The question is, do I care?
When I first started buying records myself, at about the age of 11 or 12, I bought 7" vinyl singles from Alan's Records store in Edinburgh, opposite the Kings Theatre. The owner, Alan I presume, had the top 40 printed on his counter and I would pour over it until I found a record worth buying. Always 7" until I discovered 12" singles. I went to buy AC/DC's For Those About to Rock and Alan only had the 12" for a little more money. I thought he'd made a mistake and given me an album-length record for the price of a single but apparently not.
As I grew older and was allowed to venture further afield with my friends on a Saturday afternoon (aged about 12 to 13 now) I discovered The Other Record Shop on the Royal Mile. This was a 2 storey store with records on the ground floor and posters and T-shirts upstairs. It had rough wooden floors, always smelled damp and was slightly intimidating. Round the corner we had GI Records on Cockburn Street, a much smaller independent store that sold records for slightly less than the other stores. It just had a smaller selection. And then we had Virgin on Princes Street. This was initially a dark shop with T-shirts hanging from the ceiling with cassettes up on the right hand side, later to be replaced by a small selection of CDs.
The Other Record Shop and GI Records eventually closed, leaving Virgin and later HMV to rule the roost. Virgin gradually developed into a larger spot along the street and I think HMV bought the original shop and grew that, but for years these were the two stores where I bought most of my records.
When I moved to Liverpool for university I continued to shop at HMV (I don't remember there being a Virgin) but occasionally ventured into Probe Records, round the corner from our favourite pub, Flannigans. This shop was a return to the independents in Edinburgh, rough wooden floors, rough surroundings and that damp smell again.
When I moved back home I discovered Vinyl Villains on Leith Walk where you could buy new and second hand vinyl and Fopp which opened a store on Cockburn Street opposite where GI Records used to be. In Aberdeen there were a couple of independents one up Drummond Street and in Glasgow we had the original Fopp on Union Street and, of course, Virgin and HMV.
My record buying practises have changed over the years and even included ASDA, Tesco, motorway services, bookstores and record fairs but the big stores, most recently HMV, have always been there with the largest selection.
As I mentioned above, we have one in downtown Vancouver and a couple of smaller ones in Metrotown but their selection of CDs has reduced recently. It used to be that you would go to HMV for the range and selection but this is perceptively getting much smaller.
My favourite record store now is Zulu Records on 4th in Kits. but it's a fair drive from either the apartment or the office so I'm rarely there, but it has a great selection of new and used CDs on one side and vinyl on the other. They have the largest selection of The Fall CDs I've seen on this side of the Atlantic and, more importantly, smells a little damp.
But the "record store" I frequent the most is the Salvation Army's charity stores on the North Shore here. I've bought around 600 cds in the past 4 years from these stores, mainly because they cost $1 - $2 each.
So with this in mind, do I care about the demise of HMV?
With the advent of iTunes, Beatport and illegal downloading will this mean that artists and the record companies will quickly stop producing CDs? Some bands have released recent albums on vinyl but this may be a short term marketing ploy.
While I have embraced digital books, something I never thought I'd ever do, I can never see myself embracing digital music. It's just not the same. You get no physical product to hold, no cover art other than a tiny square on your iPod and no cover notes or lyrics. These still matter to me.
I accept that the range of music that is available on-line far outweighs the choice in even the biggest record store. You can find copies of every Fall record ever released and more that their record companies churned out but it's not the same looking at them on a screen. It's not the same experience as walking into a record store and picking the CD boxes up, wondering if they will have the one you went in for or if you'll find something you've never seen before. No matter how obscure the record is, you'll always find it online. But where's the fun in that?
So this is where I start to fear the likes of HMV closing it's doors forever. If this happens there's a risk that all record shopping, apart from the second hand stores, will have to be done online, an experience where you search for your CD, pay your money and then wait days (or weeks in Canada) for your little silver disc to arrive. The feeling of anticipation is heightened in charity stores, not in terms of "do they have my record" but in terms of "do they have any records at all today" but if my favourite band releases a new record I really don't want to have to wait for it to be posted to me. And I certainly don't want to download it to be listened to on my iPod. In fact, the only reason I have an iPod is to play my music in the car. I have, as of today, 687 CDs and numerous Playlists on my iPod, a selection that would fill the trunk if I was to carry it round with me.
Or even worse, will the slowing sales of physical CDs mean that record companies will eventually stop producing CDs altogether?
And how will we get to hear new bands? This is already a difficult process, unless you know Mr Brian Black, of course. We can't rely on radio stations over here because they are hopeless, typically playing the same records over and over again, day after day. There's little in the way of new bands from around the world played over here and virtually nothing...no actually nothing... worth listening to in comparison to John Peel. No one is doing what Peel did for 30 years or so ago so we have to rely on friends (Brian Black) or the internet. And the internet is a poor choice because it's difficult to find a site that helps you focus your attention like BBC radio used to do.
There are a huge number of new artists on the internet, uploading their own home made music into the likes of MySpace but where can you go to find the best of them, the ones worth listening to? This is where record stores like Zulu can help so if they disappear we're in trouble.
So, while I don't particularly like HMV, if they fail or close it could have a huge impact n how and where I buy records in the future.
So, I need to find a website that fills the huge space that John Peel left when he died.
Any ideas?????????
