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 21st 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
