EAMONN MARRA

Every Record I Own: The British Pop Collection – 60 Original Top 10 Hits

A good compilation is a rare thing for some reason. As someone who spent years doing radio shows and making mixtapes and playlists for friends and crushes, ordering songs so they flow nicely into each other while playing a diverse range of genres and artists is something I love.

There are surely millions of people in the world who like doing this and are good at this. So why is the track listing in so many compilations so bad! There are lots of great songs. But I would never chose to listen to those songs in this order.

This is a three record set of top 10 British songs from the 1960s, it was bought by an old flatmate and I don’t it was really ever listened to, and has been ignored for the last few years.

As opposed to some other similar compilations I’ve come across in my time, this one sounds pretty good. Even though it’s 10 songs per side It doesn’t sound badly compressed or mastered in order to squeeze as much as they can onto the space available. There isn’t terrible mono-to-stereo conversions and it’s in decent condition.

I’m going to donate it to the house records at the Sprig and Fern in Berhampore when I DJ there this Sunday. While I wouldn’t play these songs in this order, there are plenty of songs on here that would work really well in amongst other songs.

(I didn’t listen to this one all in one go, have been doing a side at a time throughout the week.)

Fave songs: The Searchers – Needles and Pins, Dusty Springfield – I just don’t know what to do with myself, The Troggs – With a girl Like You, David Bowie – Space Oddity