The Pop History Series

As I was saying last week when discussing the Polydor 'Flashback' series, the label did some great compilations in Europe in the 70s. This 'Pop History' series ran to 30 volumes of double albums, They're really lovely, laminated gatefold records and always feature great music.

Most of the ones you see secondhand in UK are German, but they were also released in France, Spain and South America, They were never intended for the UK or USA market, for some reason, but someof them are common at record fairs and you can pick those up for £5-10. They do vary a little, depending on which territory they hail from but most of them are German.

26 of the 30 are compilations but four are whole albums simply reissued. The Mountain record is actually their first two releases. Brilliant music on those.

These all came out from 1972-1974. Some are very hard to get. I've never seen the Mothers of Invention or the Mountain records and I suspect they'll sell for up to £25.00, if not more. I currently have 10 of them, so there's plenty of room to expand the collection. The nice thing is that they are easy to spot in a box of albums because they have that distinctive border to most of them. For some reason every one of the ten copies I have are in mint condition and look unplayed. The photo aboveis of my Cream copy.

CREAM T-SHIRT
If you want more details, Mark Barry's blog deals with each record brilliantly