It’s fairly safe to say that nowadays I’m fully committed to digital music, what with Roon, Tidal, Apple Music and God knows what else. However, in terms of acquiring new music I increasingly find that the magic is gone, certainly compared to the halcyon days of going into a record shop and either picking up a long awaited Miles Davis album, for example, or coming across something unexpected while browsing.
The one thing that I really miss though is hearing some music playing on the record shop’s PA that I didn’t know, going up to the usually bored assistant and having to buy it immediately. Didn’t happen that often but when it did the record usually became a real favourite. Three such occasions I recall are:
Don Ellis – Live At Monterey (1966). Bought at Collets original Jazz and Blues shop in New Oxford Street.
Charles Lloyd – Forest Flower (1966). Coincidentally also recorded at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1966. Must have been something in the air that year. Bought at a short-lived James Asman shop near Liverpool Street.
The Nails – 88 Lines For 44 Women. Bought around 1997 in a funky little shop in Marina Del Rey in California. Originally released in 1984. It wasn’t available as a single so I ended up buying a compilation album – Richard Blade’s Flashback Favourites.
Anyone else remember spontaneous purchases like these?
Herbie Hancock – Manchild.
I heard the first track (Hang up Your Hang-ups) in Listen, Renfield Street, Glasgow (Cheap ‘n’ Nasty!). Had to ask what it was, almost as soon as the opening guitar riff started. Came home with the LP and it’s still a favourite.
Soft Machine – Seven
As above – except it was in Charlie Hayes’ Record & Tape Exchange in Pollokshaws Road (opposite Queens Park). Again, heard the first track (Nettle Bed), had to find out what it was and left with the (second hand) LP. A much under-rated Softs album and one of my favourites to this day.
King Crimson – Starless and Bible Black
School friend gave me a cassette with some tracks on to have a listen. Dozy sod forgot to write in the titles, bands, etc. Some Zep, some Joe Walsh, some Wishbone Ash, some Procol Harum – but then The Great Deceiver came on. I was instantly hooked, had to find out what it was, had to get the LP next time I had enough cash saved up. Again (pattern developing) this became my slam dunk favourite King Crimson album – first time I had heard them, I think…
Swing Out Sister’s Live at the Jazz Café, as heard in The Beat Goes On (the S/H shop above Andy’s Records, Cambridge).
Two customers in the shop, and we both wanted to buy it. I lost out, and had to wait until Mrs F’s colleague at Panasonic UK went over to HQ in Japan and could smuggle a copy into the country for me. I think I paid about 30 quid.
You can now buy it as part of a CD box set.
Swing Out Sister live in Tokyo of all places! I haven’t listened to them for years.
But that album is on Spotify, so I’m now giving it a listen. Thanks for the tip, @fentonsteve.
2 in the 80’s from a record shop in Renfield St Glasgow. (Can’t remember its name. Not Listen, this one was further north up Renfield St).
Branford Marsalis – Romances For Saxaphone
Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim) – African Marketplace
Both are still firm favourites.
Bloggs?
On reflection: Wee Bloggs was on St Vincent Street…so I’m wrong.
Fiesta Records?
Fiesta 75 Renfield St fits in with my memory.
God, I do miss the thrill of going into town just to browse. A different era.
Browsing Fiesta is a young man’s game, right enough..
With you there…getting the bus or the train in, just to mooche around the record shops….
Re my original post – Saxophone, dummy.
Did You Ever? By Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra from Wax Factor in Brighton in the 90s. They were playing side two, which is pure gold. I was sold by the end of the first track, a cover of Dolly Parton’s Down from Dover. It was a second hand vinyl, £8, way more than I usually spent on a record as I was a student at the time, but I needed to buy it- there was no other way of listening to it.
I try not to get into conversations in record shops because they are one place where I am extremely susceptible to hard sell. A couple of months ago I was in Honest Jon’s at Kings Cross and they played Don Cherry (the album sometimes known as Brown Rice). The first track was incredible and I resisted the urge to ask what it and carried on browsing. The second track was equally as good and I couldn’t stop myself asking. The assistant, a youngish Italian guy who knew his jazz showed me the cover and talked about the musicians and told me how it was different to other Don Cherry eras. I went back to browsing and the next track was completely different to the first two and I asked if it was the same album. He said yes so I had to have it. The other guy in the shop wanted it too, but I was there first and they only had one copy.
It’s unlikely that this would ever have come on my radar if I hadn’t been there at that moment.
Not one for listening to the radio and, at the time, out of the TOTP habit, the first time I heard Where Are You Baby? by Betty Boo was LOUD in a record shop.
Reader, if I could I would have married her. Instead I immediately bought the single..
And here’s that song by The Nails. Very much an outlier in terms of my usual musical tastes but it just grabbed me somehow:
In that there big HMV on Oxford Street I remember being persuaded to buy the Go Team’s second album by it playing instore. It has a great vibe from being played very loud, but perhaps was slightly suckered – or ‘3EP’d’
I used to work for a firm that had their head office above The Body Shop on Oxford Street. Just a short walk from the HMV money pit. I lost track of the number of times I surfaced on their escalator with a little bag of discs and a lighter wallet.
Make Me Believe In You by Patti Jo. That drum and piano intro is just immense, and much better that Curtis Mayfield’s own version. I was in Fopp in Glasgow late one friday afternoon and the weekend atmosphere and this song playing LOUD sent me running to the counter to ask what it was.
Great record.
A happy time in my life (late 90s, early 00s) when it seemed so many of these half-forgotten funk and soul records were seeing the light of day again and appearing on compilations etc. The Incredible Bongo Band (Apache), Cymande (BRA), The Meters, Ramsay Lewis, MSP, Yellow Sunshine, Cramp Your Style… all the domain of hip hop nerds and beat collectors, now all coming into the mainstream. Happy days!
John Gorka – Jack’s Crows
Tower Records, Piccadilly, London, 1991.
Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker
HMV, Scarborough, 2000.
Mary Chapin Carpenter – State of the Heart
HMV, Southampton, 1989.
Impulsive record buying knows no geographical boundaries.
You may laugh (cue Benjamin Disraeli jokes from HPS) but hearing the first track of Roy Orbison’s comeback waxing, Mystery Girl, in the Virgin Megastore in Oxford St in 1989 sent me straight off to buy it. Suddenly I was 13 again.
Also in the Virgin Megastore, Lucinda Williams doing an instore live promo of songs from the Lucinda Williams album also prompted an instant purchase.
Walking into Adnams Wine Shop in Norwich wondering whether I should buy a cheeky chardonnay or a silky shiraz and instead asking the moustachioed youth behind the counter “What you playing there?”
David’s Records in Bracknell market. I did my normal look through the 12” singles that were in new release promo – picked up The The – Uncertain Smile for 50p unheard based on the sleeve being rather good.
Handed it over at the counter and asked what song was playing as it sounded great. Seems the record was better than the sleeve.
Mothercare, St. Helens. Sly and the Family Stone Fresh and The Velvet Underground Loaded. Both were in the bargain bin, 50p each. I’ve often wondered since now weird funk and gutter rock enhanced the baby shopping experience for new mums and grandmas. It certainly helped me, a young teen otherwise trapped in hell for hours at a time before my aunt finally chose a pram.
These days, when you hear something unfamiliar that you like, there’s no need to ask someone (who’ll probably shrug and say “Dunno.” in any case) because we have Shazam on our phones.
Particularly handy listening to those radio shows where they play 3, 4 or even 5 tracks in sequence before they say what any of them are.