Categories: uncategorized
Date: 13 April 2009 12:51:51
What have growing up listening to John Peel or Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley's Evening Session on Radio One got in common with Nick Hornby's High Fidelity and Molly Ringwald's character in Pretty in Pink? Answer: Independent record stores.
This article in the Guardian talking about Saturday's Record Store Day highlights the rise and fall of the independent record shop. Back in the 80's when your choice was record or tape their were 2,200 stores up and down the country, these days when you can sit at home and download you'll find just 305.
These shops were the places you went exploring as a teenager, finding stuff that didn't fit into the Stock, Aitken and Waterman formular of pap. They were the places you'd buy obsure fanzines and find the posters advertising interesting local gigs or requests from local bands for muso's to join them. They were the places you'd send your parents into to buy stuff you could only half remember the title of, knowing the person behind the counter would be able to decipher it and send them home with whatever you'd heard on the radio. They were the places you would buy stuff you thought was cool, but know from the slightly pitiful look of the person behind the counter that it actually wasn't. Still none of it mattered, they were special places.
Rex Records was the proper indie record shop where I grew up in Tractor Land, that's one of those that is all but a memory now. A trip around google tells me the same is true of Spin A Disc in Northampton, where I bought tickets to see Pop Will Eat Itself and a limited edition Nirvana / Jesus Lizard disc when I was at uni. More successful were the shops frequented in Kent: Gatefield Sounds in Herne Bay, which last heard was hanging in there as is Soundhouse in Broadstairs. According to the website Soundhouse is well involved with Record Store Day with a mixture of bands and DJ's through the day..... although with the size of the shop not quite sure where they'll put them.