Britannia Music Club

[Land Waster]

Ahh, the glory days of mail order records, casettes and CDS. Discounted items as long as you bought so many per year, and all that.

Except I often bought a lot of rubbish because it was discounted, instead of being more discerning and taking my time over choices.

What are your memories of using pre-Internet mail order services?

[Crusoe]

Britannia Music Club

For a while I used to order albums from the HMV telephone service. It was something like 0800 (0845?) 33 45 78 and you'd be put through to a random store to order whatever new album was out that week that you wanted. They always seemed a bit nonplussed.

[Jah Womble]

Britannia Music Club

I never used Britannia (or similar) - they never seemed to have anything I or most people I knew would possibly want. When their inevitable inserts fell out of Time Out or whatever, a work colleague and I would usually play the 'if you absolutely had to buy three CDs/cassettes from here...etc' game - as I'm sure many did.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Britannia Music Club

Brothers In Arms was an almost compulsory purchase for Britannia members, I seem to remember.

[Jah Womble]

Britannia Music Club

Indeed. I recall that Simply Red's Stars was also a staple for some while as well.

Someone I knew did sign up to Britannia (though it may have been a lesser-light mail order service), regretted it within weeks - and then spent most of her waking hours trying to leave.

[Giggler]

Britannia Music Club

I never joined Britannia, but I did send an inordinate number of postage-paid cards from CD singles to 3 Aleveston Place, Leamington Spa.

[Various Artist]

Britannia Music Club

Heh heh, yes good old 3 Alveston Place, Leamington Spa — I must have seen that so many times on CDs' card inserts. There's a nice little piece here about it in a blog post from 2008 by UK chart guru James Masterton, who has been writing weekly commentaries on the singles chart since the mid-90s at least and occasionally gets called up as a talking head on TV.

I did have a Britannia Music Club membership back at the tail end of the '90s, and it was partly responsible for me expanding my collection noticeably around the age of 19 and 20. Had to laugh at Stumpy's post because I think I may well actually have purchased Brothers In Arms from them in 1998.
I certainly sent back a lot more than I kept: I realise now I can't nail down with any great certainty much that definitely came from them (even though presumably I joined via some '5 for £6' offer), except for Elvis' Always On My Mind collection that same year and possibly the Levellers' One Way Of Life compilation and the "re-vamped" edition of Bat Out Of Hell. I do know I ended up with duplicate copies of at least a couple of things thanks to them, though, including the Elvis CD, so my brother ended up taking the spare one off me as it was easier than having to pay to send it back to Britannia.

I did always enjoy reading their catalogues, as I'm sure it expanded my musical knowledge at the time. For some reason presumably connected with this, I therefore only recall them specifically for featuring just about the entire output of The Sundays and Bic Runga.

I used to play the equivalent of Jah's "if you had to pick three" game with the catalogue of a discount book retailer whose leaflets were equally ubiquitous inside magazines, Sunday papers and the like — I'm sure somebody will be able to remind me of their name — at the same sort of time period. I never joined because I could never see any satisfactory set; the only title that ever really tempted me was a softback edition of the excellent Leith's Cookery Bible which would have been an absurdly good buy at something stupid like 99p, but it never appeared alongside two or four (or whatever it was) other things that looked good enough in any one offer.

Edit: Wow, googling reveals BMC existed from 1969, I had no idea. Went into administration in 2007, sadly.

[Land Waster]

Britannia Music Club

Stumpy Pepys wrote: Brothers In Arms was an almost compulsory purchase for Britannia members, I seem to remember.

Along with Fleetwood Mac's Tango in the Night.

I think we're starting to see a pattern emerge.

Some of the album descriptions were laughable. I remember seeing the Levellers third album described as 'essential for anyone who enjoys a good hoe-down.'

Although in the case of Levellers fans, a good 'hose-down' may have been more appropriate. But then hardcore Levellers fans would be unlikely to flick through the pages of a Britannia catalogue.

[Jah Womble]

Britannia Music Club

'A good hose-down' - very good, sir.

I suspect that The Levellers could count more than their fair share of fanbase 'suits' as well, however. I recall being in a bar (briefly) at a table next to a bunch of tedious office-type blokes who spent most of the time putting Levellers tunes on the jukebox and singing raucously. (It was unsurprisingly One Way of Life, mainly.)

Viz the terrible descriptions these leaflets threw up, I remember one promoting still-a-Spice-Girl Mel C as an 'indie rock chick' for her Northern Star album.