"I just bought a mate who's leaving bash im going to tonight 40 seven inch singles for a quid from a second hand record shop in Camden," writes Dom Smith.
Well, 15 years ago some records were absolute paradoxes, these weird little things that might turn up in tiny second hand record stores in New York, London or Paris.
He put me onto a few other artists like Arthur Baker and Cybotron, and that was when I really started digging - mostly in second hand record shops, like Beano's in Croydon.
Rummaging through record stores, I sense the ghosts, too: I love second-hand records because of the mysteries and stories they hold.
The permanent exhibition features some fascinating early documentary footage of Lyon, and on Sundays there's a flea market that sells second-hand records and comic books in the square outside.
Either way, his photographs are indispensable first-hand records of an important place and time, buoyed by persistent grace.
They decorated the place, got a few more second-hand records, roped in some friends to act as waiters and, using their connections to London's alternative nightlife, brought in a couple of turns to provide entertainment.
From this point of view, the nurses' first-hand records appeared to be the most reliable ones.
Spending time with FIP is like rifling through the wares of a brilliant second-hand record shop (on the left bank, naturellement).
It may be available as a download but it desperately wants to be a 33rpm vinyl record with a faded sleeve that first entered the second-hand record market around 1973, rather than a 21st-century artefact.
The early chapters are much anthologised since they offer a first-hand record of an African kidnapped at the age of ten, taken to the coast, sold to European merchants and despatched to the Americas.
