The Death of The Local Record Shop

It’s recently struck me that the high-street is changing.  For a music obsessed kid; the late 80s and 90s were fantastic for record shopping.  Even in my small home town, I had a choice of Our-Price, Andy’s Records, HMV and at least two or three local record stores.

While going through all my old vinyl and CDs recently, the old memories came flooding back  As sad as it sounds, I still remember the exact record shop I bought most of them from.  The days when I was desperate to have the latest imports from Europe and the U.S and would pay a pretty penny for them too.

Those cold Monday mornings, heading off to the local record store to line up outside at 8am before college. It was quite an odd experience, you were often at the mercy of some aloof assistant who would feel he was doing you a favour once you got “pally” with him by letting you hear the good stuff from under the counter; a privilege only the few elite regulars got.

When I started Uni, the student loans allowed me to further my record buying obsession, and the late 90s rise of the superstar DJ brought with it the “DJ Megastore”.  Saturday afternoons getting the train to Birmingham and dragging my poor girlfriend around Hard To Find Records was a montly treat back then.

This week, it has been announced that as from 2010, Pioneer will be discontinuing the legendary DJ favourites, the Technics 1200/1210 turntables.  This news did sadden me, it wasn’t too long ago that vinyl had a huge comeback, and as little as five years ago the 1200s were outselling guitars.

Obviously times are changing, and fast.  The rise of “digital djing” has been heralded for most of this decade, but now with world famous stars such as Tiesto, Paul Oakenfold and Roger Sanchez leaving vinyl behind, it seems the DJ community is really moving on.

I retired as a full time professional club DJ in 2003, however I’ve recently gotten the bug again, upon entering a DJ booth for the first time in a few years I was shocked to see only CD decks and no turntables in sight, apparently a common trend in clubs and bars now.

I will admit, I’m not a fan of seeing DJs in bars with their laptop on a table and doing a set, I know its what comes out the speakers that counts, but it looks too much like some nerdy kid is sitting doing his homework in a bar.  Give me technology like Pioneer’s CDJ2000 and you’re taking DJing to a whole new level, and are able to perform things that were never possible on vinyl, it really does bring an extra dimension of creativity to the table.

While I did love vinyl; the feel of the plastic, slipping a record onto the deck and putting the needle on it, even the smell of a new record is something you never forget… I won’t miss it.

Nostalgia is a great thing, but in reality you were limited to what the know-it-all record buyer in your local record store decided was worth getting in stock. Previewing your songs meant having to carry your big stack of vinyl over to some clapped out old turntable, and listening to it with an pair of headphones taped together with only one earpiece working.  Hopefully you had a lot on your credit card too, the best vinyls usually retailed for over £10, up to £18 for the hot imports.  Doing a gig itself was fine if you were a superstar DJ who had people desperate to carry your record bags, for us lesser names you often turned up to a gig walking slightly funny from your crippled arms and back – vinyl was heavy!

Today, I can head on-line, go to any “record store” around the world, preview tracks in the comfort of my own home, buy them for a tenth of the price it cost to manufacture vinyl.  All of this I can do while sitting in my PJs before showering, burning them to a small USB drive and taking my entire record collection to the gig with me.

So while some still claim “real djs use vinyl!”, the one’s who are smart certainly don’t anymore.

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