Remember the 'Top Of The Pops' LPs - I re-created them, but with the original artists.

During the lockdown, whilst trying to think of something to do, I came across one of the old 'Top Of The Pops' albums that seemed so prevalent years ago. And it gave me an idea.

I went on the Discogs web site, and found that all of the albums and their tracklistings were available to buy or just check out on the site.

I didn't want to buy the albums, but I did wonder how the albums would sound if you heard them in the running order, but by the original artists.

I've got a pretty decent sized music collection and felt that I probably already had 80% or the original versions of the songs and that given the time, I could re-do the albums using mp3 versions of the songs.

So I started with Volume 1. Of the 12 songs featured on the album, I had 9. What I decided to do was replace the songs I didn't have with songs in my collection that would keep the same spirit to the album.

Having put together the first album in the same running order as the LP was released but with the replacements, on playback, it sounded really good, so I did volume 2.

I ended up redoing all 92 albums in the collection in the same way. It gave me a pretty good representation of the music we were listening to over the years.

It took a lot of time to complete them, but as we had the lockdown in place, I had plenty of time to spare.

And I have to say, I'm really happy with the results.

Admittedly there are songs missing across the complete collection, but the songs I've replaced them with do not harm the integrity. How could they? I now had the albums with original versions by the original artists.

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