Excelente artículo publicado online por The Guardian. Llama la atención que Selectadisc y Reckless han cerrado (aunque en esta última -donde trabajó Kiko Amat - ahora hay en su lugar otra tienda llamada Revival). La mayoría de ellas ya las conocemos (Rough Trade, S.Ray, Minus Zero). En el reportaje no salen Out Of Floor (la favorita de Ibón Le Mans; ¿Habrá desaparecido también? Pues puede que no: http://www.geocities.com/outonthefloorrecords/ y ) ni la tan mencionada Intoxica ni Music and Video Exchange ni la favorita de Damon Albarn (Honest Jon´s). Muy cerca de Londres, en Croydon, está Beanos, “The self-proclaimed biggest record collectors shop in Britain” (ver foto), la misma de la que tanto hablaba Bob Stanley en su artículo de The Times sobre los vinyl junkies. Fuera de Londres, salen también viejas conocidas como Monorail (la de Stephen Pastel), Action o Picadilly en Manchester (donde Mateo Siesta consiguió su colección de C86, creo). El artículo está en http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1885493,00.html
Habrá que guardárselo por si alguna día hacemos una excursión londinense
Además aquí hay más info sobre tiendas en Londres: http://www.londonnet.co.uk/ln/out/music/record-shops.html
Y a los mods españoles les gusta éstas: http://hipocondriamods.mforos.com/1035571/5683064-tiendas-de-discos-en-londres/
Rough Trade
130 Talbot Road, London W11
020-7229 8541
Thirty years since it first opened its doors, Rough Trade is still enjoying its reign as the best independent record store in Britain, if not the world. Started by Geoff Travis in 1976 as a record store, and two years later a record label, in 1983 Pete Donne, Judith Crighton and Nigel House, all Rough Trade employees, bought the shop. "It was during Rough Trade's rough patch," says House. "They had signed the Smiths, Aztec Camera, the Virgin Prunes, put a lot of money in, and didn't make it back. We didn't have mortgages, kids, so we bought it."
The west London shop had moved location and opened a sister store in Covent Garden when the success of west-coast American bands such as Black Flag and Hüsker Dü prompted them to start selling skateboards. The Notting Hill store attracts an older clientele, browsers, and multiple album-buyers, while Covent Garden sells singles to students and lunchtime shoppers. Both are distinctively decorated with band posters and accumulated paraphernalia. "Online," says House, "it's more trainspottery. People order a load of 7-inch singles."
It is online also where Rough Trade meets its real competition. "[The big stores] get their stock VAT-free from the Channel Islands," he says. "It's not a level playing field." The shop has now launched a digital site in conjunction with Bleep, which will mean that fledgling bands can offer the shop the digital rights so the song can be sold as a download as well as a 7-inch in the shop. "You've got to embrace these things," says House. "You can't run away from them." Yet he is certain people will still want to buy records. "I think people need that, to feel and see things, otherwise it's too easy to manipulate these Sandi Thom things online."
By contrast, he marks out singer-songwriter Richard Swift as a quintessential Rough Trade victory: "He encapsulates what we're trying to do. We got sent a copy last autumn, we thought it was fantastic, put it in the album club, and we sold 800-900 out of the 1,500 copies sold in this country." The album club started 18 months ago as a subscription record club: customers say what sort of music they like and sign up to receive three, four, five or 10 CDs a month. "The idea," says House, "is that as you get older you don't have chance to find out what you like. It's people who like music who are adventurous. In a way, there's almost too much choice nowadays, so we try to give authoritative recommendations."
Of all the UK's independent stores, Rough Trade's future looks brightest; it is, after all, now an established brand, a byword for cool recognised around the world - its birthday will even be celebrated with a compilation album and a book. "The brand of Rough Trade, people love it," says House. "It means something to people, it's authenticity in this day and age."
