poptastic
I don’t know about you but there are ‘rights of passage’ that we all go through, perhaps identified by differing acts or situations, that do stay with us for life. Music provided the back-drop to many of mine in early life: hearing the opening bars to Black Sabbath’s eponymously named first album on Robert Norton’s Decca record player and realising this was going to stay with me for decades; not quite understanding Peter Gabriel’s costume significance on the Genesis Live album but thinking what a hoot it must be.
I must have been about ten or eleven when I was first allowed to ‘go’ to town by myself, on the bus and all that, and it was to ‘The House of Records’ that I was instinctively drawn. Standing in the recently built ‘covered market’ (as opposed to the old ‘uncovered market’ where you got your third-hand horror mags for a shilling and fishing bait for tuppence…yes, I am really THAT old) I was gobsmacked to be faced by their latest window display for a little known, in Preston at any rate, American glam rock band, KISS. I can’t recall if it was promoting the albums ‘Hotter than Hell’ or ‘Dressed to Kill’ but I do know I spent the rest of the afternoon in one of their listening booths acquainting myself with their (not very) extensive back catalogue. Within context, those listening booths were surely the precursor for today’s itunes where, provided you didn’t look like a pikey sheltering from the rain, you could try-before-you-buy to your heart’s content. Not that we ever bought much.
But cool really came to call when HMV moved into town and signalled the imminent demise of The House of Records and their upmarket classical counterpart, Brady’s. So it’s with sadness that after 90 years on the high street (or Fishergate in our case) HMV now faces what many believe an impossible battle for survival. Shares have plunged to a record (no pun intended) low of 16p following its fourth profit warning in only six months and have crashed by over 90% since 2009. And, having eagerly adopted Amazon’s strategy from the onset, it’s all my fault! With the oft-speculated relaunch and rebranding as a digital media company yet to materialise it would appear the fire sale of the wholly owned Waterstone’s is the only option available and another once venerable UK company will be lost. His Master’s Voice can’t be heard as loudly as Hasn’t Much Value.
