Friday 11 January 2013

Last Shop Standing

We watched a film over the Christmas period called Sound it Out. If you've not seen it, it's a film made by Jeanie Finlay about the last record shop in Teeside called, erm, Sound it Out. The main thrust of the film concerns the owner, Tom, and the customers who come into his shop. Tom is exactly what I would look for in a record shop owner: knowledgeable, friendly to your face, wide range of taste. The customers are all, what I would call, 'good people' They aren't the sort of people who cause trouble. They're the sort of people who know what they like and are prepared to talk about what they like with other people. we often hear this ridiculous term 'Broken Britain', watch Sound it Out and you realise that most people are inherently good. Friendly, even.
The stars of the film, apart from Tom and his shop, are Shane (a rabid Status Quo fan who didn't have the best start in life but doesn't let that hold him back) and Gareth & Sam (a couple of metal freaks who make their entrance into the film by announcing that they like any music "as long as it's suffixed with the word 'metal". A bit of a double act, these two). What these, and others in the film show, is that music is the best form of escapism. It really is, as someone once said "The dog's bollocks".
The film is tinged with sadness as we all know that record shops have died a death. We're all to blame, we all got our heads turned by cheapo internet deals and downloading songs we liked off the radio. I know I did. The only place I can now buy records in my town is in a supermarket or Oxfam or a wonderful old hippy who has a market stall on a Friday. Even as little as 15 years ago there were four stand alone record shops in my town as well as record departments in Boots, WH Smith and Woolworth's. Sad times. Nothing could beat going in to my favourite, R & K and looking to see what the latest metal releases were. The owner, Richard (who looked, and spoke, like a dark-haired Mike Nolan off of Bucks Fizz) was a metal fan, so he was always well stocked. Just browsing a shop is much better than entering a search on Amazon, you never know what you'll find when you do a proper browse; we went into a branch of Fopp just before Christmas to buy a DVD for someone's present - £80 later...

As an add-on to this, I heard Paul Gambaccini on the radio last week saying that Steve Jobs was the 'saviour of the record industry'. Nonsense. Steve Jobs was the saviour of making money for Apple. How else do you explain why Macbooks are now coming without CD drives? No CD drive, no ripping CDs into iTunes = more money for iTunes Store. If Apple can't make any cash off it, they'll get rid of it. I like to have something physical in my hand when it comes to music, I still buy CDs and records. I might be old-fashioned but I like looking at sleevenotes, I need to know who engineered track 6, I need to know who played marimbas on track 12, I need to know who made the sandwiches during the recording sessions (in the case of Motorhead's Iron Fist, it was Katy). Which is why I will never fully embrace downloads or Spotify, I want that sense of ownership of something, I want something tangible. And that is slowly being taken away from us.
Hopefully people like Tom or the excellent Unknown Pleasures in Edinburgh or the equally excellent Swordfish Records in Birmingham or even that daft old Krautrock-loving hippy on the market can ride the storm for people like me. They said vinyl records, turntables and cassette tapes would all be gone by now, well they're still all here and hopefully there'll be some record shops left too in thirty years' time.


4 comments:

Kolley Kibber said...

We've still got a couple of decent shops down here, though another one - Rounder - bit the dust last year. My favourite is Borderline, should you ever pass through Brighton with an urge to spend. Run by exactly the sort of people you describe - knowledgeable, passionate, non-snotty (and over 40). Go in there and try to spend less than fifty quid- it can't be done. Long may they roll.

John Medd said...

If you like to have something physical in your hand look no further.

Löst Jimmy said...

Thanks for this post, I shall look out for the film.
I miss browsing the bins in record shops. Like you I care little for downloads much prefer something I can set on the shelf or LP case. Vinyl is making something of a comeback - even record 'stores' out here in Mexico are setting aside space for vinyl. I read the other day that CDs are on the wane in the face of the likes of iTunes and Amazon MP3s, I fear the future will be all downloads with PDF files as close as you will get to sleeve notes.

Hawkfall said...

Great post. And you're right, it is all our fault, as we fell in love with the convenience of iTunes and Amazon.

I'm not against downloads: if they had been around 15 years ago I wouldn't have spent 10 euros on "The Best of Deee-Lite just to get one song. But like yourself, I do feel the need to own something, perhaps it's the collector's mentality. However, I think most people don't, and that's the thing. I think most folk have always done most of their listening to music via radio, so something like Spotify is perfect for them, it's basically radio where you have a say on what you're listening to, even if you don't have the traffic news and the Clifton Suspension Quiz. I think the concept of a record collection is on it's way out.