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Out of context: Reply #75489
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I just posted this story about the rarest record I have ever had on another forum but thought I'd share it here too as I rambled on about my back story, which you may not know (or care) about.
I started volunteering for a local cable radio station CRMK (Cable Radio Milton Keynes) in early 1991. I did a late night show from 1am to 3am for a few months but couldn’t keep such mad hours and luckily was soon moved to 10pm until midnight where I stayed for 32 years! My move to Scotland in 2020 made it easier to do a show for an Edinburgh based station so here I am, anyway... One of the great things I discovered doing a weekly radio show for a small station (remember it was on cable so I knew hardly anyone was actually listening as it probably took too much effort to connect a wire to a radio amp) but I didn’t care at all as I just love(d) fucking about with records and playing lots of dub, electronica and whatever the hell I fancied. I’d record my show on cassette and was advised to send them to promotion companies as they would be happy to send free records of a similar tip.
This snowballed to such an extent that within a year I was getting 20+ parcels of free records a week, mostly promos, white labels, interviews, coloured vinyl etc, it was just incredible. I wasn’t going to stop doing the show even when I wasn’t really in the mood or feeling inspirational that week so I just kept at it and for over 20 years the records then CD’s just kept rolling in. I pretty much kept most things, I have crates of promo CDR's in the garage (it’s time consuming just re-listening to them so they’re just sitting there) the records I have culled over the years, I donated hundreds back to the station if they were popular Indie bands, Supergrass, Radiohead etc, I’m sure I’ve let a lot of rare stuff go free, but hey ho. Most of the weird stuff on Warp, Ninja Tune and so on I did keep and I often sorted out on a deeper level.
It was whilst I was going through the 12″ singles I came across a hand spray painted record which just had the word Blowpop along the top. It was a white label with no other identifying info on it apart from the matrix number in the run-out grooves. I soon discovered it was one of only 100 sleeves spray painted by a Bristol based artist called Banksy. Realising it was probably worth a bit I thought I may as well stick the thing up on eBay then, and bidding went nuts. After a week it finished at £5,850 which today, 7 years later, is still a record price for a Banksy record sleeve. It was in near mint condition though and was bought by a French gallery who I assume still have it. I went on holiday with the kids to Spain that year and ended up more records of course and still have no regrets on letting it go, it had just sat quietly in my racks un-loved/ un-played since 1999.
A caveat to this story is that the guy who sent it to me via Zzonked Promotions in 1999 is now a friend on FB and when I mentioned this story he posted on my page saying how terrible I was for selling something he sent to me as a free promotion item. I apologised in the comments like a pathetic earthling and he replied “GOTCHA!” as he said he still has some copies himself that he had kept by. He said that when Banksy came into their offices they laid all the blank sleeves in lines on the floor and he just walked along them spraying away with his can & stencil and it wasn’t very glamourous and he had a mask on even then so they didn’t know who he was either.