During my motorbike rides to second-hand record shops this week I picked up two classics. The sort of record that nobody gets excited about because it is almost assumed everybody already has it. In fact they are both records that I used to have before I got rid of all my vinyl 20+ years ago. The records I bought were Frampton Comes Alive and Blondie’s Parallel Lines.

Although I do have quite a lot of what might be considered obscure now I have not been avoiding the obvious. It is easy to get sniffy about common LPs like No Parlez or Rumours, but I have to remind myself that there was a reason that they sold by the millions. When I pick up records like that I don’t feel like I am being judged for my tastes, though I do feel that the sellers must be wondering why somebody my age does not already have, for example, Tubular Bells.

I now have these LPs that everybody seemed to have in the 70s and 80s

• Tubular Bells
• Hotel California
• Frampton Comes Alive
• Breakfast in America
• Out of the Blue
• No Parlez
• Graceland
• Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
• Havest
• Blood on the Tracks
• Born to Run
• Live & Dangerous

I still do not have these LPs – though I have some of them on CD (or DVD-A or SACD)

• Dare
• Rumours
• Thriller
• Led Zeppelin IV
• Dark Side of the Moon
• What’s Going On?
• Pet Sounds
• Hunky Dory
• Sgt Pepper

What surprises me is how expensive some of these still are, even in second-hand shops. Considering how many copies were sold, they are hardly rare but just about anything by Pink Floyd, Bowie, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones cost two or three times as much as, say, a Boomtown Rats or Little Feat album.

I do wonder about that, but in the meantime I shall continue picking up things that nobody else seems to want much (Joan Armatrading, Al Stewart, Alan Parsons) but that I will enjoy just as much and leave the Bowie and Floyd unless I happen to come across a bargain.