When you're collecting records, it's noticeable how many copies of the same record you see. While some, like Chicago at Carnegie Hall evaded me for 45 years only for two to turn up in a month, others are always there. This is my top 10 records in every second hand store
10. Joan Armatrading - Me Myself, I. It could be any on her first half dozen records, they're always here. Nothing against them but everyone must have copies from the 3 or £5 box.
9. Chris de Burgh - Into the Light. It got to #2 and most copies were bought off the back of Lady In Red before they all realised how awful an album of such material was
8. Abba Greatest Hits. It sold millions. This and Arrival are in every record shop
7. Just A Boy - Leo Sayer. I'm not sure anyone who bought this in the 70s still has it. A car boot favourite, its actually quite good in a singer-songwriter way.
6. Herb Alpert- Whipped Cream and other Delights. Big in the mid-60s and dispensed with ever since. I loved it as a young boy.
5. Anything by The Moody Blues. There's millions of copies and no buyers. Lavishly packaged too. Can't give them away.
4. Herbie Mann - Memphis Underground... or anything by him. Whoever bought them all back in the day, doesn't have them anymore even though thetre's some great moments on them.
3. Sound Of Music soundtrack. One of the biggest sellers of the 60s that wasn't the Beatles which probably explains their omnipresence
2. Chicago Greatest Hits. Bought a year later by people who liked 'If You Leave Me Now only to be scared by their jazz-rock wig-out excursions like the excellent 'Beginnings'
1. Paul Young - No Parlez. The king of the record shop. I don't know why there are so many, often multiple copies of this but it haunts us like a ghost. It sold 1.2 million in the UK and had three or four hits on. Incidentally, Pino Palladino played bass on this and Leo Sayer's record. He seems to have been rejected by everyone who once liked it.
There are plenty more, of course. They come in waves.
