Record Collection

Vinyl has always been one of my favourite things to collect. It's not anything that I grew up around as by the time I came along in the '90s my parents had long since traded in all of their records for CDs. I became fascinated by vinyl when I was a teenager and first began listening to old music. Initially I liked it just as merchandise, but then I got a record player and realised how much warmer it sounded to the digital music I was used to and I was instantly hooked, and began collecting it seriously and learning about different pressings and editions and such.

A big draw to vinyl for me is this is how the bands I listen to intended their music to be listened to. It's another reason I don't like modern remastered vinyl: Pink Floyd themselves mixed and recorded these albums for vinyl. Everything else is taken from those original tapes, so I want to hear it how Pink Floyd intended it to be heard and listened to. I also enjoy how tactile the format is, you can't put a record on and forget it in the background like you would playing iTunes - you have to flip the disc after every few tracks so you're always listening to it. I also enjoy simply having a physical music collection and seeing it grow and interacting with it by looking at the sleeves, cleaning it, etc. In todays digital world where so much is streamed, physically owning the things that mean the most to you makes it that much more special.



Because of this, my Pink Floyd vinyl collection is one of the things that means the most to me. It's taken me years to build it to this point as I'm picky and prefer to save up for good quality original pressings as I play them a lot so want them to sound their best. I have a YouTube channel (I kind of always torn between making it an art channel or a music channel so I include both) and one of my most requested videos is sharing my Pink Floyd vinyl collection. I have a couple of gaps, but I enjoying hunting for stuff in record shops as much as I enjoy owning it so I'm in no hurry and I don't think collections are ever truly finished as there's so many unofficial and foreign variations out there. I had a lot of fun putting this video together, so I hope that you enjoy it!

We don't need no thought control

Since I first started seriously collecting Pink Floyd merchandise something that I always wanted most was The Wall figures. They were released in 2003 in two series, and fetch large amounts on the secondhand market so for a long time they were just a pipe dream. But this year all of my luck seems to have fallen into place and in the space of two months I've gotten the two figures out of the entire collection that I really wanted!



I'm in the habit of making vague searches on eBay quite frequently for Pink Floyd merchandise, and that's how I came across both of these items. The first was the School Master, he's always the first character people think of from The Wall and I really love his design. He was quite cheap on a Buy It Now, so I didn't hesitate and it arrived early February. It was cheap on account of the box being slightly grubby, which I do care about but I'd rather save the money to be honest as the figure itself is just fine and that's what really matters.

Once the School Master arrived I started thinking which one I hoped for next, not really expecting to get it. The Marching Hammers was top of the list as it's the logo for the whole album and movie, and last week I happened to see it on an eBay auction and I won!



It arrived yesterday and I couldn't be happier. Sometimes plastic figures can look really tacky, but these are so well made that even people who aren't Floyd fans have admired their quality. The Marching Hammers in particular look like actual polished metal, and despite being so gangly the School Master is really sturdy. I had originally planned to keep the Marching Hammers in the box, but I could see it had already been removed at some point and you don't get the full effect of it behind the plastic packaging. I'm not at home at the moment so can't see what they look like alongside each other with the backings interlocked, I'll update with a photo as soon as I'm back!

Speak To Me

I've wanted a space purely to discuss Pink Floyd for the longest time. I have an Instagram account just for my collection, and I mostly post about Pink Floyd on Tumblr (and I also run an account dedicated solely to Nick), but neither offer much opportunity to go into any depth as it's all image based. Pink Floyd are my favourite band and I'm incredibly passionate about them, but I don't get much chance to wax enthusiastic in my day to day and so I have a lot of feelings to share and get out there! In the past I've tried to incorporate it into my other blog, but I feel like I have to dial myself down so as not to come across as obsessed as I actually am and bore the uninterested, but I'm rather tired of that. In the words of one of my favourite authors, "maybe my passion is nothing special, but at least it's mine."

I want to use this blog as an outlet to share my thoughts and feelings about my favourite band, share the new additions to my collection, the things I already own, and the adventures my love for this band takes me on. All posts before this one have been copied over from my main blog for posterity's sake. Last year in particular was very Floyd filled in general and left me with a very full heart and so it's important to me to include those journals and memories.



I've been a fan of Pink Floyd for over 15 years. I discovered them as a teenager through David Bowie's album Pin Ups which includes a cover of See Emily Play. It was my favourite track on the album and as I knew it was an LP of covers I sought out the original and it all snowballed from there. The Syd era has always been my favourite, and Syd himself means a great deal to me (Nick is also a favourite, he's such a sweetie). My favourite albums are Piper At The Gates of Dawn and Animals.

I love the 1960s in general, and as well as Pink Floyd merchandise I also collect vinyl, vintage clothing and homeware which I blog about here. I'm also an illustrator, and naturally frequently draw Pink Floyd.

Nick Mason

It was Nick Mason's birthday on Saturday, and as he's one of my favourite members of Pink Floyd I took the opportunity to draw him. I really struggled to find a high quality image I liked, and couldn't in the end. Considering my reference photo looked as though it had been taken with a potato and I had to use my imagination for the finer details, I'm quite pleased with how it came out!

Gerald Scarfe

Last month I took a little trip to London to visit the House of Illustration as they’re holding an exhibition of Gerald Scarfe’s work. I’m currently writing my dissertation on Gerald Scarfe, as I’m very interested in how illustration and music are used together and obviously never have the two mediums come together so seamlessly as with Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Scarfe’s style has become synonymous with the band despite only being used for just one album out of fifteen, and I find it so interesting how his artwork has given such a concrete visual narrative to the very non-visual medium of music. He’s illustrated Roger Waters’ ideas and autobiography to an extent, and yet added his own narrative and perspective into the mix. I could geek out about it for hours! So you can see why the exhibition was a must for me.



