44 years ago this week I walked down the hill to the small group of shops in the village we lived in.
Amongst the Woolie’s, Boots and small, local independent shops was an electrical store, a shop that sold fridges, washing machines and records.
Behind the record counter were the two most contrary, intimidating characters you could ever not wish to meet.
I took the album out of the rack.
I queued and, to my horror, the string-bean with the long, greasy hair became free first.
I handed him my intended purchase.
He looked at it, looked up at me, and looked down at the album again.
He yelled.
“Ladies & Gentlemen, Finally, we have have someone with taste.”
He winked at me.
“Finally, we have someone with taste.”
“Every one of you still shopping, you better bring an album this good up to the counter. If not, why would you bother?
It remains my proudest moment.
forty years ago, shurely? I am confuse.
Lovely story though.
…alternatively, that sort of behavior is why I don’t miss record shops. As a kid, I didn’t conform to the officially sanctioned notions of good taste and found those places to often be relentlessly bullying.
Partisan, opinionated Record Shop staff are much missed.
It’s a fine line between outright rudeness (“Why are you buying that sh*t?”) and guidance (“If you like this, you might like this”).
Acceptance, and awe, of your chosen purchases is great feeling of success
I bear many scars from Probe Records. I never got any approval.
*sulks*
http://www.nme.com/blogs/fans-remember-buying-records-from-pete-burns-1769961
I was too scared to buy anything when he was there
I didn’t move to Liverpool till 1988, so I missed the heyday of Probe. It’s not a shop that I ever bought much in though, as I found it a little bit overpriced. In fact, I used to find Liverpool a bit poor for record shopping compared to Manchester, so my first day off after payday was usually spent there. There was a really good second hand shop that opened up around 1989/1990 though, called Scene of the Crime. The staff there were the total opposite of the kind of arses you usually get in record shops and made some good recommendations to me.
I was a bit gobsmacked the other week in HMV in Meadowhall too. I bought the CD of Thrillington, just because I’m a Beatles fan/completist and not because it’s that great an album. I’d always wanted to hear it and only managed to do that for the first time last year, when I found it on a blog. Anyway, when I took it to the counter the bloke who served me revealed himself to be a big McCartney fan and we had a chat about collecting McCartney records. To be fair, he was a little older than the rest of the identikit male HMV shop assistants, he didn’t even have a beard, but I was amazed that someone who worked in there actually knew something about music.
Piccadilly Records in Manchester used to be up themselves too.
As a kid I thought that all records were available in all record shops — or at least that the staff would know whatI was talking about.
I still cringe when I think of walking into Discovery Records in Market Harborough and asking for the new record by Hagar The Womb. I thought I was being cool and hip and whatever else. The two girls behind the counter laughed me out of the shop.
I was the original clueless teenager and not only assumed the same about record shops, but thought all people my age shared the same tastes in music (in my case King Crimson, Hawkwind, Pink Floyd and so on). It must have been 1973 and, having just passed my driving test, I was on a camping holiday in France. One day, I drove into Switzerland to some city or the other. I was after a record by Amon Duul II, Dance of the Lemmings. My logic ran along the lines that some Swiss spoke German and therefore all record shops in Switzerland would have it. I first tried a small record shop and drew blank looks. Thinking big, I then tried the record section in a large department store. I even helpfully translated my requirement into German: Tanz der Lemminge by Amon Duul Zwei… bitte. Blank looks. Giggles. I should have guessed looking at the the covers of the records in the bins that I was way off beam (men in traditional dress, blazers, chunky-knit sweaters and girls in long -dresses sitting on mountainsides wistfully looking at the sky) but, like I say, I was utterly clueless. I eventually bought it on my return to the UK. It was a special order via our local electrical goods shop, which also sold a few records. The cover was interesting (an important factor then) but the music was pretty crap. I doubt I even played it twice.
Even though I was a regular, and punted hundreds over the years on the staff’s recommendations, all of which were sound, there were still some purchases for which I had to apologise in advance when buying at Revolver on the Triangle in Bristol in the 1980s.