| AS ORIGINALLY PRINTED
IN RHYTHMS MAGAZINE -
DROPPED TIL I SHOPPED
Excuse me, but I’m mourning the loss of
a close friend, no not a person, but that most endangered of species,
my local independent owner operated record shop.
You know the sort of idiosyncratic place that
I mean, run by a music fan, a human search engine ferreting out
quality music from often the most most obscure of sources, steering
clear of the Top 40, interacting with the customer on a one to one
basis always willing to engage in a passionate discussion about
music. If you looked in the racks, you’d have a fair idea
of the personality behind the counter or converserly if you met
the owner at a party you’d have a good idea of what could
be found in the shelves, a human interface of product & person.
But it’s difficult swimming against the
mainstream, faced with declining markets, recorded music sales 7%
down this year & the fact that the profit margin on music sales
is much smaller than other retail, the mark up for clothing is 100
– 200 % or more, while the markup for a CD is 30% if the vendor
is lucky, many shops such as my local are finding it increasingly
difficult to compete with the large chains & K Marts where most
records are sold these days. Given that margins are small, it’s
shifting units that counts, don’t look for much jazz blues
or other fringe musics in their racks while you’re throwing
your heavily discounted Australian Idol Cd in the shopping trolley
along with your homeware purchases. Many of the monoliths actually
run their top selling CDs as loss leaders, hoping to lure the consumer
into the shop in the hope that they will purchase electronics &
car stereos etc… while picking up their music bargain.
So it’s a struggle for the small is beautiful
brigade. All of which makes the recent deal that Bob Dylan has done
with Starbucks to initially exclusively retail his forthcoming CD
even more puzzling than his recent Victoria’s Secret lingerie
commercials. After all hasn’t it been the smaller record retailers
that have stuck with Bob through thick or thin over the years? But
it is understandable given that the coffee counterfeiter has over
9,200 stores worldwide, that the average regular customer amongst
their 33 million coffee slurpers per annum makes more than 200 visits
per year. They could potentially do to music retailing what they’ve
done to the coffee industry, flooding & dominating & corporatizing
it.
The internet may have made life easier behind
the counter, but it’s also undermined the small music retailer
& here I stand guilty as accused having spotted a bargain or
long sort after disc on the internet & fed my credit card number
in,clicked enter & waited a fortnight until the package arrived.
No human interaction at all. And no flipping through the racks,
digging out a gem, having a listen, having a chat about it &
finally handing over the cash for it.
For some strange reason amongst all the countless
dreary capitalist consumer purchases I’ve made during my life,
the record buying ritual, the thrill of the hunt, the risk taken,
a new world opened up, has stuck with me. If I looked through my
collection, especially the vinyl & gaze at the covers, even
though I can’t quote date & time, I can recall a series
of sense memories connected to when where & who I obtained that
particular disc from. How I felt when I got home & first put
it on. And I confess that when I was a kid I used to actually collect
& keep the record bags from various esoteric outlets. In download
culture you can be doomed to live in a ghetto of the known or liked
& yet how many times has great music that might not be immediately
“likable” been drawn to your attention by the guy slumped
behind the counter or what someone else is listening to on the shop’s
hi-fi?
So given the attachment that I have to that process
I’m having second thoughts about my souless cyber consumerism,
at least when it comes to music. I’m beginning to see the
extra couple of dollars that I may spend at my local music emporium
for a particular disc is perhaps a cultural subsidy to an idea worth
keeping real. The ragtag aesthetic of the High Fidelity subculture
is a cultural virus that has connected important music & audience
in an eccentric & yet essentially capitalist interaction for
the past 40 years.
Long may it fester.
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