Going back to my roots...

I watched a very interesting documentary today about the rise and fall of independent record shops in the UK. It gave a great insight into how music has changed over the years and about the way in which we purchase and learn about new music. It's called 'Last Shop Standing' and if you haven't seen it you should definitely take a look. Find out more about it here. This film made me consider my own journey and how and why I became a music lover in the first place. I know I've touched on some of this before, but I decided to take a trip down memory lane and look into all the things that I remember that have shaped my musical taste, and especially the shops I spent time in.

My parents both loved music and when me and my brother were growing up it featured around us a lot. My mum was a Mod and my dad was a Rocker which made for a very interesting combination. Mum always loved the latest tunes and was a big fan of Cliff Richard and the Beatles. We used to have music playing in the house and in the car all the time and I think this had a big influence on both me and my brother. Dad was a bit of a DJ in his youth and we had a lot of vinyl in the house. I remember the hi-fi unit we had which featured a double tape deck with a turntable on the top and room at the bottom to store your LPs. It stayed with us for a long time and in the LP stack were things like 'Dark Side of the Moon' by Pink Floyd and 'Machine Head' by Deep Purple sitting along side various Beatles albums. I think the first time I heard 'The Chain' by Fleetwood Mac was when I pinched the vinyl of 'Rumours' and played it.

Welcome to the dark side

As much as I heard a lot of music growing up, I didn't begin to buy my own until the late 80's when I would've been around 11 years old. I tended to buy 7 inch singles from places like Woolworths for the latest chart music and I was into the likes of Kylie and especially Rick Astley. I still have Rick's first 2 albums on vinyl, although sadly they are not currently in my possession. When I left London and moved to the Midlands over 10 years ago they didn't make the journey with me. In fact, I am not actually sure where they are. In storage I think. One of my tasks is to be reunited with them at some point soon.

Anyway. I come from East London and grew up in a place called Chingford. You've probably never heard of it, but the most famous person to come from there is probably a little known footballer called David Beckham. Nearby we have Walthamstow (the end of the Victoria Line on the tube) and also Highams Park and both of these places have produced the high quality musical stars (ahem) East 17 and Blazin' Squad. Top class entertainment...

East 17. Who knew one of them would one day manage to run over himself whilst driving his own car

We had a few independent record shops where I grew up which we spent a lot of time in. I had to text my brother earlier to ask him the name of one of them as I couldn't actually remember what it was called! In Highams Park we had a very small shop called 'Master Blaster'. It sold mostly vinyl I recall and I think this would've been where I bought my Rick Astley LP's. It was a tiny shop which had a section of vinyl in the middle and it was very tight to actually move round someone who was looking through the racks. The only other memory I have of buying something from the shop was getting a cassette of 'Some Fantastic Place' by Squeeze as it was an album I didn't have. I still have the cassette somewhere actually.

Chingford is sort of split into 2 main areas for shopping with North Chingford having Station Road and South Chingford having the Mount. Both locations had a branch of a record shop called 'Turntable' which I spent a lot of money in. The one at the Mount was slightly larger and we knew the staff in there quite well. In fact, we went to school with one of them. They didn't stock everything, but you could order stuff in and they would usually be able to get it for you within about a week or so. As far as I know, the shop at the Mount went first during the decline of people buying records in the 00's and was followed by the Station Road branch a few years later. My brother bought some of the storage racks from the Station Road shop when they were having a closing down sale. He also got me a Semisonic mug which they had for the release of the album 'Chemistry' and it's the one I always use for a cuppa when I go home to see my mum.

Chingford. It really is the end of the line.

Walthamstow is larger than Chingford and has a street market which apparently is the longest in Europe. We used to shop down the 'Stow on occasion and it was a treat to visit there as they had a McDonald's and of course a pie and mash shop called 'Manzies' which was amazing. On the high street there was a record shop called 'Sounds Familiar'. It would later change it's name to 'Cavern Records' and this was the place I remember visiting. It was a fairly large shop and had lots of vinyl, and Cd's and you could spend a long time in there checking out the stock. I don't really recall what I bought from there, but it would have probably been some cassettes or CD singles. It's gone now which seems to be par for the course for independent stores. There was also a shop called 'Record Village' which I think was further down the high street, but I don't remember it as well as Cavern.

Meanwhile, down the market...