Disque
11 Chapel Market, London N1
020-7833 1104
Away from the gleam of Islington's main drag, Chapel Market is a clutter of bakeries, Indian restaurants and stalls selling fruit and vegetables, discount footwear and negligees. Among them sits Disque, its windows thick with flyers and record sleeves, and music spilling out of its door: soul, 60s R&B, breakbeats. This small shop, stacked to the rafters, has been here since 1999, when former Tower Records employee Ed Davies decided: "Tower had started to want to be HMV, and I wanted to be independent." The result is a positively idyllic record store that majors in customer service, with flourishes such as calling regulars with recommendations and supplying a weekly email. Staff, says Davies, "are hired for their attitude. I need people who are nice, not people who know everything - though they need to like music and care about it."
A recent shopping complex brought Borders and HMV to the area, and while they suck in the casual browsers, Disque suffers more from online competition. "Amazon can deliver new albums for £8.99," says Davies, "and apart from stealing them, there is no way I can do that." His response has been simple: "Become more specialist, more aggressive." Disque homes in on hard-to-find gems, at least 60% of their trade is vinyl, and the shop attracts DJs seeking out Brazilian compilations and Monk One, "an amazing mix tape of disco tunes from a New York DJ. It's selling bucketloads."
Davies refuses to believe the future is bleak, but he does wonder which direction it will take. "You can't sustain a market where everything's getting cheaper and cheaper. It's always puzzled me about our industry. When you go to buy a new car, you don't expect it to be the cheapest. So why are the new chart albums the cheapest? You expect the CEO of Warners to say, 'Hang on, guys, we've got it the wrong way round!'"
Ray's Jazz
In Foyles bookshop, 180 Charing Cross Road, London WC1
020-7440 3205
For several years, Ray's Jazz resided in unruffled contentment at the dog-end of Shaftesbury Avenue. But, as business began to stagnate in direct correlation to the augmentation of the rent, Paul Pace decided it was time to pursue a different route. He approached Foyles bookshop on nearby Charing Cross Road to see if they might accommodate his shop. Books, jazz and an independent coffee shop has, over the past four years, proved a symbiotic relationship at Foyles.
Ray's regular customers followed the shop to its new abode, and there are more "footfall" customers drifting through, but Pace is not complacent. "We've got to be a special place to come to. We sell records and 78s - I think that will be increasingly important - and we have events." Jamie Cullum, Mike Garrick and Julia Beales have all played sets at Ray's. "It's showing live music to a generation that hasn't known it before," says Pace. "It's showing them that CDs and records are documents, not the real thing." And if nothing else, you have to love a shop with a whole section named As Rare As Hen's Teeth.
Sister Ray
94 Berwick Street, LondonW1
020-7734 3297
Sister Ray (sibling to Brighton's Rounder Records) is a Soho institution, stationed among the fabric shops and wholesale jewellers of Berwick Street for the past 17 years. Last year, when the owner of the neighbouring Selectadisc announced his retirement, Sister Ray's owners, Neil Brown and Phil Barton, decided to up sticks and shuffle a few doors down. "Rather that," says Barton, "than let an awful coffee shop move in."
Today Barton is surrounded by 500 copies of the Sex Pistols' album Spunk on white vinyl. "Let's have a butcher's," he says, edging a copy out of its sleeve. "Ooh, lovely! Oh, yes!" Previously only available on bootleg, Sister Ray has now secured its own exclusive pressing of the recording. It's an example of how the shop hopes to diversify: it can't hope to compete with the big stores on CD prices, but it can think laterally, with in-store performances (the Cribs, the Rakes and Richard Hawley have all performed there), keeping prices low on vinyl, and selling online - its own website accounts for 15% of sales, and the store also sells through Amazon and eBay. "And we have a new site coming online with a million songs to download," says Barton. "We won't make any money on it, but it'll be an intro into the Sister Ray world."
