Vinylrichie’s Weblog

Lively decor, neon lights, personal internet linked touch screen listening posts, staff just out of school with their arses hanging out of over-sized trousers who’ve never heard of Fairport Convention and can’t spell properly…none of that here.

Welcome to the centre of my tiny universe – the world of the second hand record shop. Or the ‘best job in the world’ (TM) according to people that have proper jobs and think that listening to music all day whilst wondering where your life is going is a great way to spend one’s existence. Oh, and the pay is poor too.

 Some of you, the ones that still venture out into the real world to experience things like talking, shopping, people and reality, may have been in a second hand record shop (yes you can call it a store my American friends) at some point. If you did this on purpose you are more than likely to be a male -quite often caring more about original spiral ‘Vertigo’ labels than your own personal hygiene, unable to chat up women but wax lyrical about ‘Beatles’ matrix numbers on the run out groove, or you may be female – in which case you will invariably have been standing in the corner of said shop, arms folded, tutting loudly and urging your boyfriend/husband to hurry up even though he’s been following you around ‘Top Shop’ for four hours and missed the football (no, Americans, you may not call it soccer) to go on a shopping trip where he has to try and muster enthusiasm about the fifteenth skirt you’ve tried on before you say ‘I’m not sure, what do you think?’ Only to ignore the increasingly strained response anyway and drag the poor sap to ‘Claire’s Essentials’ to watch you agonise over bangles and beads.

These dusty hives of the worryingly obssesive were a common sight in Britain’s seedy, litter strewn back streets for many years from the 1970s onwards. Only a handful remain due to the evil internet;brain washing people into doing things that sound like medieval torture methods like ’streaming’, ‘ripping’ and ‘burning’.

This blog has these purposes: to enable me to share the unique experiences of being employed in one of the most unique independent shops in existence (namely laughing at nutters), to give me something to do now that customers don’t really come in anymore and to warn you of the dangers of anorak-ism and having no drive to better oneself.

Here you will meet an array of colourful characters, whose stories will make you laugh, cry, feel palpable anxiety, worry you and convince you that buying CDs on Amazon is a lot safer than vying for space next to a smelly Cliff Richard fan in your local dank pit of a record shop. So be prepared to meet the likes of Ghost Man, Manx, Cosmic, Spitter, and the-man-that-look-like-Doc-from ‘Back to the Future’, Kevin Eyebrow and many more. WARNING:these tales will contain bad language, bodily fluids, cynicism and scenes of extreme geekiness.

I hope you enjoy it just as much as I endure it. If you like what you read, maybe you can run the shop for a day while I nip off fishing.