june 6th extract.. and the closure of record shops

I wouldn't normally post anything from the new book that's directly related to the news but I've just heard that One Up Records in Aberdeen is closing the same week that HMV has gone. I'm not arsed about HMV but One Up going is really bad news. Anyway here's the extract from "Totally Shuffled..." 

Day 158

June 6th

Foetus Interruptus-Thaw

Record shops are increasingly becoming a thing of the past. Sadly. They’ll become stuff of legend and myth within the next couple of decades. I’ll be sitting my grandchildren on my knee and telling them tales of hours spent browsing for strange fat, round 12” artefacts just in order to listen to music. They’ll listen wide-eyed and incredulously about the hours wasted in vain attempts to get hold of “rare” songs imported across the ocean from America in numbers of less than the fingers of one hand. They’ll be staggered at the exorbitant prices that used to be paid for just one record and that generally music was so difficult to obtain. Maybe they’ll see recorded music as a bit odd in itself.(Recorded music ,after all, is  just a blip that’s only been around for a 100 years or so. By the end of the 21^st century it may be looked upon as a technological and cultural dead-end. Like a harpsichord.) 

(Let me tell you a story.)

Anyway, I’ve spent many, many happy hours in record shops up and down the U.K. (And many costly hours as well.)  I can’t actually remember the last time that I spent any significant period browsing but I have a feeling that those days are gone forever. I’ll start from the North and work my way down South in respect of the most memorable record shops that played such a large part in my life.

1.One Up Records, Aberdeen.

This would have been in the early 1980’s when I worked for a while in the Granite City. There was a Virgin store in Aberdeen which was ok but One Up was a small indie store just off Union Street in the city centre. It was slightly similar to Probe Records in Liverpool (more of that soon) but staffed by dour-as-fuck Scots and therefore a much jollier retail experience than Probe. One Up was, I think, next door to a café-which was useful. It must have previously operated as a different sort of shop as all the wall were at weird angles which wasn’t conducive for housing racks of vinyl records. Having said that, they had a great selection of really indie stuff-lots of records from the USA and post punk singles from around the world. If you’d heard, say a 7” single played on Peel’s show by an unpronounceable Polish hardcore band on a Wednesday night, the One Up would have it ( or know of it and be able to get it for you) via some circuitous route from Gdansk across the North Sea by the following week. There were plenty of singles I got from there purely on the basis that they seemed obscure and therefore hoped they would be the next-big-thing.(Never worked out like that). Two other facts; their record bags were cool and if you hung around long enough they’d always make you a cup of tea.)

2 .Probe Records, Liverpool.

I’ve already gone on at length about Probe so I won’t reiterate things too much. However, it was a little wonderful trove of records in Mathew Street, Liverpool and staffed by the most fucking miserable condescending bunch of know-alls in the whole retail sector. There is an apocryphal story (which rings so true) about a hapless punter who wandered in off the street one day and asked in all innocence, “Do you have Phil Collins’ new album?” “Yes”, came the reply. “Can I have it please then?” “Er, no.”  That just about sums it up.

But, for their selection of records, it couldn’t be beaten and that’s why I spent many hours in their browsing away and many pounds that I couldn’t really spare crossed the counter into their coffers. (Unlike in Aberdeen, you’d never get a brew from them.)

3. Penny Lane Records, Liverpool.

Although they must have had a shop in the actual Penny Lane this one was in the city centre. It’s now an opticians I think. Penny Lane was up a flight of stairs on the first floor above, an opticians. Maybe bad sight has increased at the same rate as record shops have declined. Penny Lane was a bit like Probe (indie shop but not so much indie (music)) but it did have a really good selection of reggae albums including loads of dub and what seemed to be the whole ECM catalogue on vinyl. When New Order played the State Ballroom in Liverpool, the only place you could get tickets from was Penny Lane. The shop suddenly closed down-it must have gone bust- one day it was there and the next it was gone. I wonder what happened to all those unsold ECM records.

4. Virgin Records, Oxford Street, London

Not the megastore Virgin but a strange little Virgin store that co-existed at the same time as the megastore was growing. It was halfway down Oxford Street in a sort of arcade of shops and must have been forgotten about by Branson as it seemed to be a bit of throwback. It only appeared to have in stock weird rock albums from Germany and Japan and obscure old hippy albums though there was a section of industrial oddness which is where I got hold of the first Foetus album, “Deaf” (which is now worth a fortune and which I sold for buttons ages ago. Grr.) I could never have imagined of being able to go into any of the Virgin megastores and being able to buy a Foetus record.

I wonder what they were thinking of.


Totally Shuffled:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00CJYZ3CA