I hadn’t been to the House of Illustration before, and photos aren’t allowed so unfortunately I have nothing to show you, but it’s well worth a visit. It’s very small, and the Scarfe exhibition filled most of the gallery. It covered a fairly wide selection of his art, with sections on The Magic Flute, his costumes and design for The Nutcracker, The Wall, his short animation The Long Drawn-Out Trip, and his concept work for Disney’s Hercules which I found the most interesting. Being a huge fan of Disney, I loved seeing the notes back and forth between Scarfe and the animators of how the characters should be designed and move without losing Scarfe’s distinctive style, and how the animators translated that style to be Disney appropriate. I’m currently trying to change my own art style up from a less Disney inspired style as it’s what I grew up trying to draw like, so I made sure to take some of their notes to heart and took joy in seeing how they had to unlearn some of the same habits I’ve gotten myself into. I also loved seeing so many of Scarfe’s original artworks, nothing can compare to seeing an artists work you admire in the flesh. To see that things aren’t as perfectly cropped and bordered like they appear in a book or a screen, to see the lines he rubbed out and how his designs changed. I’m sure all of this sounds terribly geeky, but for an illustrator like me I was in my element!




These photos of his works are from Their Mortal Remains, but you can see some those details here too. Not many of his pieces from The Wall were featured in this exhibition, but they were different from the ones I’d already seen which I appreciated. I know Scarfe had a lot of his original artworks stolen by Floyd fans in the ‘80s, so I believe what’s left is quite limited.

Remember A Day

On Thursday I traveled to London to see Their Mortal Remains, the V&A's Pink Floyd exhibition, for one final time before it closes on the 15th. I'm lucky to have been a total of 3 times so far (you can read about my other visits here and here), and I'm going to miss this exhibition SO much. I can't even begin to put into words just how much I love Pink Floyd and what they mean to me, and so what this exhibition means to me. It just gives me the biggest buzz and makes me so happy to escape and just be completely and utterly immersed in my favourite band for a few hours. It renews my love and wonder for them all over again and makes me feel like I did when I first discovered them, and I'm going to miss that feeling so much. I have no idea how I'll recapture that without the exhibition. The closest thing I can describe it as is it's like Disneyland, but for Floyd fans. It's that same kind of magical escapism. I managed to spend 5 hours in there this visit and I have no idea where that time even went, I was in such a happy bubble making sure I took in absolutely every little thing before it's gone forever. I just love Pink Floyd so much, and this entire exhibition just highlights that so much and overwhelms me with adoration. I could never see it enough times.

I'll put most of these images under a cut as there's going to be A LOT, but I just want to remember this always. You'll have to excuse the red and green dots, it's the reflection of the audio guide around my neck!



As you begin the exhibition you enter through a model of their Bedford van which was the bands earliest mode of transport for all of their equipment. There's a photo of Nick loading his drumkit into it (which you can see clearer here - notice the band through the window in the background!) and a letter Syd Barrett wrote to his girlfriend of the time that mentions the van.








A zine Syd made for a school friend


Really my only complaint about the entire exhibition, and has been since day 1, is that there isn't enough emphasis placed on Syd. Roger Waters himself has stated "We wouldn't of existed if it weren't for him", and as I know from first hand experience how few people are even aware of Syd's existence (the amount of times I've been condescendingly told by 'fans' that there's no member of Pink Floyd called Syd!) that I really feel his influence wasn't emphasized enough. After the first few rooms he's just never mentioned again, despite the fact that he inspired so much of the bands later content such as Wish You Were Here and a lot of The Wall and his shadow forever haunted them. At the very end of the exhibition there's a little tribute to Rick to mark his passing, and yet there's nothing like that for Syd which I thought was sad.



One of Nick Mason's technical drawings from his architecture studies, and an abstract painting by Syd.

"After two years at the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology, Syd Barrett came to London in 1964 to study at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. He was a prolific painter, and many people saw him as an artist first and a musician second. Although Pink Floyd's increasing success meant Syd left Camberwell early, he continued to paint for the rest of his life"

Floating down, the sound resounds

Today is 50 years to the day that my favourite album of all time was released. August 5th, 1967. It still sounds fresh - I'd like to say as fresh as it would of sounded when released, but it was unlike anything that had ever been released before it so that's impossible. It's an album that gets overlooked a lot - even by Pink Floyd themselves. Nothing was released for it's 50th anniversary, no special edition, not even a previous edition repackaged for the occasion. Nothing. I'm bitter about that - when you consider how many editions of Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall have been released. Those albums would never have been made without Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Pink Floyd as we know it would never have existed without Syd Barrett. They'd never have been signed to EMI without him. So many people don't even know who he was, beyond the "crazy diamond" written about on Wish You Were Here. He was so much more than that. He wrote the majority of Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Pink Floyd struggled to find their feet with their sound after he left. They wrote a few songs that tried to imitate and capture Syd's whimsical essence, but never could. That's Syd's talent. He could take child like themes and play on words, yet there's an unexpected deepness to it. The songs on this album have supported me through some of the darkest times. It transports me to another world, a world where I am understood.

Pink Floyd recorded this album to sound like their live performances that were garnering so much attention. They'd record during the day, and then play a live set at The UFO Club or The Roundhouse in the evening. I can only imagine how fabulous those live sets were.