My name is Luis Borrego and I was born in Madrid. I became a Beatles fan at the age of 13. It all started as a revelation when “Twist and Shout” EP and the album “Beatles For Sale” fell into my hands. They were brought as a gift by a sister of my mother who lived in London. Since then, I have always been interested in rock and Anglo-Saxon popular music. The discovery of the LP “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” would come soon through my good friend JC, whose godmother lived in Biarritz. She bought her godson this awesome find, so impossible to spot in Spain at the time. Next came the single “Like A Rolling Stone” that a school mate lent me in the summer of ’66 along with the single “Gloria” performed by The Shadows Of Night. The last one already occupying one of the top ten spots on UK hits lists. That event changed my life forever. Vinyl records, especially the LP’s of those wonderful years, specifically, releases referred to as Anglo-Saxon popular music, have been for me objects of worship since the first drumbeat and first few sentences of “Like A Rolling Stone” resounded in my ears, altering my sense of perception. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Translating and understanding the lyrics by the Duluth Genius became a goal that I soon left, temporarily, for lack of the necessary basic knowledge of English. In those days, the only foreign language officially studied at school in Spain was French. My devotion to vinyl was forged at a time when the struggle for freedom and music and the message of the minstrels become essential in the life of any university fellow with a minimum of social consciousness, at least in my country. Having the album in your hands, reading the notes on the back cover and the lyrics, when included in the publication, were transcending the sound experience and gave meaning to the songs and the universe of the artist itself, songs expressing concerns, emotions and the feelings of a generation.

From that tumultuous period, though still happy, passionate and full of vitality, Rock evolved and represented for many of us a way of living and understanding the world. The discs were then, like books, bearers of soul and human thought and listening to them, touching them, reading them, and trying to analyze the ultimate meaning of the phonographic work was comforting or at least enlightening. Sometimes shocking. They generated a feeling likely to cause a strange pleasure of extreme intensity or uncontrollable pain emanating from the bottom of our guts as it made us aware of ourselves and the helplessness, powerlessness of human beings. It was almost like trying to capture the “memory of the world” within a plastic disc. However it was already in the 80s, more resolutely from 1985, when I became determined to collect vinyls and complete the official discography of the Beatles and also Bob Dylan, of which I had only purchased until then, 4 or 5 LP’s. Anyhow this would not involve any ignorance of his work which I always followed with interest and diligence, although not so much in depth. Other artists also related to Dylan’s work, and many others of several kinds, both American and British, were joining my arsenal. I became especially interested in British bands of the sixties, Pop and Folk Rock and its derivatives, as well as its roots, Rhythm and Blues, traditional blues and in particular the Mississippi Delta Blues singers. I also tried to include Rock in general and some jazz, though very poorly represented in my archives. At the end of the decade I looked back to the Madrid scene and included some other disks of Spanish bands or artists, such as Gabinete Caligary or Los Pecadores, although ultimately it was the new values that attracted me the most, focused very specifically in El Ultimo De La Fila (Quimi Portet and Manolo García) and its various formations, such as Los Rápidos and Los Burros. Some of Radio Futura and Flamenco singing, particularly Camaron, José Meneses and Manolo Caracol, gather on my shelves and even mythical representatives of the Hispanic couplet, as Concha Piquer, add to the hodgepodge, like the famous singer Carlos Gardel, the most universally popular and significantly outstanding performer of Argentinian Tango. New discoveries, such as Talking Heads, The Cure or R.E.M. and others not so well represented in numbers, such as Pixies, Stone Roses or Silencers, brought new blood to the sample, in my collection. After 1990, already in the digital age, with the birth of the minidisc and other forms of recording and playback, the volume of my vinyl acquisitions declined. However, I still watched for new releases of the most important artists in my personal hierarchy of artistic and musical values.

After 1999 I discovered the extent of the internet and the ability to get my hands on previously inaccessible unusual recordings through exchanges with other collectors who you could contact through Google newsgroups, such as rec.music.beatles or rec.music. dylan.

That is how I came in 2004 to be part of a small collective which we refer to in a private and intimate way as the Dylan Traders Community. Thereafter I became a moderator, then administrator and finally co-founder of the Hungercity page, now defunct. Some of you who frequented that space or any other similar sites, may already know me as Luisbp51, the nickname with which I identified myself in these areas.

So I open a new stage with this blog, in which I intend to publicize the scope of the work of many of these artists, exposing my collection publicly and making available to any interested party the channels to gain certain copies, low coverage recordings and out of print or rarely accessible vinyls. I hope you find it useful and overall you can find here a place where you may have access to certain information concerning your interests as collectors and lovers of rock and popular music.

The Hypnotist Collector