I knew what I was getting, because I know this album very well, but I never had a vinyl edition, instead just a well-worn tape (yes) recorded off my mate's album in the mid-Seventies. This was, of course, an early version of piracy and we were warned sternly at the time that 'Home Taping is killing music and it's illegal'. That was bunkum and the industry made plenty of money selling crateloads of blank tapes in those days: what did they think they were being used for? Anyway it's nice to have the album at long last; it seems sad that youngsters these days miss out on album artwork and the thrill of actually possessing the music as an actual artifact. And the sound quality of vinyl played on a good-quality turntable with a decent set of speakers is of course vastly superior to CDs and downloaded computer files. And "Selling England by the Pound' is rather an important album. Genesis had been essaying an affectionate and rather antiquated view of Englishness for some while now, but this album ended that dalliance, because the next album was the sprawling 'concept' double album The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, an often clumsy religious allegory, set in New York. After that Peter Gabriel left the band and Genesis never regained that flighty, light and humorous touch that is at the heart of Selling England by the Pound.