I was off on my travels at the weekend and absolutely HATED carrying my records again. Not played vinyl for quite a while as I got spine problems and have been warned off lugging it around by the doc but OOOF. I thought I'd do it but I'd forgotten what 100 odd records weigh.

Also, I had to check them in as they were over 10kg and the airline weren't exactly being flexible. Then I had to wait for 3 hours at the destination for them to turn up as they'd been sent to the wrong place. Great.

Once I got them there was more lugging around to get to where I was meant to be.

Now, the upside of the whole thing is that I really enjoyed playing them on the night.

However, I'm going to test/invest in one of the final scratch clones (or perhaps the original) as it's just more practical. Need one you can scratch without trouble on, though. One that keeps up (any suggestions). I do like the feel of playing 'records', maybe I will also check for the new technics CD decks but they're far from being universally installed in clubs so I guess that'd mean more lugging around of stuff.

Also I can only carry so many pieces of vinyl, so there's always going to be some that I wished I had but couldn't take. If I had a hard drive full of every record I have I don't think I'd be wanting for much, and I could take a laptop in hand baggage with 2/3 timecode records no problem. This would definitely guarantee that I could play to the best of my abilities with the full army, rather than just doing sorties with a small detachment of troops (if you get my meaning).

I don't see that it makes any difference playing off of vinyl/pc/cd whatever, as long as the music is good I don't care. It's not the medium, it's the tunes and the performance as far as I'm concerned.

It may sound like a small gripe and I'm sure people out there will think that it's not much to suffer but I've had a CRUSHING headache for the last 3 days and it ain't fun.