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Rennes (AFP)
“I speak by weight because it is easier”: Robert Lacire, 78, has accumulated throughout his life a staggering number of 21 tonnes of vinyl, or nearly 130,000, which find place in every corner of his home Rennes and in several garages.
A visit to his neatly tidy three-room apartment is a tasty moment. In each room, records: in the dresser, in a closet … A quick calculation makes it possible to imagine that it would take ten years to listen to them all. By way of comparison, the collection of Champs Libres, the main library of the Breton capital, amounts to 39,000 records.
Born in 1943 (“the same year as Johnny”), on May 24 (“the same day as Bob Dylan”), Robert Lacire began “in the bakery”, his father’s trade, before passing a CAP of electrician. Called in Algeria, where he is “troufion” according to his term, he takes care of the sound system of a rock group “Les Kakis”, the beginning of a long history with music.
In 1968, he took over the American bar “Le Country” in Dinan and caught the LP virus. “As it was not far from Jersey, we went there often and brought back records. Likewise, we went to the Saint-Ouen flea market”.
Having become a record store in Rennes, his collection grew, grew, fueled at the beginning of the 1990s by the advent of the CD: considered bulky and out of date, vinyls were sold off and “Bob” was doing business. His collection grew so much that he had to rent garages to store all his boxes.
– A record museum? –
When he’s not playing boules with friends, Robert rummages through his collection and unearths unlikely nuggets. Thus, this vinyl in the shape of a square postcard (!) Which shows a sardana from the Catalan country.
Or these vinyls of 16 and 100 turns, an album of songs from a Michigan prison camp or “Catch a Fire” by Bob Marley that opens like a zippo. If he enjoys rock and country, he displays eclectic tastes, putting “24,000 baci” by Italian Adriano Celentano after fixing a Sheila-shaped centering device on a turntable.
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“It is a very interesting collection, in particular because of its diversity: speeches by Lenin, military music, theater like Le Petit prince read by Saint-Exupéry or records illustrated by Dubuffet”, details Michel Brand’honneur , museographer, who had appraised the fund in 2007, finding “a pity that such a collection is eventually dislocated”.
Because in the fall of his life, Robert worries about the future of his vinyls. “It’s stupid that it stays in the garage,” he pleaded, punctuating his sentences with a dry laugh.
“Monsieur 100,000 records”, as one journalist called it, would like his collection to be part of a conservatory or a record museum. In a plastic sleeve, he shows the letters he had sent to local institutions or even to Jacques Chirac.
But nothing succeeded, despite signs of interest from municipalities in the region and while the vinyl market is experiencing insolent growth (4.5 million units sold in 2020 according to the National Union of Phonographic Publishing) .
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“My greatest wish would be for a city to follow his project,” explains his daughter Sabrina, 52, a childminder who has worked with him in record stores for a long time. Today, “we choose the facility with Spotify or Deezer but we forget these supports which made live artists!”.
“Everyone finds the project very good but nobody moves. I am getting older, it will go to Emmaüs rather than leaving a memory in a region”, he regrets.
© 2021 AFP
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