Frustrated by old albums not being available on BitTorrent, this week I did it the legal way and bought some records on Ebay. My latest strategy is to pick artists from the early 80’s (the fondest musical period in my life) and go to allmusic.com and see what is considered to be their greatest record (usually the first). There are a lot of one-hit wonder bands whose later work was mediocre, but often their first was the one that got the attention, and for good reason. I’m hoping to discover some of these (cheaply). Recent successes have been Gang of Four, PiL and Magazine, with it working for 90’s bands too (Pavement, Sebadoh). I don’t know why I ended up in the Vinyl section of Ebay, but before I knew it, I just had to have the first L.P’s of Lena Lovich and the Gun Club. Before I knew it, I was pumping in favourite old local bands and finding fan sites from that period. A punk one told me that I guy I used to know had died last year. Another showed pictures of a band THAT WERE MY PHOTOS. I came across a site called Inner City Sound which is a run by a guy with a massive collection of cassettes from gigs between 1977-1984. I just happened to have one on his wishlist (a Wet Taxis live-to-air on 3PBS from the Prince of Wales in 1984), so I shot him an email, and now he’s all over me. But in a nice way. He’s going to convert it to CD and mail it to me back (both the cassette and the CD), plus a copy of any gig in his collection that I want (on CD). I don’t know what to pick. I’m hoping that my 20 year old cassette that I haven’t played for 5 years is still ok and listenable. I wonder about the state of my other cassettes and am thankful for Melbourne’s lack of humidity.