Another place I bought vinyl from was 'Mike's Record Shop' which is in the indoor market at Wood Street in Walthamstow. It's actually still there I believe and has lots of second hand rare vinyl. I bought some Queen records from there in the mid 90's including the rare 'Queen's First EP' which cost me over £10. Of course you can now pick this particular EP up online for just a few quid, but I'm glad I got my copy by sifting through piles of records and finding a little gem for my collection in a proper record shop rather than faceless online purchasing.

My other half comes from Liverpool and I asked him about buying records where he grew up. He told me that the first record he bought was 'Dancing in the Dark' by Bruce Springsteen on 7 inch vinyl. To be honest though, bought is a bit of a lie. Now, hang on a cotton picking minute here. Do not go stereotyping please. The story is this, apparently when you purchased a pair of shoes from Clark's shoe shop they gave you a voucher for Woolworths to go and spend on a record. He used his voucher to get the aforementioned Springsteen single and thus started his collection. His vinyl now mostly comprises of 90's dance tracks as this was what he was into at that time. Compared to my britpop and rock albums it does make a rather interesting talking point.

Hey baby!

I still have my 7 inch singles somewhere (probably in the same storage place as my albums I guess) and I got some of these from a newsagent in Chingford Mount. It was a typical newsagents with magazines and sweets etc, but for some reason in the middle of the shop there was a white carousel type thing (the kind of stand you find greeting cards in) filled with vinyl singles in white sleeves. They had all sorts of stuff from chart hits to slightly older singles and all marked up from 50p to £1. We would spend ages in there getting in everyone's way while we hunted through to find a bargain. I believe this is where I got my single of 'We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off' by Jermaine Stewart. It never actually occurred to me as to why this shop was selling records as it's kind of strange when you think about it. I just knew it was somewhere else that I wanted to go when I was at Chingford Mount.

Another of my posts talks about the decline of record shops so I won't go into that again, but let's just say that when I think back to when I was younger and visited the places I've mentioned above it now makes me sad. I grew up visiting those shops and now none of them actually exist anymore. It is comforting to know though that more independent shops are appearing and that youngsters are visiting them to purchase music. I think Record Store Day is a massive help and I am looking forward to this year's day on 18th April. Check out what is happening in your local store and join in and support the local retailers. Go on, you know it makes sense!

Music shop lovers of the world unite...

Right then. Hands up if you got some sort of music bought for you for Christmas. Now then, what was it? Did you get a nice CD or maybe some gorgeous vinyl? Yeah, me too. But I'm sure some of you also got either an iTunes voucher or the promise of some sort of downloaded music too. Correct? Thought so.

No feeling the presents

Now, I've written about physical vs downloaded music debate before, but this reared it's head again with me just before Christmas when it became apparent that the lack of music retailers available now is a huge pain in the arse. A friend of mine at work wanted to buy a relative a CD as a gift and had to ask where in town she could actually find a shop selling CD's. And you know what, when we thought about it there weren't that many to choose from. It left me feeling very sad. To make matters worse I saw a tweet from someone a few days later saying that HMV was absolutely rammed when he was out shopping. And why was that? Cos people want to buy bloody physical music and films, that's why. Pah. 

I went Christmas shopping at one of the faceless, massive shopping malls we all love so much and my partner had a look at what shops were there online before we went. He informed me that HMV had closed down and that there were no music shops there any more at all. I was gutted. He was in fact wrong though (or the internet was) as HMV was still there. And of course it was packed and we struggled to get near anything. Which is interesting if people are supposedly not buying physical music anymore. Hmm...

People, people everywhere...

I went to a gig last week and afterwards I bought a rather beautiful limited edition purple vinyl from the lovely merch lady and also got it signed by the artist. Now buying at a gig is all part of being a fan. You may be lucky enough to get some really great stuff that you can't get anywhere else. Could I buy this vinyl in a shop? Not likely. I may get it online, but would it be the correct one? Doubtful. And I definitely wouldn't be able get a signed copy of it. That in fact takes a mixture of a certain little smile, along with a little charm and a lot of style to go with it (wink). Or just polite harassment. You choose. Which is why buying in person for me is always better than taking your chances online. Plus I can now look at my signed vinyl and smile. I can't do that with a download can I? Well, I could, but I think people would be slightly more concerned about me than they usually are...