Such moves are necessary in a climate where Sister Ray can buy CDs online from China cheaper than they can wholesale from record companies. "Things are very tough. It's been a bad summer," says Barton. What concerns Barton most is how different the musical world is from 25 years ago, when Sister Ray was a market stall in Camden. "This is going to sound all grandpa-ish, but what I worry about is that it's so throwaway these days; music is so disposable," he says. "Music should never be free. It's a wonderful thing, and it's an absolute privilege to hear it. We're becoming a soundbite society. Why don't we read a whole book any more? Why don't we listen to a whole album for once?"
Clerkenwell Music
27 Exmouth Market, London EC1
020-7833 9757
"I was working as a nursery teacher, but playing in bands and obsessively collecting records," recalls Jeremy Brill. He abandoned teaching and opened Clerkenwell Music on Exmouth Market when he saw the neighbouring independent bookshop. "I thought it would be nice to have a CD and a book shop here," he says. The street has changed in the past seven years, and is now a destination for eating and drinking. "I think the shops have suffered slightly," says Brill, though he is heartened by the arrival of a weekly farmers' market.
"We love what we sell and we make a point of being welcoming. We don't just laugh at you whatever you ask for. If you own one jazz CD, we can tell you what else you might like. And we have a healthy cynicism - if something has had rave reviews but we don't like it we'll say, 'Do you want me to tell you quite how bad the Lily Allen album is?'"
But times are hard. "We've had the worst year imaginable," says Brill. "So we've decided we'll have coffee and snacks, not just CDs. After all, people already use it as a place to hang out in."
Haggle Vinyl
114 Essex Road, London N1
020-7704 3101
Lynn Alexander's route into record shops was unorthodox. "I hadn't collected records ever before," he says. "My son in South Africa asked me to get him some records, so I popped into a shop and the records were £10. I said, 'Will you take a pound less? They said no." And so, Haggle Vinyl was born. Alexander counteracted his lack of musical knowledge by relying on the expertise of an antique-dealer friend "who was always fiddling around with records. He handed me a parcel of records every week." He admits that at the outset he "sold amazing records a lot cheaper than I should", but the past eight years have been a musical education for Alexander, who had previously bought perhaps 10 records in his life.
He doesn't enjoy much current music. "I don't understand what they're doing, making loops of music, drum'n'bass, hardcore. Anyway, I'm still catching up on music from 30 or 40 years ago." Business has been quiet this summer, but he has used the quiet periods to relearn the flamenco guitar. "We don't make a lot of money but we get a lot of respect," he says. And that is enough for Alexander. "I'm not into money. I'm from the 60s. I'm a real drop-out, you see. I've always been a loafing around person."
Stand Out/Minus Zero
2 Blenheim Crescent, London W11
020-7727 8406 / 020-7229 5424
"As soon as I realised I couldn't sing or play an instrument I thought this was the next best thing," says Bill Forsyth. "Being in a record store was being in heaven. I can't do anything else. I've been doing records since the 60s." Forsyth and Bill Allerton opened a shop together in 1984 as Plastic Passion, but in 1989 the two Bills parted company.
Strangely, they decided to split the shop down the middle to form two stores in one. "I'm on the left," says Forsyth. "I do a bit more modern, alt.country and powerpop." Sensibly, where they overlap, the pair offer the same prices and, generally, they exist quite harmoniously side by side. "We both like the store; it's got a lot of character," says Forsyth. "I remember coming here in the 60s when it was what they called a head shop, selling incense and hippy things."
Rising rents mean their corner of Notting Hill is growing increasingly bland, full of shops selling "nick-nacks and paddywacks". But, he sighs, "The internet is predominantly the enemy. I came late to the website. I guess I'm not money-hungry. I put a description of why I like a record on the website, but I think people read it and go elsewhere to buy it."
Once, people wanting to sell their record collections took it into a shop. Now they sell it on eBay. "The Beatles' Black & Gold Stereo used to be one of the real rare records, it fetched between £2,000 and £5,000," Forsyth says. "We didn't see a single one during Plastic Passion. I was looking idly on eBay the other day and there were three! And it dampens the whole thing. They say the same thing with Picasso."
