Dan Snaith's Oxfam Jams

It emerged yesterday that dance music's nicest man, Dan Snaith, had nipped down to the Oxfam on Kingsland Road in Dalston and dropped off a teeny, tiny chunk of his record collection for the delectation of charity shoppers. The man known to clubbers and festival goers worldwide as Caribou slunk in amongst the Barbara Cartland novels and greying white t-shirts to deliver 150 bits of vinyl, which is set to trickle onto shelves in instalments over the coming weeks.

Having spent a few months in a dark place last year getting really, really into Bargain Hunt I decided to head down to E8 for a rummage around the mothballed rubble in search of a few Snaith selections. Unfortunately, work got in the way. Here's what I think I might have found. I think they're his anyway. They all had his name tippex'd on the run-out groove anyway. So I was told.

Michael Jackson - Thriller

The law states that every single charity shop in the United Kingdom must stock at least thirteen dogeared copies of the biggest selling record ever made, priced at a fiver or more. I battled through sixteen down in Dalston before finding the Caribou collectors item, which sees Snaith, scrawl an unconvincing pair of glasses on the deposed King of Pop and a crudely done tumescent penis-tip popping out of the top of his slacks.

Nightlife Unlimited - "Peaches and Prunes (Ron Hardy Re-Edit)"

Weirdly, this seemed to be the only record in the batch that was featured on the gem-heavy 1000 track YouTube playlist that Snaith put together one — presumably very stoned — night. Either he's keeping the good shit for himself and hoping we're happy with the scrawled-on offcuts, or he's actually just pretending to have a big record collection and in fact he actually just picked this up from the Barbardos in Borough and is passing them off as his own. In any case, this Ron Hardy edit usually goes for £40 on Discogs so I was delighted when I noticed that Oxfam were offering it for £38.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? - Live at the Fez

The joy of trawling through someone else's record collection, removed from the order of it's original home, slipped out of the all important clutches of context, is that it allows you to piece things together, giving you the chance to understand the life of another soul without direct communication. You join the dots between Merzbow and Blueboy, DJ Koze and DJ Billy Bunter. You can spot the development of taste, map out internal triumphs and quiet devastations, implicitly noticing beginnings and ends. In Snaith's case, we worked out that he's a HUGE fan of nu-rave never-were's Does It Offend You, Yeah? going so far as to own everything the ninth most-listened-to new band of 2008 on last.fm ever released on wax, including this rarer than hen's teeth 12" that sees Reading's most mediocre covering "Whip It" by Devo. Somehow that one didn't make the 1000 song mega playlist Snaith put together recently. It's not on YouTube so if you wan't to hear it, come on over.

The Tweets - "The Birdie Song"

Oh, and he's also seemingly a fan of terrible, terrible, terrible novelty records. I skipped on a £4 copy of "The Ketchup Song", by the way, but my granddad likes this one and it's his birthday soon, so in the tote bag it went.

Zig+Zag - "Them Girls Them Girls"

No, I'm not sure how or why a Canadian mathematician and bedroom producer got hold of a 12" released by a pair of ugly puppets who launched to fame on The Big Breakfast before Denise'n'Johhny took their rightful place on the sofa, but there you go. The A-side is nothing to shout about, but boy oh boy, the "12" Alien Dub Mix" on the B deserves a place in anyone's collection. Shame on you, Snaith, for casting it aside.

NB: These might not actually be the records Dan Snaith has donated. Why not head down to the aforementioned Oxfam and confirm/deny for yourself and donate a bit to charity and pick up some no doubt excellent picks at the same time. Feel free to let me know what you found.

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