My partner knows that if I enter a music shop I will disappear without a trace in approximately 10 seconds flat. He's given up trying to keep up with me and knows that at some point I will appear again by the front door to find him. It's a fact of life. I go into a music shop, I will be kept occupied for a considerable amount of time while I roam the aisles. I love checking what is on offer, seeing if there's an album I haven't got or looking at the staff recommendations to find something new.

When I was younger we had a couple of independent retailers in my home town. Me and my brother used to love going to them and wasting away time looking for bargains. There was also the institution that was 'Woolworths' when we were growing up. I think I bought most of my 7 inch singles from there to be honest. It was a sad day when these shops closed down and our town had nowhere to buy music from. We had friends who worked in these stores and lost their jobs when they shut. We had to go further a field to buy CD's. It was the beginning of the end and for music fanatics it was the grim reality that it would never be the same again.

Who misses Woolies then?

Another mate of mine who also happens to be a musician, fully embraced the digital age of music not that long ago. He got rid of all his beloved vinyl and CD's and now only uses Spotify to stream his music. When I asked him why he'd chosen to do this he told me that he is fully aware that physical music is going to disappear in the near future and he is preparing himself for it in advance. Brave man. This is not something I can even consider doing though as I love my CD's way too much for that. When I moved house a few years ago I had to go through my boxes of singles and ended up chucking some of the older, rather obscure ones that I had collected over the years. It was a painful experience and even now I have the awful feeling that I might have accidentally binned something I wanted to keep. My partner didn't understand. He basically owns about 10 bloody CD's himself so he has no idea.

My brother on the other hand, does understand these things. He came to the gig with the last week and we were having an in-depth debate about vinyl on the way there. There has been a so called 'vinyl revival' of late where folks seem to be going back to buying this format over mp3. I said this to my bro who looked at me with a raised eyebrow and said "Well I've never actually stopped buying vinyl Nic". To be fair he is a DJ so I guess I can let him off on this occasion. But I do think he is correct. The muso's among us will no doubt be of the same opinion. Vinyl never actually went anywhere in the first place. We then had a long and rather interesting conversation about white label records and how you had to be in the know to be able to find the rare ones. None of this ordering them over the internet, nope. You had to visit a record shop and hope they had a copy somewhere under the counter (and that the they liked you enough to sell it to you) as they weren't advertised. Those were the days.

Mysterious white label record

When HMV collapsed a few years ago it didn't look good for music retail. The availability of cheap CD's in supermarkets was blamed and of course the online market such as Amazon. Funny thing is the supermarkets I go in only ever have a very small selection of CD's and usually only the so called 'chart' and not much else. Not the kind of place you would go to if you wanted to buy a specific album. Amazon does fare better I guess. I have bought quite a few albums from here, but mainly because I can't pick them up in a shop myself. Some of the HMV shops were saved, but the fact that the flagship store in Oxford Street has gone is somewhat of a crime. I spent a lot of time pacing those 3 floors and it was one of the many places I liked to shop when I lived in London. They now have a smaller place not that far away, but it's just not the same.

I was over the moon when a local campaign to save Fopp here in Nottingham worked earlier this year. The store was under threat of closure as their lease was coming to an end, but some local people got together to protest and finally they found somewhere it could relocate to. It's a great shop and every time I walk past it there and tons of people inside having a good look around. Fopp are leading on the vinyl revival and are proud to state on their walls that vinyl is killing mp3. Very nice indeed.

The debate is ongoing and could be considered to be about preference (as are most things in life). We sadly now have a lack of places where we can embrace music, be part of the discussion and spend our time thumbing through the LP's on offer in the hope of finding that little something special. We should support our local independent music retailers as much as possible because without them this becomes a thing of the past and those among us who truly love the physical aspect of buying and owning music will be left with no option but to become online consumers. And as someone whose house basically looks like a small branch of HMV, I can definitely say that it's not as much fun...

Got it, got it, got it...

Let's get physical...

I've been sitting with my feet up for a while considering how to write a piece on the whole downloading music vs CDs/vinyl debate. After doing a bit of research (or googling which is a very technical method of finding out information, just ask anyone who works in IT) I've decided to put down some thoughts on this matter. It's a subject which will no doubt go on and on, so I'm sure it will present itself again in the future.

