Learning to Love Record Stores — From the 90s ’til Now
I was always looking for the kind of record store that existed in Empire Records, I found the High Fidelity-style (pre Zoe Kravitz reboot) to be intimidating. The shop staffed by three straight white man-childs to whom taste was EVERYTHING. The famous quote “it’s not what you’re like, it’s what you like” being the toxic soft-boi motto of the 90s/00s. This particular record store atmosphere gave way to a myopic way of thinking that musical snobbery is an important character trait, that women are asked to name three albums if they wear a band tee, and that you’re openly mocked if you attempt to buy Stevie Wonder’s worst song.
Empire Records was a bit more my scene, a ragtag group of archetypal teenagers working Saturdays at a big record shop. They was a freaky troubled one with a shaved head, a weirdo without a band, a quiet and clever troublemaker with good intentions, a hunky lovesick artist, a sexually assured blonde, and her perfect girl-next-door-with-secret-problems best friend. All these kids are lovingly looked after by the grumpy patriarch, Joe, who plays the drums. The film follows a classic capitalism David and Goliath. As the employees prepare for the arrival of an aged pop star they all think is lame, they also mosh in the store, dance shirtless, overlook kids making out in the listening booth, chase down a shoplifter and (spoiler) try to raise the funds to save their beloved freaky hangout from becoming a Tower Records because the real boss is a yuppie with no soul. Their motto — “Damn the man!”. “Save the Empire!”
I really wanted to grow up and work at, or own a record store. One where with this kind of community could thrive. All freaks and weirdos, making little zines and badges, people flyering for their band or pushing their demo, wanting to damn the man — save the empire! By the time I became old enough to do it I didn’t really care anymore. Sure I still loved music, but I didn’t love what loving music looked like. The ‘music loving’ men around me would be derogatory or dismissive about music that wasn’t cool enough (although I later learned it was because they’d never heard of it, and it was easier to pretend they did and they just didn’t like it). I hated listening to men talk about music and I hated listening to them play it to each other. Liking music didn’t really feel like freedom or experimentation, it felt like a club that was way too stressful to try to be in. I found the artistic community I wanted more around literature, festivals and politics. Poets felt a little bit more mad, bad and dangerous to know, in that scene it felt like the archetypes could thrive and art felt generous.
In my youth I was very hungry. As an 11 year-old I used to visit HMV almost every day on my way home and study the CDs. I never had the money to buy anything but I’d browse each aisle over and over. I’d try to get a grasp on different genres without ever listening to the music. I used to think what I wanted my first ever record to be and tried to choose between the Miseducation of Lauren Hill and DJ Shadow’s Introducing — later I opted for an old Pink Floyd I found in Notting Hill. HMV was always full of people queing up to test the latest Tomb Raider or flick through the new posters, it was the first place I learned about MC Escher or Patti Smith.
I owe a lot to looking through these catalogues and seeing how many genres existed even if I never heard the music. I remember asking the guy behind the till what was playing and it was A Child’s Introduction to Jazz — The Nextmen’s mixtape mashup of Jazz from old and new based on the original narrated by Cannonball Adderly. I ordered it immediately and played the CD into until the skips outweighed the notes. I must have been about 14 and I guess the guys behind the counter were always sweet with me when I did pluck up the courage to ask.
Gigs were a big deal where I lived and emo, ska punk and synth pop were all the rage, while my skater peer’s tastes were heavily influenced by the Tony Hawks II soundtrack. As I got older I could expand my tastes by ripping hard drives from friend’s older siblings. While I loved going to gigs, I didn’t really go for the music, I liked the moshpits more. My connection to music has always been a mix between visceral and visual and my favourite way of finding new music was to look up the soundtrack to films I liked on imdb. I liked the way they were curated like mixtapes but by people who weren’t your friends, rather artists whose tastes you respected.
When I listened to music at home I’d play out little movies in my head. It was through this method I learned about Portishead, Echo and the Bunnymen, Soul Coughing, The The, Love and Squarepusher. Finally came the music festivals, where new music was everywhere, curated but eclectic. A lot of old, new, camp, avant-garde, heavy, electronic new music. Even the Chai Tents played good music, even the rowdy neighbours with boom boxes. It was this kind of exposure that I wanted.
