Rare and Racy

It's time we talked about record shops. Sometimes I get worried that all the good independents will disappear, and I'll have to jab away at the internet to buy vinyl. One of my favourites is Rare and Racy, which has been open on Devonshire Street, Sheffield since 1969. Beloved by Sheffield bands, arty types and literary types, it's mainly a second hand book shop similar to Shakespeare & Co. The walls are pasted with posters for local gigs and pages torn from old books. It's a slightly musty anachronism, and I love it.
The record section is very Howard Moon, as it's full of old bluesmen and bebop. But there's non-jazz too, and if you want some obscure glitch or ambient techno, you'll leave happy. Because it's in Sheffield, they usually stock plenty of Human League and Cabaret Voltaire.




The John Peel graffiti isn't on Rare and Racy itself, but the shop next door. It's so wonderful I plonked it on here too. A few days after John Peel died, somebody sprayed it all over town in tribute. The wall has been repainted a few times, but John Peel remains.

Recording shopping in Liverpool

Saturday shopping has never been a hobby of mine, but I spent some time browsing record shops this morning. Liverpool city centre is fairly hectic most days, but Saturdays are packed out with teenage girls struggling with Primark bags.
My boyfriend and I went to Zavvi, where I snapped this picture of the dance section:

It's like an eerie vision of the future, where everything has been packaged into separate compartments (Ibiza chillout, summer dance, funky house etc), but everyone is impossibly attractive because they're made out of plastic. And the content is all the same. Zavvi is not my kind of shop, but the boyfriend did find re-pressings of The Cars' Greatest Hits and The Art of Noise, for £2 each. Although we're usually eco-conscious to the point of being eco-bores, he asked for a plastic bag (well, we need something to put the rubbish in). It was hilariously large, and pictured here with the Norton Complete Shakespeare for scale:

And that Norton Shakespeare is BIG. We also browsed Probe Records, but left empty handed. In Hairy Records I picked out Roxy Music's Music For Your Pleasure, and the boyfriend selected a Stock, Aitken and Waterman compilation called The Hit Factory (of course). When I was sticking it onto the turntable at home, two press releases fell out:

The text is the same, but one is double spaced. Are they the former property of a SAW completist who bought them? Or was it a promo copy? They're dated 14 October 1987, but the record was released 12 October 1987. Nice to know that Stylus Music had the marketing campaign was well planned. As press releases go, it's a good one as it's full of facts. And there's no purple prose, unless you count the badly punned title of "Stylus score spectacular coup with SAW collection". The 12" had a dealer price of £4.17, and RRP of £5.99, while the CD dealer price was £8.34, RRP £11.99. The TV advertising campaign had a £500,000 budget, and there's even a Telex number at the bottom. The past really is a foreign country. I don't really to keep them, but don't want to chuck them in the recycling (yawn, eco-bore). If you want me to post you these pieces of SAW history (you know you do), email me at takeittothechorus@gmail.com.

Three hours in Nottingham

Yesterday, I went to Nottingham for a job interview. Strolling around the medieval streets and people watching in a very sunny Market Square made me think 'yeah! I could live here!' The reality is that it rains in Nottingham as much anywhere else in the UK, and I don't know anybody who lives there. Nottingham has a good gig scene, but it felt a bit too small. Don't get offended Nottingham, it's just that I'm ready for a big, big city.
By reflex, I went into Select A Disc. Since when has it been so expensive in there? Everything I wanted on vinyl (Cut Copy, Hercules & Love Affair, Holy Fuck) was about £20. I left with a copy of The Stool Pigeon, Moscow by the recently defunct This Et Al (a 2005 limited edition release) and a Dragonette vinyl which mysteriously had 'freeparty@dragonette.com' stamped on the label. It was a bit embarrassing to hand over the total spend of 50p to the chap working there, with 'FREE JAZZ' emblazoned across his t-shirt. But I couldn't leave empty handed after browsing every record while waiting for my train.
Back home in Liverpool, I discovered the Dragonette seven inch is the divine I Get Around. Shame Dragonette only sold about a wheelbarrow full of records when they were trying to make it big in the '07, but I spied on their website that they have an Australian tour this September. So perhaps they're selling records somewhere in the world. I haven't spun This Et Al yet. Shame they never made it big outside of Leeds, as I always had a soft spot for their angular post-rocking antics. At least they had their integrity.