“When I was seven, I stole my Dad’s record player. I don’t know why I wanted it so badly, I just knew that this record player was the heart and soul of the family and I wanted this magical instrument to myself.”
“Bearing in mind it was almost the same size as me, it was a feat in itself that I managed to get it to the top of the stairs en route to my bedroom. However, it was the final step of my journey that proved to be the most fatal. It happened so fast. I tripped and my precious cargo slipped from my child’s grip and crashed with a sickening crunch on the floor.
I followed suit and landed perfectly on top of the arm spinner. The whole thing was in bits. It was an incident that wasn’t spoken of for years to follow, I probably cried all the tears in my body that day. My Mum and Dad’s collection of records which were stacked up in our sitting room were only a painful reminder of my misdemeanour and the fact that for ten years later, we didn’t have a record player.
Instead, my memories of vinyl were more of the sleeve artwork than they were of the songs themselves. I loved sorting and staring at the covers—nowadays, I wouldn’t know one band’s record artwork from the next—but back then, I could tell which was which by their sleeves. I wasted no time showing my friends when they came over!
They were the images of songs and bands I never really got to listen to on vinyl. However, before “The Incident” I’ll never forget watching my Mum and Dad dancing to The Stones’ “Wild Horses” on the old record player.
That was pretty sweet.”
—Lexy
