Needing to buy a present for an upcoming party I had the excuse to go into town to sample record store day 5. A phenomenon that had been buzzing virtually left right and centre on the net.
I pottered over to Swordfish records and was amazed to see it empty, no one in there, no boxes of records, no buzz, just the usual personnel shuffling around the same as on a week day, so I had a root around some of the records and found a superb lp, a rerelease of the Nuggets album, double gatefold heavy vinyl, nice.
So I went for a wander round town, got the pressies, urban outfitters is the way forward, after the ground floor of Selfridges and being very disappointed with Record Store Day I whipped out my blackberry as a last resort.
First was a tweet slagging off record store day, the second let me know where another record shop was in Brum. Ignite. Never heard of it and found it on the blackberry, in Oasis. Now I probably haven't been in Oasis since school, and walking in it was the same, a department store for students, smelling of joss sticks and feeling far easier to walk round than when I was feeling very self conscious at school. The only thing I remember buying years ago was a spray painted teeshirt, which I loved and cost a fortune, can't remember the picture now, but the booth was still there still selling individual sprayed tees.
The store was a winner because it had a box of record store merchandise. I went through and found a few interesting things, the new Inspirals single (signed), the Ramones Blitzkrieg Bop, Belle and Sebastians cover of Crash by the Primitives and MC5 Kick out the Jams, all on (bloody expensive) seven inch . There was only me in the little store, with the ex indie buyer from Tempest who ran he stall. He had been scraping by, but doing so, and said he was just looking to survive. He had had a queue of about 100 people on opening though, and even better the next customer was a school girl, going through the indie vinyl who was a regular.
So I bought the most expensive 7" records in my collection, but was very happy to support a record shop, and happy to then retire to urban coffee, relax over an Americano and lovingly look through my records purchased, read the times mag piece by Caitlin Moran and watch the Blues game on twitter, very like watching on Ceefax, just with background noise from other random tweets. Refresh.
I then went back to Swordfish for a transformed shop, full of people of my age, packed in to watch the Wonder Stuff or Miles Hunt and Erica from said band, perform their 5th in store of the day, consisting 4 tunes, 3 covers (Slade, the Beat and the Move) and an oldie. Miles had good banter, telling us about his uncle who had been in ELO, the Move and Wizard and the first 7" in 20 years for the Stuffies. The was part of their From the Midlands with love project, covers of songs that had inspired them, and celebrating (in a typically self deprecating fashion) the world of the Brummie.
The songs were great, a self confessed not too sure of the chords to Slades tune, a couple of wrong words in verses (self confessed again) but overall a very warm feel. We bought the 7" after and I met Miles with the same star struck look I always get on these photos, plus gave him my pen for everyone else. Miles was a very warm chap among friends, he had been a regular customer of the owner, and it showed, he warned us not to let the record store become a thing of the past to reminisce about and then I left, happy to have participated in records store day 2012.
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