I’ve just (literally) thrown hundreds of records (and I mean proper, 12″ vinyl records) into a large bin. Why? Because we no longer need or want them anymore in the department of the university where I work.

The collection I’ve just disposed of was ‘donated’ by the university radio station five years ago, and it has since been sitting, uncatalogued, uncared for, unused, in the corner of our department, which is becoming steadily busier and more cramped. Hence we have no room for it anymore, and hence my recent heretical chucking of it.

I’m torn as far as how I feel goes. On one hand I feel like a book-burner or something, as if I’ve committed a great sin against art and music. On the other, it was a definite thrill to hold all that culture in my hands, deem it unworthy, and cast it to the pit.

Don’t panic! Myself and my colleagues had trawled through the collection at length to fish out anything worth keeping, both for personal use and to add to our proper music collection in the library. I myself seized a pile of Jimmy Cliff and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, an old Verve promo, a near-mint condition 12″ copy of “Lazarus” by The Boo Radleys (which I’d been trying to get hold of for years!), a white-label promo copy of “Blue” by Bark Psychosis, some Talking Heads and a whole load of early 90s alternative stuff (World Of Twist, Momus). There was fuck-all left in that collection that anybody would have wanted, and all that’s been thrown out is knackered and unplayable or negligable dross at best. But for every Leo Sayer LP there’s a scratched-to-shit Killing Joke, for every dodgy, never-made-it no-mark there’s a Sweet album… I may not care for them, my colleagues may not care for them, you may not care for them, but maybe somebody would…

Fuck it. I had one last ruffle through them before I chucked them on the pyre. I had been worried in case there was something I’d missed, some record hidden in there, a diamond amongst shit, an album to potentially change my life but I’m 24, things don’t change my life anymore. I’m not sure they ever did, now I think about it. Maybe In Sides altered the way I listened to things from then on, but nothing ever convinced me to run away and be a monk, or to split up with my girlfriend, or to set fire to something…

What I’m trying to say is that, really, when you get down to it, at this point I think everything is disposable, and that nothing is genuinely essential to how well you live your life. If culture is telling stories, maybe there are so many stories being told now, by so many people, in so many ways, that none of them, by themselves, are absolutely necessary.

So goodbye Toyah, goodbye Zodiac Mindwarp, goodbye “Ireland’s Famous Singing Farmer”, goodbye Adorable, goodbye anonymous early 90s rave 12″. There are plenty more records out there to be heard.