Top five record collector types – which one are you?

Time Out produced this article where they saw 5 distinct types of record collector…which one are you?

1. The dad

Once upon a time Peter would hang out his bedroom window, smoking joints and blasting rare northern soul seven-inches. Now he’s got a beer belly and thinning hair and his beloved records are relegated to the loft. But his Thorens TD 160 Super turntable still takes up shelf space in the lounge, even though it hasn’t worked since the mid-’90s. He steadfastly refuses to get rid of this dusty relic of his youth and gets in a rage when his daughter uses it as a resting place for half-finished cups of coffee.

2. The DJ

John, aka DJ Tunemeister, has amassed the kind of  record collection that makes shelves buckle, blocks out natural light and scares away prospective girlfriends. On a Saturday night you’ll find him in a loud paisley shirt and shades, spinning Afrobeat to a half-cut crowd in a Tottenham warehouse. He can still just about pull a crowd as there will always be an endless supply of young people who want to get high and get laid, even though he’s deaf in one ear and the girls don’t notice him any more.

Jeff has a penchant for alphabetisation, a voracious completist tendency and a vitamin D deficiency. He happily forks out a month’s wages on complicated stereo equipment and half-speed remastered Quadrophonic LPs, and once drove to Plymouth to buy a rare 78RPM copy of Elvis Presley’s ‘A Mess of Blues’, but he absolutely refuses to spend a penny on sub-par records – especially the kind of 140g black disc which comes in a cardboard square and costs £20 in Tesco. It’s thanks to Jeff that indie record labels are still in business.

4. The millennial

Jessica proudly nabbed the new Coldplay LP when Tesco launched their fab new ‘trendy gifting option’. She’s not the kind of gal who would be seen dead in a charity shop or record fair. After all, she thinks, who wants to spend valuable Netflix-and-chill time on your knees under a folding table rifling through dusty crates when you can buy all the latest hits in a strip-lit aisle along with your gluten-free bread and almond milk? The only thing thing she’d make that kind of sacrifice for is 30 Instagram likes.

5. The hipster

Lorie spends her lunch breaks at Urban Outfitters, thumbing the vinyl collection with her newly acrylicked nails (done just in time for that DIY punk gig in Dalston). Her long-suffering housemate doesn’t even get a chance to say ‘it’s “vinyl”, not “vinyls”’ before she brushes him off with the classic ‘you might not have heard of them’. She doesn’t actually own a record player, but the album cover really complements her medallion tapestry.

Illustrations: Nathan James Page