Beano's
7 Middle Street, Croydon
020-8680 1202 Sail out of central London to the suburb of Croydon and you will meet a throng of chain shops and megastores. Off a sidestreet is the gaudily painted, multi-storeyed Beano's. "I may look like a human, but I'm a squirrel," says David Lashmar as he gazes out over his domain: acres of CDs, 7-inchers and LPs, encompassing everything from £2 Showaddywaddy singles to a £6,000 copy of Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen. It is hard to imagine a better-stocked record shop, yet Beano's, Lashmar's labour of love, is soon to close its doors after 31 years of trading.
"I used to play in rock bands in the 60s. I had a number one in France," he says. "And I was a record collector." In 1975, Lashmar discovered he simply had too many records and, via a boutique jukebox and a market stall in Plymouth, opened a shop in Croydon. Every year, Beano's fortunes fared better and better, until a couple of years ago, when trade in Croydon dropped dramatically. "The internet has nothing to do with it," he says. "My theory is that downloading is the best thing that's ever happened to the music industry. It's given people anonymity, the ability to experiment away from your peers. A 17-year-old boy with dreadlocks in Stockport can listen to Perry Como or Elvis."
The real problem, he says, is that the browsers all disappeared. "I said, 'Hold on, the browsing will come back!' But it hasn't." Today, Beano's is one of three independent retailers left in the town centre, along with a clothes store and a hardware shop which is also about to close. "I'm not anti-Croydon, I'm anti-suburban faceless towns," says Lashmar. "And Beano's has to be in the suburbs; we couldn't meet the rent in Soho."
He will keep going until the warehouse is empty. Which could be a while. "I never throw anything away," he says. "Mostly it's crud from the 80s. How many Phil Collins albums do you need? I've got a thousand. I'm not a good retailer. I'm not logical. But this is the most appealing record store in the world."
Since he announced the closure, the response from Beano's customers has been overwhelming. "Extraordinary letters," says Lashmar. "One man, comes in every week. 'It's my life,' he said." Lashmar observes a moment's dignified silence. One of Beano's staff wanders past. "Got any records?" he asks Lashmar, deadpan. "Sorry," Lashmar smiles, glancing around, "we've sold out."
Rounder Records
19 Brighton Square, Brighton
01273 325440
There is a bar over which you must vault should you wish to be employed at Rounder Records, and, be warned, the bar is set high. "The Famous Rounder Test," says Steve Sexton, the store's manager for six and a half years. "Name the artists for 20 album titles." To secure a job at Rounder, you must score at least 18. "It is," Sexton admits, "quite harsh." Rounder has occupied a spot in the South Laines since 1966, and now touts CDs, gig tickets, vinyl and an encyclopedic musical knowledge. "I've always been obsessed with records," says Sexton. "That's why I had no friends at school." Today, all of the vinyl carries personal recommendations from members of staff, and there is a list of the store's top picks (on the day we speak, Peter, Bjorn and John, Hot Chip and local band Metronomy).
Sheer knowledge, Sexton believes, is the independents' trump card in the war against the megastores. "I find 'Amazon recommends' quite random," he says. "And if you go into HMV and ask, 'What's the best My Bloody Valentine album?', they'll look at you blankly. If someone comes in here and wants a Bonnie "Prince" Billy album, we can tell them everything else he's done."
Vinyl makes up about 40% of sales, and is appealing to "everyone from 12-year-old kids buying 7-inch singles to 50-year-olds buying a James Brown reissue". In recent times, they have watched nervously as a couple of neighbouring record stores closed, but business has not been too bad for Rounder - "Apart from during the World Cup. But then it was the same for anyone not selling beer and crisps," says Sexton. "I'd love," he adds dreamily, "to have a shop selling beer and crisps and records."
Selectadisc
19 -21 Market Street, Nottingham
0115-947 5420
Jim Cooke had been a regular customer at Selectadisc in Nottingham for many years before its owner, Brian Selby, invited him to work behind the counter. Today, he is the store's manager. "It's changed radically since I started," says Cooke. He recalls the late 70s: "It was so laid-back then. People came in and had a cup of tea." Today, Cooke is busy entering orders into a computer. "Back then you just had a Biro."
