Record Store Day: ‘Going to record shops was an early rite of passage’

GROWING up in the 1970s, going to record shops was an early rite of passage. The sort of thing you had to go through before progressing to more serious matters like drinking and girls, but still serious enough in its own way.

You started shortly after going to secondary school, and you knew it was serious because of the looks on the faces of the slightly older boys who had been there, done that and had the I Found It At Bruce’s bag to prove it. These boys, usually called Gus and precociously hairy, brought records to school every day in their Bruce’s bags.

We only got music lessons twice a week and even then would have to listen to something classical. But still they brought the bags, which contained Argus by Wishbone Ash, Machine Head by Deep Purple, or, at a push, Tales From Topographic Oceans by Yes. That was a double album, which meant the Bruce’s bag, being made of thin plastic, was put under severe strain.

One reason why sales of Yessongs, a triple album by the same band, were so low was that it just couldn’t fit into the standard Bruce’s-type bag without ripping it to bits. Another reason was it was mince. I mention Bruce’s because, in Edinburgh at least, that was the shop with most credibility in the first half of the 70s. You could buy records at Boots or Woolworths or other department stores, but you wouldn’t buy an album there. Not a real album.

The first time I saw Ziggy Stardust, Harvest and Blind Faith for sale was in Boots on Princes Street, but I knew not to buy them there. There were just ordinary shop assistants behind the counter and they would treat it like just another purchase. They didn’t understand.

Real record-shop workers were the guardians of the cult. They wouldn’t simply sell you a record. They passed judgment on your choice, sneering or even suppressing a smirk if they did not approve of your taste.

They never so much as deigned to smile if they liked what you were buying, but you could tell. A barely perceptible current of mutual respect passed between seller and buyer, and you knew you had completed the rite of passage successfully.

For many of us at the ages of 13 or 14, the guys who worked in record shops were godlike arbiters of taste. There was surely no better job than getting to listen to music all day, sneering at anyone who tried to buy Wear It’s ‘At by The Rubettes, and being paid for it.

They were all a bit intimidating, but one was particularly scary. This was the one who – at least according to rumour, for we never found him – had PINK FLOYD rubberstamped across his forehead. We thought this meant either he had been brainwashed by Roger Waters and colleagues into slavishly following them, or he had ingested such a large quantity of hallucinogenics that he had slipped free of his moorings and abandoned all convention. Particularly the convention against having PINK FLOYD rubberstamped across your forehead.

And of course, whether they sneered or smirked or snarled, all these record-shop people went through another little ritual before the transaction was complete: checking for scratches. They would take it out of the sleeve, hold it up to the light at an angle, squint at one side, squint at another, then put it back in.

This took all of four seconds, and was not exactly a rigorous scientific process. But we just assumed it was part of the mystical expertise of these men – and they were all men, because no woman could ever be found who was sufficiently po-faced and pompous enough to fit in. And we knew that if the record stuck when we got it home, we would have a hard job convincing the shop to take it back. “Wasn’t scratched when you bought it,” we would be told. “I checked.”

The other thing they would do was accuse you of having played it too often before bringing it back. I took Band On The Run back to one shop because track one on side two, Mamunia, kept sticking.

“How often have you played it?” the guy asked.

“Three times.”

He had the record out of the sleeve and was squinting at it. “You’ve played it more often than that.”

How did he know? I’d played it five times, but how did he know? Did the hole in the middle become ever so slightly more frayed every time you played it? And what did it matter anyway?

It wasn’t like I was trying to use the shop like a record library, because such things were a couple of years off in the future, at least in Edinburgh, and no-one even attempted home taping in those days. And I didn’t want my money back, so I was obviously not trying to rip him off. I just wanted a copy of Band On The Run which didn’t stick on Mamunia. Even though it was the weakest track on the album and these days I always skip it on my iPod.

But if buying records was an earnest business in the early 70s, an element of joy succeeded in creeping in as the decade stumbled on. There were the listening booths or posts, for example, where you could try out a record on headphones before deciding whether to buy.

The first time I heard Raw Power by Iggy and The Stooges was at one such booth in The Other Record Shop, probably the branch on the High Street but it might have been on St Mary’s Street. I bought it, and at home discovered it was on junk vinyl, about a quarter of the thickness of an original copy of Rubber Soul that I got a bit later from Deja Vu record exchange in Lauriston Place.

The most joyful a record shop ever made me feel, though, was walking down Cockburn Street in the summer of 1977 and hearing The Clash’s version of Police And Thieves blasting out from an open doorway. I think the shop was Phoenix.

I went inside to buy the album. There were no sneerers behind the counter; no hairy boys called Gus in greatcoats skulking in corners. The revolution had come to town and music would never sound so good again. Especially not on CD.

The state of Scotland’s indies

RECORDS. LPs. Vinyl. However we know them, they were once the staple product of the music industry. Nowadays the business has a more digital focus but vinyl remains wildly popular in some quarters. Record Store Day, now in its fourth year in the UK, is a celebration of records and the independent shops that stock them.

Kevin Buckle is the owner of Edinburgh’s iconic Avalanche Records. “The vinyl business in Scotland is healthy,” he says. “Anyone who visits Edinburgh who’s into their music comes to Avalanche. All the bands who come to Edinburgh come here.”

“We get a mixture of young people, customers who’ve been with us for many years and those who’ve rediscovered vinyl and wish they hadn’t sold some of theirs in the first place!”

Buckle played a big part in establishing the event this side of the Atlantic. “The very first one was in America,” he says. “It was Sandy McLean, who now runs Love Music in Glasgow, who spotted it and mentioned it to me. I got in touch with other shops. That year it was just all big ones like Jumbo in Leeds and Piccadilly in Manchester.”

Each year Record Store Day has grown in size and scope. Blur used the 2010 event to release Fools Day, their first single in seven years. This year there are more than 250 special release records on offer, and the international event now has a strong foothold in Scotland. Nearly 20 shops are taking part, right from Grooves Records in Orkney to Barnstorm Records in Dumfries.

But Buckle is keen to stress Record Store Day is only a small part of what businesses like his are all about. “The limited edition bit is something that tends to overwhelm the whole thing. People tend to focus on it but the day is about celebrating record shops and more importantly for people to realise that they should be supportive all year round. That’s the key message, like when people say ‘a puppy isn’t just for Christmas’. We’re in a music industry which is generally in decline, we’re on the high-street, which is in decline, and we deal in the arts. I think you have to accept that ours will always be a niche market.”

Avalanche Records, like many other independent stores, are working hard to maintain an environment in which vinyl can thrive. They work closely with local musicians and vintage shops.

“It has to be a bigger picture than simply ‘how does a record store survive’,” Buckle says. “We do well with bands like Star Wheel Press. They’re putting their music onto vinyl and playing at an after party we’re having this year at Electric Circus.”

Looking forward, he is confident about the future of records in Scotland. “We will always have vinyl because it’s such an attractive format, it has a feel to it. That is something that you just cannot replicate.”

JOSHUA KING

• For more information visit on events happening across Scotland and beyond, visit: www.recordstoreday.com