Good News from the Walnut Tree

Record Store Day - Part 1

So record Store Day rolls around again this Saturday sending those that adore all things record shop into spasms of ecstacy or agony depending on how many limited 7 inches their store gets delivered.  The link above will send you to a list of the exclusive UK releases which are spread around the country to these stores.  I will come back to these later…

Firstly let’s have a look at why this day exists.  You know why though don’t you?  Its because the internet has decided to kill almost everything and one of its first targets was the humble record shop. I love you ‘The Internet’ but come on, don’t make me choose between you and music.

I grew up in Bromley, which has an HMV and a store called Head and has had a number of high street record shops over the years including Virgin MegaStore/Zavvi, Sam Goode and Our Price.  It did at one point have an independant record store near Bromley North Station at which I bought a number of Nirvana Rarities in about 1994 and a number of 7 inches by people like Helen Love and Pavement. I can’t remember the name of that place it wasn’t around that long.

I also remember popping in on the way home from school one spring/summer and listened to ‘What’s the Story Morning Glory’ two weeks before it came out.  That doesn’t sound too exciting these days due to the lessening of Oasis’ musical legacy and the fact that most sought after albums (other than Radiohead’s) are leaked a couple of weeks before their release and are downloaded by their biggest fans before the CD/record has even hit the shelves.  That is even if the record goes near shelves.  Amazon, Play and other online stores can charge less for the physical product and itunes makes it easy to buy an album in as long as it takes to download.  We have become a very impatient culture, why wait when I can download what I want for free before it is even released?

In some ways for a music fan this is amazing. Who wouldn’t want great music without even having to get out of bed (or wherever you may be at the time).  Think of a song and you can download it instantly.  It’s certainly less effort but for me the effort in getting to the store was part of being a ‘fan’.

The people in charge of Record Store Day argue that the record shop holds an important place as a physical area for music lovers to meet and share.  The people that work at the stores are taste makers (this is where I link to that scene in that film that everyone talks about in relation to record shops, you know the one yes?  How boring of me.) 

It’s important that there are places that people can go to check out who else is into their scene.  Bands are formed in these record shops and so the circle of life rolls around again.  I agree wholeheartedly with this, I love going into a record shop and can spend a good few hours looking for things I don’t have or even things I have that I think may be worth something.  There is nothing as satisfying as seeing a 7 inch I bought in 2001 for 99p being sold for £15.  Not that I would sell it.  

I used to go into Croydon almost every weekend with a few friends to look around the record shops.  There seemed to be a wealth of independant shops hidden away in corners or down backstreets.  I think I still have plastic bags from most of them, 101 Records for indie, Shake Some Action for punk and Beano’s for everything.  My band once played in Beano’s we had a bad name at that time and the guy that announced us gave us an even worse name ‘Free Spirit’.  He must have thought we were chumps that asked an advertising company to come up with a name for a new fragrance for ponces and kept it as a name.  Beano’s is gone now, it’s a shame, it became a shambles of itself for the last few years.

Of course Croydon record shops also birthed a whole scene, Dubstep was in part thrust from the Croydon loins and has been cherished ever since with pop princesses like Rhianna and Britney getting a musical version of the Croydon facelift.

I do feel that some Record Stores behaved exactly the same as Record Labels, they are so used to getting people to pay loads of money for music that when competition comes in they can’t cope with not making hugh profits and collapse.  There has to be a new way.  Look at HMV for example.  I used to be able to find most of the 7 inch Vinyl records I wanted in the flagship store, now the rack is embarrsingly rare. No-one seems to care for it.  It is becoming increasingly difficult to find music in HMV, you must first battle through acres of DVDs (which must be next to go and therefore not a particularly intelligent way to go, surely in the next 5 years everyone will be downloading movies/TV?), then past the books, T-shirts and video game stuff to find the CDs.  Trying to find Vinyl is even harder.  HMV seem to have given up on music, they will call it diversification but I think it is lazy short-termism. 

They have a massive footfall, a hugh audience that are drawn to the shop primarily because of the historical musical link.  If HMV wanted to they could agressivly market to these people and insure that HMV is the first stop for music lovers. 

Instead they try to sell people membership to their points club, when I was offered membership it cost £2 to join and the member then builds points towards something.  No-one ever told me what I could do with the points and I refuse to pay so that a company can build up a profile of me so that they can send me information and give it to marketing companies so that they can sit in a circle and discuss the best way to get me to buy the new Metronomy album.

I’ve no idea if it is still going.  I could check but I don’t even care that much.

Rough Trade East is a great example of how a record shop can thrive, their manager is the UK co-ordinator for Record Store Day and in this interview he says some very interesting things about the start up of Rough Trade East and how record shops should move on in the future.  He speaks a lot of sense about the music retail business:

Because we’re focused and because we sell music that we really love we haven’t been affected by it as badly as some other people have been. We’re still finding there are a huge number of people who want to come into our shop and buy a record over the counter because we’ve got knowledge and well we’re pretty friendly!

Very wise words indeed and the whole interview is well worth a read.  It helps that Rough Trade East is in a great location and that they have diversified a bit with the coffee bar and created a (and this makes me cringe) ‘vibe’ throughout the store.  The staff are knowledgeable but also retain the edge that creates a good record shop worker.  

Too much writing, you didn’t read it all.  That’s ok.

Tomorrow I will look at the releases that I’m excited about and why you should get up and queue outside your local record shop on Saturday.  I bet you can’t bloody wait!  In fact if you read this far say the codeword ‘Bananaspaz’ to get a prize.