Selectadisc stocks vinyl, CDs, DVDs, cassettes and videos, "but most people here are vinyl people," Cooke says. He cites Stuart Maconie's 6 Music radio show as a huge influence on his customers' buying habits, and describes the Selectadisc customer's taste as a combination of Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, Can's Tago Mago, Roy Harper's Stormcock, the Smiths' The Queen is Dead and the Wicker Man soundtrack. The shop offers a dedicated section for Nottingham artists, and a large noticeboard where you can advertise for a bassist, or potential bandmembers who share your love of Pantera.
Selectadisc started selling online last November, spurred on, perhaps, by the fact that they view their biggest rival as illegal downloads. "I worry it's a monster no one can control," says Cooke. "As soon as they prosecute one, another springs up. Music has become a commodity that's free, but it's an art-form. We give that personal service. It's not just pressing a button."
Every Saturday, the regulars trickle into the store. There is a man who travels from Peterborough, one from Lincoln, two from Birmingham. "They'll hang, spend, chat. That's why they come in," says Cooke. "I can set my watch by them, every Saturday morning."
Action Records
46 Church Street, Preston
01772 258809
Preston is precisely the sort of town where many independent stores are suffering - without the customer base of a city, but close enough to Manchester and Liverpool to see their business go elsewhere. Gordon Gibson began Action on a market stall in Blackpool in the late 70s, selling "post-Pistols and a lot of second-hand rock". However, things only really caught fire between 1979 and 1981. "That was the second wave of indie-punk, Joy Division and all that," he says. "That's when the independent shops took off."
He moved into small premises in Preston in 1981, and since then has expanded next door and upwards, with two floor spaces reserved for mail order. "You have to now," Gibson says with resignation. "I think people have forgotten how to walk out of their houses." The online phenomenon is worrying. "We like to deal with people who want to buy real items, so it's got memories when you look at it in 20 years' time and you remember where you were and who you were with when you got that record. Do you get that downloading in your bedroom? We encourage people to come and spend the day rooting through the second-hand vinyl. It's not the sort of shop you walk in and walk out of."
Action's main customer base is "serious vinyl-heads and kids buying 7in singles". "You can get some really nice vinyl now," says Gibson. "The artwork, the quality of the sleeve - your Springsteen, say, will be really well presented. And we buy very, very limited-edition vinyl with hand-made art sleeves."
Spillers Records
36 The Hayes, Cardiff
029-2022 4905
At 112 years old, Spillers regards itself as the oldest player in the recorded-music game. Nick Todd arrived here 31 years ago, has owned it for more than 20 years, and employs three members of staff who have worked there 17 years apiece. "When I came in, in excess of 50% of records were sold through independents. Now it's less than 3%," he notes sadly.
Spillers has responded by becoming more independent, less charty than its rivals. "We cater to the intelligent end of the market," Todd says. "We do punk really well, because I came here in 1975. Punk was a kick up the arse the record companies needed at the time."
The Spillers website is building momentum, and the shop is doing well. "We'd be bucking the trend if we weren't in the middle of a development complex," Todd says. Unusually, vinyl is not a big part of their business, but local bands sell well, and the store, capable of accommodating 60 people, has benefited from in-store performances, including a couple of appearances by William Elliott Whitmore. "He is my biggest tip for a should-be since I've been here," says Todd. "It's great being over 50 and finding something that reminds me why I do what I do."
Todd has decided to sell the shop, but hopes to remain involved in some form. "I've made most of my friends through here," he says. "It's easy to put a smile on someone's face in here and to be the recipient of that, because you've something in common and that's a love of music. I'd rather own Spillers than Virgin. If you've got something unique, it's worth it."
