Record Collector is a British monthly music magazine and is distributed both within the UK and worldwide. It was first published in March 1980. The magazine would normally consist of both prose pieces on the history of the artists, and detailed discographies of their UK releases. These discographies would provide all the information needed for collectors to pore over, and which enables them to differentiate between different pressings of outwardly identical releases – catalogue numbers, release dates and distinguishing features of the records/record sleeves themselves. In particular, they would also include a valuation of each record, so that dealers and collectors have a springboard to work from.
Links to Peel[]
Peel was featured in several editions of the magazine, most importantly in a long interview in 1991, This was described by interviewer Mark Paytress as “one of the most in-depth interviews which John Peel ever gave."[1]. As well as talking about buying and collecting records, the DJ mentioned many details of his life and career which did not appear in Margrave of the Marshes or in his other interviews or articles.
Before his death, Peel appeared in the January 2003 punk special edition, where he was asked to pick his favourite ten punk albums from that era. He gave his list in chronological order: [2]
- Ramones: (album - Ramones) Sire
- Damned: (album - Damned Damned Damned) Stiff
- Clash: (album - The Clash) CBS
- Wire: (album - Pink Flag) Harvest
- Buzzcocks: (album - Another Music In A Different Kitchen) United Artists
- Siouxsie & the Banshees: (album - The Scream) Polydor
- Fall: (album - Live At The Witch Trials) Step-Forward
- Undertones: (album - The Undertones) Sire
- Joy Division: (album - Unknown Pleasures) Factory
- Gang of Four: (album - Entertainment!) EMI
After his death, Record Collector paid tribute to the DJ by reprinting the 1991 interview in there successive issues of the magazine in 2004-5 - although only the first part is currently available online. [3]. Interviewer Mark Paytress also mentioned Peel's other connections with the magazine:
- Recently, when RC published the feature on the rarest-ever psych singles, Peel set about playing them all, he seemed genuinely shocked when two titles by Craig and Tintern Abbey were missing from his collection and set about the task of finding them. One of his producers mentioned that he had both the tracks on compilations, a suggestion that was rapidly dismissed – it had to be the originals or nothing at all...
He was also invited to a record fair Paytress had organised:
- I had invited John Peel to my own record fair in Bury St. Edmunds last year. I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t turn up; after all, he must have been asked to things like that all the time. Returning home that night, I flicked on the answering machine: “Oh hello it’s John Peel, thanks for the invite to the record fair. I left at three o’clock and got about halfway there before noticing on the flyer that it ended at four! Bit silly really, make sure you let me know when the next one’s on”.
But he did manage to attend the next fair and showed his preference for vinyl:
- I made damn sure I did just that, and I was thrilled when John did finally attend a couple of our Bury fairs, the last time being this July. The amount of on-air mentions he gave it prior to the date demonstrated a man positively boiling with excitement at the prospect of spending a few hours looking through records. That’s exactly what he did. I made a point of observing that all the time he was there he didn’t look at any CDs – it was vinyl all the way.