I can remember in the early 90’s going with a friend to Boots when they still sold vinyl. All right now was the single I thought he bought. It was a novelty for me as I’d never been into a record shop to buying anything at all before that point.
For a long time there was a chain of independent record shops in Kent, called Richards Records, who had a branch. Along with Plastic Surgery and Plastic Surgery 2 there were alternatives to the likes of Our Price and Woolworths. Nick Hornby makes reference in his non fiction book 30 Songs about the closure of an independent record shop near to the fictional Victory Vinyl. Was it a victim of the internet age.
I can remember the first two albums I bought were The Best of the Kinks and Abba Gold both on cassette from W H Smiths in Maidstone with my single purchase being Stay by Lisa Loeb that I bought from one of the Maidstone Our Price outlets back in 1994. Along with that there were all the tv commercials encouraging us to get down and buy our music from Our Price.
MVC has been another casualty in the high street wars, never a real bargain before it was subsummed into Music Zone who in turn were gobbled up in turn by Fopp who went pop by expanding too much.
I remember first coming across Essentials at Greenwich market and having a good mouch arounds it’s wares whilst at uni. After I moved to Southampton I was pleased to see one appear to sate my growing need for music. The Southampton branch of Essentials was the first shop where I walked in heard something that I liked that was playing and asked at the counter what it was. A minute later and five quid lighter I’d just purchased Endtroducing….. DJ Shadow.
Unfortunately Essentials in Southampton disappeared with the arrival of Fopp in 2005. A bigger selection, better prices and Essentials with its diet of imported cds couldn’t hold out. Essentials had the far better logo though.
On one of my recent trips to London I thought I would pop into Steve Sounds up in Soho just off the Charing Cross Road. Unfortunately its disappeared. Possible a victim of redevelopment like Just Games was. I was consoled by being able to find Cheapo, Cheapo Records which is a little gem of a shop full of odds and ends, music, videos, DVD’s, audio books where I’ve found stuff that I hadn’t thought of.
In more recent months both Woolworths and Zaavi formerly known as Virgin Mega Stores have disappeared. In the months before it disappeared it appeared that Zaavi were trying to play catch up with HMV reorganising their lay out putting the DVD’s downstairs by the door and the music upstairs. Too late, the internet behemoth arrived several years ago. Now even Fopp is but just an extension of HMV, Zaavi is but an online brand name.
Not even the Silverscreen chain of specialist DVD shops could make a go of things. Perhaps they were in too expensive sites or couldn’t get the stock but they didn’t last very long.
With respect to the second hand record shop there’s been a lot in the news about vinyl shops disappearing but in the last few months CEX appear to be expanding the shops from my knowledge at least Southampton and Maidstone and are now stocking them with second hand music. Next time I’m in London I will have to see if the whole chain of shops that buy and sell a variety of goods from books, retro clothing, vinyl, cds, films in Notting Hill Gate are still there or whether ebay has put the final nail in their coffin.
Will 2009 see any new high street record shops appear. HMV is reportedly doing better as a result of it’s competition disappear? Will just have to wait and see.
