If there’s one thing music has taught us, it’s that ‘Breakin’ Up Is Hard To Do’, and music lovers tend to take it the hardest.
Ben Folds Five sang about urging an ex to give back all those wasted dating dollars (“and don’t forget my black t-shirt”) on ‘Song For The Dumped‘, while Sting got his LP records back but “they’re all scratched” on The Police’s ‘Can’t Stand Losing You‘.
Now a messy new court case involving a vinyl obsessive has taken the worst of both those song scenarios.
David Carbines and Cora Spaans were a happy couple, operating their art and rare record shop – Abstracks – in the English seaside town of Worthing, but following their split the 32-year-old Carbines has sued his former 43-year-old girlfriend for coming between him and his beloved record collection, as The Telegraph reports.
Carbines is sueing Miss Spaans for failing to return a collection of 7,000 records to him, claiming that despite attempts by him (and his mother) to repossess the vinyl collection from his ex all efforts have proven fruitless.
As part of the messy split, Miss Spaans last year made a legally-binding vow in the Worthing County Court not to damage or dispose of any of Carbine’s property left behind in the flat they once shared, which includes 7,000 vinyl LPs belonging to Carbines.
The ticked off record collector estimates that among the missing discs, gathered over 18 years and estimated at a value of £17,500 (approx AU$ 30,200), are rare early pressings of The Beatles’ White Album and the 1956 self-titled debut from Elvis Presley, with the 7,000 missing records forming more than half of a collection that tallies 13,000.
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(Abstracks, the record shop Carbines & Spaans ran together before the split. Image: Paul Keogh. Source: The Daily Mail)
In March 2012 as part of the separation, Carbines had attempted to have his ex jailed for allegedly breaking her legal-binding promise, but a Worthing County Court judge found in favour of Miss Spaans’ claims that she had no more of her partner’s property.
Carbines then took his case to the Court of Appeal where he demanded his records back or at least monetary compensation for the missing collection, even giving Justice Coleridge a precisely recalled list of the absent records he’d purchased in a detailed document.
“Mr Carbines is a serious collector of records and his whole collection he has itemised, from A-Z, in a lengthy schedule which runs to 70 pages,” said the judge. “It is a most impressive document and he says that, because he bought every one himself, he has been able to complete that from his own memory.”
As well as the more valuable Elvis and Beatles items, the exhaustive list included the entire discography of The Spice Girls, Girls Aloud, and 5ive, some of them autographed by the pop groups themselves.
Though Justice Coleridge said the case was not open to appeal, the 70-page list could provide enough fresh evidence for a new case in the Worthing County Court.
“I am satisfied, having seen the list, that there may be further evidence which, had the judge had it on March 5, could have made a distinct difference to the result,” added the judge.
On top of the 7,000 collection, Carbines – a music graduate and songwriter – says that a hard drive containing a collection of his compositions (no doubt including a few of its own break-up songs), and a service history for his 1986 Ford Capri, are also missing and allegedly in the hands of his ex.
