'You hold in your hand a miracle.A book about a passion, and the hipsters, oddballs and old heads who share it, written by one of their number, albeit a ludicrously erudite one' - Danny Kelly A revival of interest in vinyl music has taken place in recent years - but for many of those from the 'baby boomer' generation, it never went away. Graham Sharpe's vinyl love affair began in the 1960s and since then he has amassed over 3000 LPs and spent countless hours visiting record shops worldwide along with record fairs, car boot sales, online and real life auctions. After leaving his job at William Hill, his retirement dream was to visit every surviving secondhand record shop across the world. Whilst Graham still has a little way to go on his travels, Vinyl Countdown follows his journey to over a hundred shops across the globe including the many characters he has encountered and the adventures he accrued along the way. From Amsterdam and Angus (Scotland), to Bedfordshire and Budapest and Tennessee and Wellington (NZ), always returning to his local record shop Second Scene in Bushey to report on progress. Vinyl Countdown seeks to reawaken the often dormant desire which first promoted the gathering of records, and to confirm the belief of those who still indulge in it, that they happily belong to, and should celebrate the undervalued, misunderstood significant group of music-obsessed vinylholics, who always want - need - to buy... just one more record. Vinyl Countdown is a mesmerising blend of memoir, travel, music and social history that will appeal to anyone who vividly recalls the first LP they bought and any music fan who derives pleasure from the capacity that records have for transporting you back in time.

'You hold in your hand a miracle. A book about a passion, and the hipsters, oddballs and old heads who share it, written by one of their number, albeit a ludicrously erudite one' - Danny Kelly

A revival of interest in vinyl music has taken place in recent years - but for many of those from the 'baby boomer' generation, it never went away.

Graham Sharpe's vinyl love affair began in the 1960s and since then he has amassed over 3000 LPs and spent countless hours visiting record shops worldwide along with record fairs, car boot sales, online and real life auctions.Vinyl Countdownfollows his journey to over a hundred shops across the globe - from New York to New Zealand, Walsall to Warsaw, Oslo to Ozstralia, (old) Jersey to New Jersey - and describes the many characters he has encountered and the adventures he accrued along the way.

Vinyl Countdown seeks to reawaken the often dormant desire which first promoted the gathering of records, and to confirm the belief of those who still indulge in it, that they happily belong to, and should celebrate the undervalued, misunderstood significant group of music-obsessed vinylholics, who always want - need - to buy... just one more record.

A mesmerising blend of memoir, travel, music and social history, Vinyl Countdown will appeal to anyone who vividly recalls the first LP they bought and any music fan who derives pleasure from the capacity that records have for transporting you back in time.

'Graham Sharpe's journey around the second-hand record shops of the UK is full of laugh out loud anecdotes and wonderful observations. A great read not just for vinyl fans, but for anybody who has ever visited a record shop' - Graham Jones, author of Last Shop Standing (Whatever Happened to Record Shops), Strange Requests and Comic Tales From Record Shopsand The Vinyl Revival and the Shops That Made it Happen