Heart of a Punk Soul of a Rasta

Right so it's Record Store Day 2011, or as we call it here across the muddy pond Record "SHOP" Day. This is the day (in case you didn't know) when you're supposed to go out and support your local independent record shop, but of course we don't just visit our record shops once a year, do we?!! We visit them all year round, right? Oh right you don't, well you should, because the download is the work of the devil and the internet is a passing fad. Anyway just to make sure we all get off our volumous collective arses and get out there on the Record Shop Day there are always some exclusive product available (records you can only get on RSD), stuff to lure us out of our deathly slumbers and into the real world.

Now living as I do in Shropshire finding a local independent record shop here is about as easy as finding a professional footballer who admits to being gay. Still with LOCAL upper most in my mind I decided to travel 166 miles from Ludlow to Exeter and visit "Martian Records". What d'ya mean that's not local? Is so! Anyway I wanted to get hold of the Radiohead 12" Supercollider/The Butcher, so I wanted to travel a long way, and burn up a load of fuel, and pollute my way half way across the country in an attempt to balance out my tiny carbon toe print against Thom Yorke's & Radioheads massive size 11 carbon boot crater. I hired a private jet to fly back in, and got the car driven back on a low loader with the worst fuel consumption possible, I still didn't come close, but anyway that'll show 'em!

Martian Records (in case you didn't know) is a top Independent Record Shop that ticks all the proverbial boxes. Tucked away in Gandy Street Exeter they sell both second hand & new vinyl & cd's, and the old vinyl is always properly graded (I like that, yes I am that sad). On the RS Day they opened half an hour early to allow the goodly sized gaggle of punters waiting outside to get their hands on some exclusive stuff. As far as RSD goes then at Martian Records everything was peachy, the punters turned up, the product was available, the shop was full and buzzing all morning. Raffle tickets were given out free with every purchase for a midday draw to win a Nirvana LP, yes everything was sweet at Martian and as it should be.

But with every GOOD side nowadays it seems there has to be a BAD side.
Over to John.

Yes it seems that after only a short time Record Store Day isn't doing exactly what it was supposedly created to do. I spoke to a Record Shop owner prior to the RS day, he was listed as a participant on the RSD website and obviously wanted to get involved like he had done in previous years. But he told me that this year he'd been prevented from doing so because of the increase bureaucracy in ordering the exclusive product.

Previously the RSD exclusives had been ordered via Rough Trade, but that wasn't the case this year. To get hold of product this year from say Warner Bros, you needed an account with Warner Bros and to be shifting a certain amount of units for Warner Bros per year. The Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) also seemed to have a higher profile this year too. Yep folks this nice idea of promoting local independent shops seems to be going the way of all flesh, overtly corporate. The Record Shop geezer I talked to seemed to think that the Record Companies have decided they want to control the whole shindig, and especially they want to be able to count all the beans that are being sold.

Thanks John.

This turn of events is no great surprise and very much the way of things. Nowadays a music passionate bod who has a good idea to say put on a new festival somewhere is slowly corrupted in the same way. Folk turn up on year one and usually dig what's going on because its hap hazard and all the corporate bullshit is absent. Somehow these passionate bods get to scale things up and next year and even more punters come and dig it. Then before you know it year three of the Festival comes around but now the festival has a logo, a sponsor and the site if full of idiots with sunglasses on their heads looking for a guacamole dip to dunk their fresh cumquats in and music is secondary.

Let's hope that at this time when our independent record shops are so few and far between that RSD doesn't completely circumvent their requirements and turn from a damn good idea into just another failed marketing tool. Yes we want RSD, yes we want some nice exclusive product, but what we don't want is the Big Boys f**king with the folk at the pointy end. If RSD is really, purely, an idea for boosting indie record shops then make it as easy as possible for them to be boosted! Goodnight.

Now I don't believe in collecting records. Buying them purely to look at them in their shrink wrapped state. That would be intrinsically sad and I'm sad enough already. And I think that people who go out on RSD to buy the exclusive product simply to make a quick profit by selling it on on Ebay, are just a bunch of f wording c words. Vinyl for me is therapy - vinyl therapy - musical therapy - something I can use in my enforced drink & drug free life to block out all the political no marks, celebrity wannabes and deadhead dullards - you know who you are. Everything went wonderfully well at Martian Records on RSD here's a selection of the stuff I bagged, with reviews to follow: