Heart of a Punk Soul of a Rasta

The Last Record Shops of Engand (Part 7)

White Rabbit
Record & Books, Shrewsbury Indoor Market, Shrewsbury, Shropshire.

"………..one pill makes you larger. And one pill makes you small. And the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all". When this little ditty plays in my head its Dave Vanian of The Damned I hear and not Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane; but either way, its always good.

Anyway as I stumble around England visiting "The Last Record Shops of England" sometimes it feels like I'm on a never ending beach treading in my own footprints from a former time, when all of a sudden I find some of my footprints have been washed away. This month the footfall in question was Muzo Records in Hereford; I went there to find the windows were white washed and CLOSED scrawled across the door. For a sad old vinyl shit like me its a piss poor state of affairs but for the geezer who ran the gaff it must be a total bummer.

So with emporium after emporium giving up the fight its more than wonderful to find somewhere NEW: White Rabbit Records & Books who've set up in Shrewsbury's Indoor Market. As Peter Tosh would have said White Rabbit Records is a "brand new second hand". It's snuck away, up on the top tier balcony of the market and has a goodly stock of SECOND HAND vinyl, 33's & 45's, tapes, music related books and some musical instruments and gear.

Now unless someone knows better, to my knowledge anyway, Shrewsbury has no great heritage as far as Independent Record Shops are concerned. In recent times they've only had "Out There Music" and "Flip" which were both dance orientated places. Why is this? Do the people of Shrewsbury go about without a song in their heart? The Music Hall in Shrewsbury has seen a few good uns come and go between The Beatles in '64 and Babyshambles in 2005; and the Buttermarket has had just about everyone in its time, so why Shrewsbury has never had a long running independent record shop? I don't know I'm asking you!

There is one question I can answer though. It's the one I'm often asked, it is, "Ed with your 72,051 records, 8,752.00 CD's and 4 cassettes what do you actually buy when go to the "Last Records Shops of England". Well stuff like this actually:

Yes when I went on the rumage at White Rabbit I bought "Kill Uncle" by Morrissey on vinyl. But not just any vinyl.

When I brought this little baby home my wife immediately said "What have you bought that for? You've already got "Kill Uncle" on cassette and on CD!" "Yes dear I have" I replied. "But this LP has been WITHDRAWN from Dudley Public Library, it's totally unique; Dudley Library only ever had one copy of "Kill Uncle", it must be worth a king's ransom!" And just think how many cassette tape recordings of this very album there are knocking around the West Midland Masturbation, sorry I mean Conurbation; it's a mind boggling piece of rock history this record is!" Her reply was short and sweet. "Yes that's all fine and wonderful, as soon as you've recorded it on to a C90 it's going on Ebay!" "It's not", "It is", "Is not", "Is so" "Is not so" and so on.

But people please don't go to bleedin' Ebay looking for vinyl go to The Last Records Shops of England whilst stocks last!

Appearing in a market near you, here are some I've bought stuff from recently: there's Music Nostalgia at Truro Market where they have a veritable mountain of stock. Truro used to have quite a few decent record shops - all gone now. So use this one - yes especially you holiday makers! There's IGNITE RECORDS at Oasis in Birmingham - whatever happened to Vinyl Dreams from back in the day? And there's a geezer I stummbled across recently at STAFFORD MARKET indoor markey who sells vinyl - can't say anymore than that really except I bought something off him.

But hey while I'm in STAFFORD whatever happened to STAFFORD BINGLEY HALL? Once the venue of choice for every world reknowned ROCK band, today its just the venue for the Sedgley & Gornal Dog Show. The wind cometh and the wind bloweth away. Damn you NEC, NIA, ICC, MEN and RNLI!