DID you get into the groove yesterday? October 10 marked National Album Day and a chance to celebrate the humble LP.

I’m sure I’m not alone in confessing to having a loft full of old records that haven’t seen a turntable in decades. We don’t even have the means to play them anymore, the old Fidelity hi-fi having packed in many years ago. Why don’t we just wheel them to a charity shop?

The truth is, it’s hard to part with memories. Up there gathering dust is the first LP I purchased (Blondie’s Parallel Lines) and a limited edition Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark album with a gatefold cover which I was convinced was a canny investment and I’d flog it for a fortune in years hence and retire to the sun. (I checked on eBay recently … it’s worth about eight quid).

Of course, for many, the album was ditched in favour of the new-fangled tape cassette, which you could listen to on a handy ghetto-blaster or a dinky Walkman. Oh, the high technology of it all!

Then along came the new kids on the block in the shape of the shiny compact disc. Amazing! How could so much music fit on one wee round of plastic?

Little did we know. Now the early iPod I purchased looks like something out of the dark ages.

Our son’s generation will have no cause to devote cupboard space to albums, tapes and CDs … all they need is a smartphone.

But surely the download experience can’t match hours spent trawling music emporiums. My go-to was Virgin on Glasgow’s Union Street, where I could become lost for hours.

So what will be the next new thing for music ownership? A digital chip implanted behind the ear? I jest, but nothing seems impossible these days.

The theme for this year’s National Album Day was 1980s music, with BBC Radio 2’s Sounds Of The 80s marking the event with a poll.

Listeners chose U2’s The Joshua Tree as the best album of the 1980s.

Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms came second, followed by The Stone Roses’ eponymous debut.

All but one of the top 20 are by male artists, with the exception being Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love at number 11.

The Human League’s Dare took sixth place while albums by Madonna, Janet Jackson, Tracy Chapman and Grace Jones featured further down the list.

Written against the backdrop of the Cold War, The Joshua Tree reflected two sides of the American dream, with the Irish band drawn to its glamour but repelled by what bassist Adam Clayton called “the bleakness and greed” of the Reagan era.

“And it feels like we’re right back there in a way,” said guitarist The Edge, after hearing the results of the poll. “Politics are still so polarised.”

Released in 1987, The Joshua Tree made U2 one of the world’s biggest bands.

Five years prior to its release, I saw the band play Glasgow’s Tiffany’s. I purchased my ticket the day before the gig for the grand sum of £3.50.

Nearly forty years on, a U2 ticket will cost you a pretty penny more and be slightly harder to come by.