Running up to Record Store Day 2019: Part three, the most expensive singles I have ever bought

Years ago, if you'd told me that I'd pay £35 for a 12" single and £18.99 for a 7" single, I'd have been speechless.

But I have.

Both of today's singles were Record Store Day special edition releases by Florence + The Machine.

Of course they were...

It perhaps says something about my relationship with Record Store Day that I didn't camp outside a record store all night/morning to buy them.

I bought the 2015 Record Store Day release of 'What Kind of Man' in late 2016 via Amazon, having discovered that the B Side was 'As Far As I Could Get', an almost Patti Smith esque, tense stream of consciousness that is both perfectly executed and an absolute masterclass in controlled despair and rage.

You can't buy this track any other way and, having heard the bootleg of it on YouTube, I had been trying to track it down for about a year. The 12" was waiting for me in the hall after I got back from having my second tattoo done.

The 2018 Record Store Day release of 'Sky Full of Song' was purchased via Piccadilly Records, and I picked it up from the shop about a fortnight after Record Store Day 2018 had taken place.

Piccadilly Records basically advertise those RSD releases they still have left on their website after the event, and they're available to order/reserve on a first come, first served basis. Which was lucky for me in that I was still working at the library at the time and, as such, would have needed to book the Saturday off work to queue up outside the shop to get it otherwise.

I know that the queueing up with your list is kind of the point, that it's all part of the experience, as are the DJ's and in store appearances, but I only wanted that one record and, as such, didn't want to use up a day's annual leave to secure it.

As it was, I went after work one day to pick it up, a journey I will always remember for two reasons: I was body slammed by a a woman at the crossing by Newton Street in a particularly disturbing instance of pedestrian chicken gone wrong, and the person who served me at Piccadilly Records very kindly complimented me on my My Neighbour Totoro bag.

The 12" is pressed on milky blue vinyl and the 7" is pressed on a storm cloud grey milky vinyl. Shades of grey and white. It perfectly compliments the black and white video that was made to accompany 'Sky Full of Song'.

'Sky Full of Song', while not the lead single from High As Hope (that would be 'Hunger'), was the first single to be released from the album. As such, it seemed apt that the B Side to the single would be a spoken word piece by Welch, namely 'New York Poem (for Polly)', which would later feature in the book Useless Magic, and which gave the album High As Hope it's title.

There was a kind of synchronicity to this, given the way that poetry and lyrics, book and album, are so intertwined. Similarly, 'As Far As I Could Get' is the perfect B Side to 'What Kind of Man'. It's the quieter, sadder, side of the situation, it speaks of pain in a quieter way, but is equally as strong and ferocious for all that.