Reveal Records
63 St Peter's Street, Derby
01332 349 242
"I started Reveal from scratch six years ago," says owner Tom Rose. "Then there were seven record shops in Derby. Now it's just us and HMV. We co-exist. Virgin and Music Zone closed last year." Like most independents, Reveal has survived by becoming more specialised. "We've gone to being a delicatessen," says Rose. Last year, Reveal also started a record label. "I went to see Rufus Wainwright, saw the support act, Joan as a Policewoman, and soon found out she hadn't got a label."
The store already draws customers from a wide area - students buying 7in singles, readers of NME, Uncut, Mojo, 50-quid man. There are 20 listening posts with new artists every week, and frequent in-stores. But mostly they are there for the diverse selection and the welcoming environment. "We do well with Americana," says Rose. "We have a punk and metal shop upstairs. Downstairs it's folk, jazz, soul and the two don't go too well. We keep it separate so we can play music all day. It's not Rough Trade, messy indie; it's bright and clean, beige and pine, neutral. Everything's organised by genre. It's not," he adds, "the intimidating sort of record store."
Crash Records
35 The Headrow, Leeds
0113 243 6743
Crash has been around for 20 years and fell into the hands of Ian De-Whytell, a former rep for Sony, a decade ago. The ground floor houses indie, punk, metal and gig ticket sales, and in the basement there is drum'n'bass, house and hip-hop. "The dance scene has levelled off a little bit. It's not as vibrant as it was five years ago," says De-Whytell. "Now 17 year olds are into guitar music again. The odd thing for me is how 7in vinyl has come full circle. We sell more singles on vinyl. You feel you've got something with them, it's the opposite of a download.
"I think Leeds is quite vibrant but smaller towns - Wakefield, Halifax - the independent shops are closing." De-Whytell wishes the government would remove Vat from CDs, so that the chains would lose their stranglehold on the market. "You can offer the best service in the world, have nice, friendly staff and a really nice shop, but if you can't compete on price, it's not worth it. And then it will be case of supermarkets dictating the music policy to A&Rs. You won't get anything quirky, and that would be to the detriment of music. But I think the future looks bright. Probably with a few clouds."
3 Beat
5 Slater Street, Liverpool
0151-709 3355
You can hear 3 Beat before you get to it. And in this era of Blunt-esque Muzak, it is a reassuring sound: relentless, red-blooded dance music, pumping along Slater Street and beyond. Founded in the wake of the acid-house scene, when three students, fed up of traipsing to Manchester or London to get their vinyl fix, set up a shop selling "space-age disco sounds" and an award-winning clubnight, G-Love, it has undergone a £30,000 makeover. These days there is a mail-order business and website, but the store itself continues to thrive, dance-enthusiasts making a beeline for its vinyl racks and decks set up on the counter.
Much of the attraction is that 3 Beat prides itself on its exceedingly knowledgeable staff, all of them DJs, not to mention its star-studded clientele including Paul Oakenfeld, Tim Maas and Groove Armada.
Vox Pop
53-55 Thomas Street, Manchester
0161-832 3233
Vox Pop, in Manchester's "Vinyl Valley", a haven of record stores not far from Piccadilly station, is something of an institution. For several years it was housed in nearby Cafe Pop, but last Christmas it moved to its own "bigger, better" premises, with a cafe and exhibition space. "There's more, better quality, a lot more CDs and a huge amount of warehousing, which means we can fit far more on the internet," explains Andy Shaw, one of the store's owners.
Around 40% of their trade is online. "And that's growing fast," says Shaw. "They're mainly foreign orders, pretty obscure hip-hop and reggae. The internet site was once just a showcase for the shop. There wasn't even broadband, but we've invested in it massively." He describes their stock as "90% second-hand, 10% R&B, hip-hop, compilations and re-issues," and the store attracts DJs in town for clubnights such as Electric Chair. "I can recommend a record to a DJ and at the end of the week they're in again thanking you." His current tip is Fat Freddie's Drop.
