Oh God, not another new Blog site...

There is something special about the music you can find in Charity Shops. For some people, hunting down weird and wonderful records that only cost a pound or two becomes an obsession of sorts. The Charity Shop record collector is a different breed to your average collector, who might spend hours on E-Bay bidding for that rare Bowie 7" only released in Japan, or who might get up at 5am to scour record fairs for that elusive Herbie Hancock album.

While you may stumble across the odd financially valuable item in the corner of your local Scope store, collecting music from Charity Shops really isn't about that. A lot of the time I buy things simply because the cover looks amazing (watch out for a post on that coming up) or because it looks like the musical treats on it appear to be something magical that I have never heard before. Sometimes the cover is naff, the record is worth nothing, it may even be pretty scratched or have a large brown stain on the front but I know it's a dance floor smasher that will go down a treat when I play it at the weekend.

A lot of the fun in Charity Shop collecting is actually listening to your purchases when you get them home to see what they sound like. Obviously sometimes you do get it completely wrong but over the years your eyes become well trained at spotting what could sound interesting, just by glancing at the cover.

Earlier in the year an opportunity arose for us both to start actually playing our rather large Charity Shop vinyl collections out in public. We are both DJs playing out regularly in London but figured that the crowds we usually play to probably wouldn't appreciate a bit of Tina Turner or a big band cover of a horror movie theme suddenly dropped in the middle of a Techno or Ragga set (John & On is resident at large weekly Techno / Electro night, Always Fridays at The Egg and Nasty Mcquaid is resident DJ for Off Modern at Corsica Art Studios and Best Before at Dalston Superstore, alongside running the bashment/ UK Funky/ bassline night Young Money Millionaires). Hence our Charity Shoppe night at The London Fields pub was born...

The Charity Shoppe Manifesto:

- All records played must have cost £1.99 or less and been found in a Charity Shop or Flea Market.

- Punters are encouraged to bring along their own charity shop finds to play.

- There are no boundaries to the genres we cover in one night.

- No records are played for the purpose of being ironic.

That last point could probably be expanded upon... Basically, all the records we play, we love! The night is a celebration of Pop Music in all its forms so we ask people to please leave their pre-conceived ideas of what is, "cool", and what is not at the door. In the words of Edwin P. Whipple:

“Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment”.

So, if you do happen to hear one of us playing Queen or The Bangles soon after playing some obscure Disco or Ragga 12" be assured that we hold good Pop Music in as high regard as any of the great underground music that we play!
Anyway...

On the Blog we will be posting up some of our best and most interesting finds, not only of the musical variety, but also pictures of some of the other fantastic objects / clothes etc you can find in your local charity shop. We will also be sharing with you some of our favourite shops around the UK as well as or own and other people's mix tapes.

I'm off to listen to my new Russian Folk songs 12" I picked up recently...