catalog

Well-known member
When I used to go to car boot sales in the 90s, you'd sometimes come to this stall with a load of really good vinyl, like quite rare 12 inch niche dance singles or eps, or foreign films on vhs, those tartan ones, and it would be a someone who had no idea about what they had, they just wanted to get rid. It was often a woman, I always wondered whether it was stuff left over from a relationship gone wrong.

I remember also buying a Dr S gachet mixtape off a grandmother, like a homemade mixtape.

I really miss car boot sales, got so much good stuff at them. For a while, I had a bit of a system going, where I'd pick up loads of stuff, even things I didn't want, then go into Manchester and sell it all to vinyl exchange, for exchange in the shop. Got loads of stuff i never would have bought that way.
 

catalog

Well-known member
I have a 40 year old friend who has never stopped, those tall thin racks of CDs on proud display in the open plan dining room. It's like the last decade of technological advances has passed him by, and why not... it becomes tiring to keep up.

It's like a time capsule. I'd forgotten what it's like to look at spines to find music, not a searchbar in a UI.

There's also a sunken cost fallacy. He bought a Cambridge Audio CD player and those CDs were £7.99 each on CDwow.
I've got a mate who has just built custom racks on his landing to store all his old cds and dvds... Has constant rows with his girlfriend over all his stuff, she wants him to get rid and move in with her, but he won't, cos there's no room for the cds.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
When I used to go to car boot sales in the 90s, you'd sometimes come to this stall with a load of really good vinyl, like quite rare 12 inch niche dance singles or eps, or foreign films on vhs, those tartan ones, and it would be a someone who had no idea about what they had, they just wanted to get rid. It was often a woman, I always wondered whether it was stuff left over from a relationship gone wrong.

I remember also buying a Dr S gachet mixtape off a grandmother, like a homemade mixtape.

I really miss car boot sales, got so much good stuff at them. For a while, I had a bit of a system going, where I'd pick up loads of stuff, even things I didn't want, then go into Manchester and sell it all to vinyl exchange, for exchange in the shop. Got loads of stuff i never would have bought that way.
I love boot sales when I can get up. Problem is the best stuff is all gone by 5.15am.
Nearest I get these days is going to London and hitting charity shops, I always hoover up loads of books for buttons.
You got the Feira do Laura here but it's not the same. Edit it's obviously not Laura's fair but that is how autocorrect rendered it.
 
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catalog

Well-known member
Yeah, when I was in an earnest phase, it made Sunday mornings quite stressful. Would need to be up at 5, in the car.

Plus I got into competing with all the serious market trader guys. There's one guy in particular I remember, he grabbed the first black sabbath lp out of my hands, literally snatched it.

It was chaos when you were there early and a new car turned up, everyone crowded round like vultures. Morning breath. Having to make quick decisions about which box to go for.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah, when I was in an earnest phase, it made Sunday mornings quite stressful. Would need to be up at 5, in the car.

Plus I got into competing with all the serious market trader guys. There's one guy in particular I remember, he grabbed the first black sabbath lp out of my hands, literally snatched it.

It was chaos when you were there early and a new car turned up, everyone crowded round like vultures. Morning breath. Having to make quick decisions about which box to go for.
Yeah I remember my friend selling some stuff and he was saying as soon as he opened the boot everyone was grabbing the stuff - how much for this - didn't even let them set up.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I remember my brother getting Francs in his change when the fair came to the village (the unfair we used to call it) - but we'd just been on holiday to France, so next day he brought a load of Francs with him and got back ten times what he'd lost.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
I have a 40 year old friend who has never stopped, those tall thin racks of CDs on proud display in the open plan dining room. It's like the last decade of technological advances has passed him by, and why not... it becomes tiring to keep up.

It's like a time capsule. I'd forgotten what it's like to look at spines to find music, not a searchbar in a UI.

