Sounds Like Hits - the agony and the ecstasy

The title of this blog post is a little melodramatic, but you'll see where I'm coming from...

I sometimes visit the old market at Spitalfields in East London. Usually there's nothing much to find from a budget LP perspective, but yesterday I came up trumps with the two albums below. They are numbers 10 and 11 of the extremely hard-to-find "Sounds Like Hits" on Rediffusion. I was amazed to find not one but two, in great condition - and in buying them, managed to double the number I have in my collection - an indication of how rare they are.

So, that's the "ecstasy" part. Now for the "agony" bit. The seller saw me clutching these, while rifling through the boxes in search of yet more, and asked me if I'd seen the other two as well. No, I hadn't - so he helped out with the search, adding that they all came in together and should be next to each other in his boxes. Alas, between us we failed to locate the others, although he hadn't recalled selling them (perhaps they'd been pinched). According to memory, he said they were numbers 8 and 9 of the same series - which is desparately frustrating as I would have loved to pick them up as well - especially number 8; I've never even seen what the cover looks like!

So, two managed to get away, but nevertheless, I have numbers 10 and 11 secure on my shelf. It's interesing that number 10 turns out to have a red label with white star. All the others I've seen in the "Sounds Like Hits" series are yellow, but the fact that the star is white and not black proves the use of red was intentional, and not just a case of the wrong paper being used. These are the labels from the two LPs:

Note that No. 11 is produced by Allan Crawford. He was of course the man behind "Top of the Pops", and was still producing those at the time. Unsurprisingly, there are several tracks (no fewer than eight) which appear both here and on "Top of the Pops" volume 10. Although these are different versions, they are very similar and most seem to feature the same vocalists as on TOTP.

If the buyer of "Sounds Like Hits" number 8 is reading this - any chance of a photo of the front cover? Pretty please!!!