Confessions of an International Vinyl Smuggler

Last year I went on a trip to Amsterdam, my first in 20 years. So what was taking me back? Was I going to smoke my brains for an entire weekend? Was I going to purchase an exquisite diamond ring for my wife? Was I on some Proustian quest to find fingerprints of my teenage self left behind on my last trip to the ‘Dam?

None of the above.

I was going to slake the thirst of my most secret habit, the pursuit of which I scarcely dare tell a soul for fear of the social stigma attached.

I was going to Amsterdam to fatten up my collection of picture sleeve European pop singles and E.P’s from the 1960s – at Record Palace, the great record shop opposite the famous old music venue, the Paradiso.

I feel as if I am typing these words in silhouette, to keep my identity a secret – for am I not to be more pitied than scorned? Do we not all have guilty vinyl secrets lurking like a politician’s past?

At home, I keep them away from the main body of my record collection. I play them on a red Dansette Popular from 1962.

There, in private, I dig the easy tones of Adamo (unjustly never accepted as one of my five famous Belgians when that pub challenge arises) and the gossamer charms of Lucky Blondo, perennially in skinny rib polo neck and bad slacks (that’s him, not me)…

Then there’s the stomping covers of Spain’s answer to The Beatles, Los Mustang (El Submarino Amarillo, anyone?) and the mad yodel of L’hotesse de L’air by Jacques Dutronc (roughly equivalent to being France’s Ray Davies)…

My tragic tale begins about 12 years ago on a rainy morning in North Finchley, in the North London Hospice Charity shop. There, hidden in a shoe box composed largely of singles by The Bachelors, the bane of the seven-inch hunter’s existence (how many units did these feckers shift? It must be in the billions) lurked a picture sleeve.

The period was irredeemably 60s, lower case font, clean cut guy with a pre-Beatle cut, cool suede jacket, rakishly loosened woollen tie, RCA Victor blue label.

Neither the song – Elle Était Si Jolie – nor the singer – Alain Barrière (think Don Draper re-cast as a crooner) – had troubled my radar to this point. But the words “sélectionnée par la R.T.F au Grand Prix Eurovision de la chanson 1963” caught my eye.

I bought it. It cost 50p.

I had carried a Jacques Brel fixation from college, so I thought I could handle it.

I never thought I’d get sucked in.

Who does?

But at the syrupy sound of this mawkish ballad, I immediately felt like Gene Wilder in Woody Allen’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) at the moment he suddenly falls for the sheep. I knew it was wrong. But I just had to find out more about this Alain Barrière.

The label revealed that he wrote his own material – impressive, I thought – and that the Play Bach guy, Jacques Loussier was one of his arrangers.

After a little research I found that old Al, like some Breton Cliff Richard, was still on the go! And this was his 1963 Eurovision entry! I began to seek out his records. I quickly resolved to limit my collection to his 1960s oeuvre on the grounds of coiffure alone – Monsieur Barrière had woken up on a bad hair day sometime in 1971 and had never quite recovered. His record sleeves thereafter look like those pictures on the wall of men’s hairdressing shops that seem to say: you too could have a haircut like this… if you’re not careful.

It was only a matter of time before I found (and on the spot became a fan of) Mireille Mathieu, Jacques Dutronc and a plethora of Ye Ye Girls. Then it was Drafi Deutscher (and His Magics, of course) from West Germany and Hervé Vilard (did you know he was born in the back of a Parisian taxi?) and… if it wasn’t for the fact that I was typing right now, I’d be holding my head in my hands in shame.

I have to stop this confession now, as I can hear my wife coming up the stairs, and she doesn’t know my dark secret, either. Last time she nearly caught me alphabetizing my Dutch E.P’s and when she burst in and asked why I had such a guilty look on my face I had to tell her I was watching porn on the internet. It seemed like a less shameful alibi than collecting European 60s pop records. You won’t tell her, will you? Cheers. You’re a mate.