Shaw came into record shops via his devotion to record fairs, and retains some of that collector's attachment to his stock. "Initially, you're really sad when you sell a record. But you know there'll always be more walking through the door."
Piccadilly Records
53 Oldham Street, Manchester
0161-839 8008
Launched in 1978, and moving to its current Northern Quarter location in 1997, Piccadilly remains the jewel in the crown of Manchester's many record stores, its reputation forged on unrivalled stock - one could get lost for hours amid its racks of vinyl and CDs - and the unbridled passion for music displayed by the staff; the store is brimming with in-store recommendations, forthcoming release schedules, reviews, and staff picks. Think of it as the Oddbins of record stores. The shop's website continues the mood, with informal updates, news on recent arrivals, forthcoming in-store appearances, recommendations for gigs and clubnights, jovial anecdotes and a warm, clubby feel.
Monorail Music
12 King's Court, King Street, Glasgow
0141-553 9458
Independent record store aficionados will always urge you to make a pilgrimage to Monorail. The shop was the brainchild of Stephen Pastel (of the Pastels), Dep Downie and John Williamson (who manages Belle and Sebastian), who were frustrated by the closure of the last decent record store in Glasgow. "Me and my friends started to shop online, but it wasn't the same as going to listen to records in a nice environment," says Pastel. "There was an absence."
It took them two years to find the right location, in some railway arches on the site of a former Mexican restaurant. In their first year, 2002, their main form of advertising was staging "in-stores" (live performances) in the adjoining bar-restaurant. Since then, they have hosted the Concretes, Teenage Fanclub and the Belle and Sebastian album launch, and business is booming. "It's not unusual for people to come in and spend £200 on records," says Pastel. "We're growing all the time. We know that's unusual, we don't take it for granted. We're a vinyl specialist and we have really hard-to-get CDs - not to be obscure but to try to introduce people to something they might not have heard. That's one of the greatest pleasures, really."
Fopp
19 Union Street, Glasgow
0141-222 2128 Fopp is something of a bugbear for many independent record shops. An ever-growing independent chain (there are now 31 nationwide - should they still count as independent?), it is both well-stocked and well-priced, with a well-studied air of mild chaos that makes it more hospitable than a megastore to the independent customer in search of a discerning choice of music, film and books.
Fopp began as a one-man stall in Glasgow in 1981, its founder, Graham Montgomery, then named it A1 Records (to commandeer the first record store entry in the Yellow Pages) and sold records he acquired cheaply as overstock or deleted tracks. A second store in Edinburgh in 1987 occasioned the name-change to Fopp - the title of a track by 70s dance band Ohio Players, and the chain grew throughout the 90s. The most recent additions to the family are a flagship store on Tottenham Court Road in London opened this summer and a new shop in Rugby last month, with more, doubtless, to come.
Avalanche
63 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh
0131-225 3939
A maths degree might seem a curious qualification for owning a record store, but for Kevin Buckle it proved invaluable. "It was a case of anyone who knew a lot about music and had good economic sense could do well," he says. After all, at the time his rivals were mainly "hippies selling Pink Floyd and Genesis." He has owned Avalanche for 23 years, and has expanded to three stores - one in Glasgow and two in Edinburgh. There are, Buckle explains, 14 key independent distributors in the UK, "and we're three of them".
One shop is next to Edinburgh University, where they find their customers are made up of tutors as much as students. "Students aren't what they were. We're not affected by downloads, but they're just not interested in music." According to Buckle, the biggest issue affecting independent shops is that many owners are now of retirement age. "But there will always be record shops," he says with resounding certainty. "There have to be record shops."
The store holds the rather dubious honour of having played host to James Blunt's first in-store, "just before he got big," says Buckle with a groan. "We thought he'd be popular with the posh English students."
Avalanche has also established itself as a cult destination, attracting customers from all over the world, and boasting celebrity fans including Iain Rankin, Mercury Rev and Stewart Lee. They now provide branded merchandise such as Frisbees and record bags. "We're like the Hard Rock Cafe when people come to Edinburgh."
