Saturday April 18th will mark the worldwide celebration of Record Store Day. Of course, don’t expect Beijing Olympics-style explosions – this will be a more sensitive affair, with undercurrents of pride and achievement. Ain’t that nice?
Record Store Day was officially born in the USA in 2007, and 2009 will be the first worldwide celebration. Stores from UK, Ireland, Greece, Hong Kong, New Zealand, France, Denmark… basically you name it: they are participating.
To celebrate, we at Clash have sought out some serious record store aficionados to give us the lowdown on their locals as a countdown to Record Store Day. Why are these stores are so alluring? Why is every employee is a walking, talking Wikipedia of music? And why do even newly released records manage to acquire a vintage layering of dust?
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DAY ONE, and we’ve something of a rallying call to arms from Clash contributor Charlie Frame…
When asked to write a few words about my local indie music shop, I knew it wouldn’t be a happy article.
I live in Hitchin, Hertfordshire: a medium-sized commuter town with a relatively vibrant music scene and several live venues. Once upon a time we had two indie record shops – F.L. Moore’s closed down a few years ago, while the tiny but bountiful CD Heaven shut its doors three months back to become a textiles shop, largely due to the credit crunch and the advent of download culture. The Unknown Zone, a dance vinyl emporium, is now a vintage clothes shop, and now that Woolies has gone down the shoot there’s literally nowhere in town to buy music short of scanning the limited shelf space in Sainsbury’s.
I remember my local indie from when I lived in nearby Letchworth. David’s Music was my place of solace from 1994 to 2005. My friends and I would trawl its racks after school looking for new Britpop releases and spending pennies on rejected cassingles. In my raving years I would often calm down on Sunday mornings by idly flicking through the second-hand shelves before buying something suitably chilled to go to bed to. A recent visit to the shop was a blow to my soul. The once vast racks of vinyl had been removed and half the shop assimilated with the adjoining bookstore. Where row upon row of CD releases once stood were band t-shirts, guitar tab books, artist biographies and other knick-knacks that were not recorded music.
So is this bad news, or just a sign of the times? Is it sad that we will soon see the passing of the time when we could go into town on a Saturday afternoon and carry home a new music release, reading the inlay as we traverse the seemingly endless walk home? Is listening to an album even as special any more if it’s been downloaded in minutes with a tiny icon instead of an album sleeve? And what about those who once ran music shops with passion and dignity, some of whom even went on to start record labels like Rough Trade from out the back of the store?
Do yourself and your local indie a favour: go out and buy a new record or CD today and listen to it from beginning to end. I don’t care if you rip it to your hard drive, read the inlay, then stick it on a shelf, sell it back, or throw it away – this could be your last chance before the era of physical formats bows out to digital for better or worse.
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Tomorrow’s Record Store Day content will feature Chris Cummins on Banquet Records in Kingston and Steven Harris on Dada in Chiswick. Coming later: articles from members of Brakes, Funeral For A Friend, Official Secrets Act and many more writers.
