A note of transparency first: this is a Groovilla Books title, and this page presents it rather than reviewing it.
The Grail Hunt: UK & Ireland is a vinyl lover's travel guide: twenty cities across England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and a last chapter for the road between them. It is the second volume of the series; the first is The Grail Hunt: Europe.
Each chapter tells where that city's music came from, which record shops matter now, and how to walk between them. More than 200 record shops, with addresses and what each one stocks. Each city also has five grail records, a hundred in all, and for each one its story, the Discogs median price checked on a printed date, and how to tell the original pressing from the lookalikes: catalogue numbers, runout matrices, label and sleeve details.
Shops move and close, so the book has a page of updates and corrections on this site, which the QR code on its copyright page opens.
Where to find it. Print: Amazon UK and US. Ebook: Amazon Kindle UK and US, and on Payhip, sold direct as a DRM-free EPUB.
Who it is for. For anyone who loves music on vinyl and is looking for a record tied to a city, a past or a sound. Not a tourist guide with record shops in an appendix: the other way round.
