Music writer Jeanette Leech’s record player is always spinning – especially with girl groups of the sixties.
In this digital age, where a ‘record collection’ often exists solely as a list of titles on a phone or a playlist on Spotify, it is satisfying to get your hands on an actual, physical object, lift it up and declare that you love it. No one appreciates this more than music writer Jeanette Leech whose North London flat is lined with orderly collections of LPs and singles, particularly by girl groups from the 1960s and 70s. “You have to get up, find a record, put it on, put it away, look after it,” she explains, doing exactly that. “You can’t just key one up on iTunes. There’s something about the effort you go through with vinyl that reduces the distance between you and the music.” The difference between the sound quality of vinyl and other media, she says is, “the warmth – which doesn’t sound very technical and it’s not meant to be.” Listening to records is also sociable, she says as she slips ‘He Knows That I Love Him Too Much’ on to the turntable. “You want to share them. This single, sung by a British teenager, Glo Macari, was released in 1965 and wasn’t a hit at the time but it’s really good.”
Jeanette has been collecting 60s girl groups since she was a teen. Her interest was fired up when she discovered CD compilations ‘Dream Babes’ and ‘Here Come The Girls’. “They had a lot of the more obscure stuff on them,” she says, “and they opened up a whole new world to me. I bought the CDs, then I bought the original singles from record shops, fairs and off eBay.”
For more of Jeanette’s collection, turn to page 110 of November’s The Simple Things. Buy or download your copy now.
Want to hear the best of Jeanette’s sixties girl group collection? Have a listen to her Spotify playlist.