THE FOLLOWING SONGS ARE FEATURED ON BOTH THE POP SHOP GOLD
AND POP SHOP GOLD VOL. 2 LPs
"SHADDAP YOUR FACE - JOE DOLCE"
"DOWN UNDER - MEN AT WORK"
"DANCING IN THE CITY - MARSHALL HAIN"
THE FOLLOWING SONGS ARE FEATURED ON BOTH THE POP SHOP GOLD
AND POP SHOP GOLD VOL. 2 LPs
"SHADDAP YOUR FACE - JOE DOLCE"
"DOWN UNDER - MEN AT WORK"
"DANCING IN THE CITY - MARSHALL HAIN"
If you are browsing this blog, then you, like me, are a Pop Shop Junkie. The very first Pop Shop I bought was Pop Shop Vol. 15, and I got Pop Shop Spectacular Vol. 2 for free as a buy one, get one free promotion.
My niece had Pop Shop Vol. 1-14 in her collection. Her records were also her holy grail. I was privileged enough to be allowed to listen to her records whenever I visited. She gave me the first 14 Pop Shops on my 21st birthday.
That was the start of my very first quest - to collect all the missing Pop Shops. I visited pawn shops, asked friends and family, and also advertised on the radio. I got Pop Shop Spectacular Vol. 1 from people who moved from Port Elizabeth to Bloemfontein just a week before she heard my request on the radio!
I managed to collect them all. Pop Shop was discontinued in 1991 when the last LP, Pop Shop Gold Vol. 4, was released. The first Pop Shop on CD was Pop Shop Vol. 45.
My grandmother was my greatest contributor to my collection, as she provided the funds to buy the LPs. The Pop Shop bug struck while I was still in school. Every day after school I would visit the local OK or CNA stores on my bicycle. If the new Pop Shop arrived (usually every three months), I would race home to get money from 'Ouma' and head back to town to get my Pop Shop. This kind of trip was ± 20 km on a bicycle but worth every pedal of the way!
No matter how well you take care of your vinyls, they eventually get scratched or repeat, or repeat, or repeat... itself as it gets stuck. This decay led to my second quest - collecting all the Pop Shop songs featured on the LPs in digital format or CD quality. It took me almost 15 years to track down these tracks, and now I'm able to revisit my Pop Shops in clear quality... OK, so it's not the same as listening to the vinyl sound, but at least the memories live on...
Pop Shop's greatest rival was the Springbok Hit Parade collection, which usually came out the same time a Pop Shop hit the shelves. The one big difference between the two was that Springbok did not feature the original artists. They featured cover versions of the songs. They usually featured other tracks not featured on the Pop Shop.