Some GBP12 000 worth of rare and irreplaceable vinyl.

We can only symapthise with Andrew, which, we realise, won't do much good. He's not the first, of course. No Rock still remembers the time Liverpool's Planet X burned down (no mean feat, considering the way the toilets usually overspilled and ensured the place was always damp.) Their dj Carl Sebino (time has raised question marks over the spelling of his name) had, unfortunately, chosen that night to not bother with taking his entire record collection home, planning to go back and pick them up the next day. He did, but it took a bucket rather than a box to carry the resulting mess.

Closer to home, we discovered that when our brother moved home, he and his wife had taken the decision to not bother putting a small box of seven inch singles into the moving van. Instead, some really, really valubale punk records (first pressing of Gary Gilmore's Eyes, for example) were left out for the binmen.

Even closer to home, we once found a huge pile of Fall, Family Cat, Wedding Present, Ride (you get the picture...) records for sale in a Kitchen Fittings Shop in Anfield. We thought it was odd - apparently the shop was flirting with second hand goods, but even so: why would an indie kid suddenly offload his entire record collection? We wondered this all the way into town, as we drew out some crisp notes and returned to pick up almost the whole lot. A year later, and we're rubbing knees with a big eyed boy and he takes us back to his room to play records. "I've not got many good things... I used to have a great collection - Fall, Family Cat, Wedding Present, Ride; you get the picture... but someone stole the lot about a year ago..."

Any more record collection wipe out stories? Send 'em in to records-gone@bothsidesnow.co.uk.