Record shops can work in this kind of curation of taste too. I like the ones with the little labels that describe what the clerk loved about the album and the ones that have been curated to have ‘just a little bit of everything but everything is good.’ Atlantis in Hackney is one of the most beautiful, a mash up of old punk cassettes, Egyptian pop, Krautrock and old zines and flyers from all over the world. The back room is filled with dull neon lights and quite a good hip hop section (hip hop records are always in the most ‘well loved’ condition in record shops and I love this detail). The owner has always given me a cup of coffee and a chat about cassette culture, I love it in there.
The Record Album in Brighton is another gem, specialising in film soundtracks and you can find old copies of Under Milk Wood for a tenner and iconic Disney soundtracks such as The Jungle Book and the Simpsons’ Sing the Blues. My other favourites are Let it Roll in Kentish Town, an ultra-chill, half-Colombian-coffee shop half-record shop run by two couples and a dog called Nico. It’s the kind of place I can leave with Kelela’s Take me Apart and a Sugacubes Remix album, a Snoop Dogg t-shirt while my friend can leave with an old Tangerine Dream film score and Bat Out of Hell.
Little Record Shop in Hornsey has one of the most knowledgable owners whose records are always playing in the shop. You can’t get past the till without a chat about what you chose and the walls read like a Jukebox flip-book of the best the shop has, from The Slits to a rare Tupac or Loveage album. Finally, Little Camden Market on the Isle of Wight is pure old-school, run by a metalhead with a nose ring and a love of North London. You can pick up Siouxsie and the Banshees, Tina Turner or Toyah Wilcox along with laminated pictures of Doc Martin-wearing punks in the 70s. I love the jammed-to-the-ceiling reggae ones that just about exist in South London and the monochrome punk haunts of North. To own or work in a record shop you have to really care about music, they are places of endless generosity and suggestion.
There are, of course, lots of moments where the horrible gatekeeping of the High Fidelity-style store creeps in. Taking up space in these shops can be daunting, there’s a lot of middle aged men shoving as their exercised fingers go through the records and huffing at anyone who ‘browses’ or moves through the collections inspecting the fronts and backs. I expect that anything I choose will either be judged or have the men wonder how I know about that kind of music, which I find so funny, because I never thought that I couldn’t have my own taste in music until men started being surprised by it. I know many of the spaces I mentioned are trying their best to foster the opposite atmosphere.
When I first started collecting I wanted to build up a stack that was biographical but also be open to experimentation and trying new things out. Like with roaming tents and letting my ears, eyes and feet guide me at festivals I’m fond of buying records for their covers or placement among others, walking into the store confident I’ll be shown something I’ll like. A lot of my friends cite the luck they’ve had with the algorithms of popular streaming apps to lead them to treasure, one even saying she’d found Young Marble Giants through one of these — the story of which, led me to discover them too. I learned that the way we find music doesn’t validate or invalidate it.
Since the experiences of my early 20s I’ve broken out of the thinking that record collecting or even music loving wasn’t for me. Or that I couldn’t really love music because my connection to it was visual or connected to dancing, or that I couldn’t reference an artist’s whole back-catalogue or, god forbid, I liked one of their ‘popular’ songs — although thanks to Robyn this guy faded away. I remember now that one of the first things I wanted to be was a music video director. If it didn’t occur to a child that photography, choreography and sound weren’t all connected, then the ‘being into music’ snob-culture is really what’s broken. I’m so much more comfortable now. I wouldn’t have learned about anything without my local HMV, the TV guide, Empire magazine, the hardworking DIY scene of the Isle of Wight or Bestival.
I’d still love to work in a record shop one day. Spend time with music in a rich space where we wallpaper the shop with our favourite albums. I’d like to be the grumpy patriarch looking over the kids who came to music in their own ways, their tastes being nurtured by their siblings, gigs, algorithms and movies and then passing it onto the hungry customers expanding their own collections.