The big debate

Anyone who knows me will back up the fact that music is my life. I ramble on about it, write about it, have my headphones permanently stuck in my ears and I also buy a lot of it. Friends that have been shopping with me will know that once I enter a music shop, I will disappear within the space of about a minute and you'll then have to spend a long time trying to find me. When I've moved house (which has happened multiple times so far) the transportation of my beloved CD collection has caused no end of nightmares (and heavy lifting) as it is so vast. Most of my collection has now been banished to my loft due to space issues and I shed a tear on a daily basis because of this. I think you will glean from this that I love my CD's.

I'm all about the physical aspect of having music. I love to buy a CD and hold it in my tiny hands. To be able to take the booklet out and read it or get that shiny silver disc out and hold it up to the light is a thing of beauty. It also means I need masses of space to keep them all hence the reason they are currently in my loft feeling neglected.

Now, I am not against buying music online. No way. I'm not some kind of luddite who thinks it's the work of the devil to get music via your computer. I have bought quite a few songs online and I actually think it's great. It's just not my preference when it comes to the music I love and want to keep.

How I feel most days

When I first started to buy music in the 80's it was on vinyl. Getting 7 inch singles from Woolworths with my pocket money was the thing to do. Albums were also bought on vinyl until I started to get cassettes. Cassettes! Remember them!! I still have a few of these knocking about somewhere. Anyway. CD's appeared in the 80's, but we didn't have a CD player so there wasn't much point in buying them at that time. I have no idea when I first bought a CD or who the artist actually was, but it was no doubt something a bit twee.

My extensive collection has grown over the years and if I had to do a rough calculation of how many CD's I now own it would probably be in 4 figures. Although as you should know, its not all about the size of your collection, it's what you do with it...

A small amount of my current listening...

Not all the albums I own are amazing, but then that's kind of what music is all about for me. Trying something new and seeing if you like it. I'm not actually sure whether I can say that there is an album I own where I think every single song is a winner. There will always be some kind of album filler that is a bit shite and was only added to get the track listing up. I'm sure most artists would admit to this if you asked them,

But what about this big debate then? Well, as I said I do download some music, but my heart belongs to the physical stuff I can hold on to. I remember watching a music documentary recently where Richard Hawley said something along the lines of "you can't hug a digital music download" which made me laugh because it's so true! It's not a material thing for me where I can show off what I own, it's just the basic need for me to have and be able to hold my favourite music. I know that by downloading you get it then and there, but I don't mind waiting a bit longer for something I love.

As far as I am aware there is the issue that some MP3 files are so compressed that the quality is not the same. With vinyl you get that beautiful 'hiss' and CD's pick up the great backing feed. But digital loses all of this which can sometimes be the best part. People I talk to agree and we hate the whole compression element as we love hearing that extra special stuff that you can sometimes pick up in the background.

Just yesterday I was told an interesting fact by one of my Twitter pals (thanks Michelle) about 'The Mother of the MP3'. This accolade belongs to the 1982 song 'Tom's Diner' by Suzanne Vega. The reason behind this is that the song was actually used to develop the audio compression scheme known as MP3. Great fact and you can read more about it on Wikipedia here.

The Mother of the MP3

From my 'research' (I use the term extremely loosely) it seems that Napster started the download phenomenon in 1999. Apple iTunes is the biggest supplier of downloads and it's an increasing market. The cost of a new CD is now around £9 which has dropped over the years, probably to compete with the online market. You can however buy second hand CD's online from retailers for as little as 1p which is amazing and can help you with your collection if you are looking for some older albums to add.

The choice is yours as to how you buy your music, As a geek and techie I should be excited about downloading music, but I can't help it, I just love buying CD's. I love browsing music shops and wasting hours roaming the aisles looking for bargins or rarities. You just don't get the same enjoyment looking at iTunes on a computer screen. It's what things like Record Store Day are all about and why I joined in the campaign to save a local record shop here in Nottingham earlier this year. The experience of buying music is also a big part of being a fan and although I have to sometimes resort of buying CD's online, my first choice will always be to go to a record shop and get the buzz.

If only I could work here...

However you get your music whether it be online, streaming or whatever, it's really up to you. My house is dominated by CD's and I can't honestly see that changing until they stop producing them full stop, which I seriously hope won't happen for a very long time.