There's also a sunken cost fallacy. He bought a Cambridge Audio CD player and those CDs were £7.99 each on CDwow.
im doing it cos audio fidelity is better on cd than spotify. i could buy vinyl but a lot of modern pressings seem to be shit, and i dont feel like paying 20 or 30 a time.
and im not going to subscribe to tidal for wavs or whatever it offers.
might as well own it (i suppose i could fork out for another audio file player but just cant be bothered at this stage. i found my late 90s discman in lockdown and havent looked back lol).
plus... cds are bloody cheap these days!
if i hate an album, i can just sell it on discogs.

i was surprised though that many people in my age bracket no longer have a cd player. all sold a poor audio quality dream by the streaming overlords. sad to see. (i realise nothing ages a 40 year old more than getting all stevehoffman-like and going on about superior audio.)
 

Leo

Well-known member
im doing it cos audio fidelity is better on cd than spotify. i could buy vinyl but a lot of modern pressings seem to be shit, and i dont feel like paying 20 or 30 a time.
and im not going to subscribe to tidal for wavs or whatever it offers.
might as well own it (i suppose i could fork out for another audio file player but just cant be bothered at this stage. i found my late 90s discman in lockdown and havent looked back lol).
plus... cds are bloody cheap these days!
if i hate an album, i can just sell it on discogs.

i was surprised though that many people in my age bracket no longer have a cd player. all sold a poor audio quality dream by the streaming overlords. sad to see. (i realise nothing ages a 40 year old more than getting all stevehoffman-like and going on about superior audio.)

I've still got many hundreds of CDs, and still buy them (although much less than in decades past) over vinyl for the exact reasons you mention. I'll buy a digital version of an album if there's no CD, but I'll always opt for the CD first. and I like having a physical collection, spines to peruse. luckily, I have the space for them.
 

catalog

Well-known member
Does anyone else ever think about minidisc and why it failed as a format? In theory it's brilliant. Unscratchable recordable CDs that are also smaller. But it totally failed. Probably cos you needed a lot of initial outlay and other kit to get the best for them? Or something about that weird plastic metal hybrid?
 

version

Well-known member
Does anyone else ever think about minidisc and why it failed as a format? In theory it's brilliant. Unscratchable recordable CDs that are also smaller. But it totally failed. Probably cos you needed a lot of initial outlay and other kit to get the best for them? Or something about that weird plastic metal hybrid?
Did Sony keep it exclusive? That might have done it. I guess Apple made it work with the iPod, but you had lots of other things that could play digital files too.

There's that Gescom release titled Minidisc that's based around its seamless shuffle function, so you'd have an album with however many permutations that would keep rearranging itself each time you listened.
 

catalog

Well-known member
Yeah I think it was proprietary format at first, so that probably didn't help. And I remember my friend using them to record gigs we went to in very early 2000s, so I guess just become outdated cos of the ease of file sharing.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
was talking to version about this another time but Thom Yorke doing a DJ set is the semi hip 40 year old were discussing
 

version

Well-known member
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sufi

lala
Does anyone else ever think about minidisc and why it failed as a format? In theory it's brilliant. Unscratchable recordable CDs that are also smaller. But it totally failed. Probably cos you needed a lot of initial outlay and other kit to get the best for them? Or something about that weird plastic metal hybrid?
they were not an open format and not really hackable so mp3 players were just much better usability, if i remember correctly, minidisc coundnt really play anything that wasn't compressed in the sony format, and didnt play nicely with computers, so they were not really compatible with the mp3 era.
 

Dusty

Tone deaf
i was surprised though that many people in my age bracket no longer have a cd player. all sold a poor audio quality dream by the streaming overlords.
There is a middle ground, which is just pumping FLAC files through your stereo instead. I once had thousands of CDs and records, but sold almost all of them after ripping the lot to hard drives.

Does anyone else ever think about minidisc and why it failed as a format?
They were expensive to manufacture, so always costly to buy. Also, and I doubt this impacted on their demise, but I think the audio compression used to cram the data onto the smaller disc meant they were not CD-quality audio.
 

version

Well-known member
I always tell myself I'll get round to selling books, CDs and DVDs I don't want, but I can never be arsed going through the seller process on various sites and making trips to the post office so just end up giving them to charity instead. Maybe one of the few cases where laziness results in the more positive outcome.
 
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