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When I was 15/16 or so, I had two turntables and a mixer in my bedroom and had fun being a bedroom DJ to myself, with mostly the UK and Dutch trance music that I enjoyed and was quite popular at the end of the '90s. I lived in a small village in Cornwall, down at the far southwest of England, which is pretty rural. The nearest town had a single independent music store that sold dance music on vinyl. It was kept behind the counter and when you asked what was available the owner would pull out some stuff he thought you might like. He was pretty good at this… I always ended up buying a few things I liked. There was also a fair bit of rare-ish interesting stuff in the mix - different from the larger but more commercial vinyl selection at HMV or the Virgin Megastore on shopping trips to the nearest decent-sized cities.
I didn't have enough money or the extreme interest to amass a very large collection of vinyl, nor did I keep great care of it. It wasn't too long before I went off to university and didn't take my DJ stuff, so my records were just left in a cupboard in a fairly damp bedroom in Cornwall. Sadly the record shop I used to go to closed as well. For a bit the owner continued to sell the dance music records door-to-door. He'd drop off a selection you might want, and pick up things you didn't want to keep. I stopped buying quickly though as I didn't have much to spend, and wasn't as interested.
I moved to the US nearly 10 years ago now, and in the past year started buying vinyl again. I've always continued to buy music on CDs but got interested in vinyl due to the fact I live very close to an amazing record store,
, and work at home so that I can enjoy listening to albums on CD or vinyl while I code. I picked up a HiFi turntable, bought a range of LPs to begin with, and have been enjoying that for a bit now. Of course - that made me nostalgic for the dance music too, and my bedroom DJ days.
I was pushed into doing something more about this after coming across
, the streaming radio service hosted by SDF. There are lots of great shows focused on electronic music there that got me thinking I fancied my trance vinyl again - particularly the 33 1/3rd show, which is a live vinyl mix every Wednesday. My parents visited us in the US and brought over a few records from my teenage days that were still in my old bedroom, and weren't scratched to pieces or horribly mouldy. I started picking up other things I used to have and enjoy from
- and then new (to me) stuff too. I'm now setup with two DJ turntables and a mixer again. Fun times!
This time around I have my 90s trance that I can annoy my wife and children with (they don't enjoy it)… but I've also bought a bunch of very cheap 12" singles of 80s and 90s cheesy dance music so that we can have a quarantine dance party every now and again.
It's often fun to go back to an old hobby!
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This post is day 2 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge.
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