You’ll have to wait for my review of “Girl, Woman, Other” (which I fairly ploughed through over the weekend) (spoiler alert: I loved it) as I’ve managed not to get round to writing up a review of this excellent read from the other end of my TBR. Why I read half the books I bought from Foyles with a gathering of book tokens in May 2018 almost immediately and am only now tackling the other half is just one of those mysteries. They’ll be going pretty quickly now, though, as I can’t access the up-to-date end of things behind a Terrible Pile. Anyway …
Garth Cartwright – “Going for a Song: A Chronicle of the UK Record Shop”
(22 May 2018, Foyles)
A good if exhaustive (not one for a fickle read but a book you need to sit down properly to) examination of UK record shops from their first inception to their last guttering out, or plucky survival in a few cases. It bobs around the years a bit as it takes themes for chapters from types of music as they arise and sees those genres through: I can’t really see how else it could have been done, but there is a little bit of repetition and cross-reference.
I learned a lot. It was interesting to find out that 78s were originally available in hardware and other shops, and I didn’t know that the album got its name from the practice of selling series of linked records (all a composer’s symphonies, for example) in a bound folder. Supercilious record shop staff have apparently been with us right from the start, and that’s recorded, however much of the history Cartwright documents is almost invisible in the public record – including the existence of a whole record shop, distribution and label-owning family, the Alis, and many of the shops features here, so he does an important job of making them known and saving what details there are. Lots of oral history and interviews flesh things out and nice connections are made between the known locations of musicians and the known or possible shops they frequented.
I was particularly interested in the Birmingham side of things and also the shops of Berwick Street, which I used to haunt in my London days. I was sad to learn of the demise of Cheapo, Cheapo, where I picked up many peculiar low-priced favourites, although I was never on any level of intimacy with its staff or owner as Cartwright clearly was. A massive labour of love, written from the inside and the outside, also filled with wonderful images of the shops in question and their ephemera.
I’m still reading Clair Wills’ “Lovers and Strangers” and have also been reorganising my bookshelves a bit, as I managed to score two tall “CD Rack” bookcases from a local charity shop in the week, which have fitted in the remaining 20cm-wide gaps in the house where a book storage item can fit. I now have all my Iris Murdochs, hardback and paperback, together, and a new collection of Sport and Nature upstairs. Iris Murdoch is on the landing, indeed!
Oct 28, 2019 @ 19:36:29
Oh, this sounds wonderful, and one that would certainly get my nostalgic heart-strings going. I can remember so many lovely record shops in my life – all gone now. Happy days….
And well done on the book organising – hope Iris is behaving herself on the landing! :DDD
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Oct 29, 2019 @ 08:30:15
It was really good, I’m going to pass it to my best friend Emma but I’m sure there are still copies around. Iris is very much enjoying having all her editions reunited (I could now fit a set of US first editions on the other side of the bathroom door – overegging things a little, though?).
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Oct 29, 2019 @ 09:25:54
I can see why you were drawn to this book. How lovely that it references places you used to know too. Iris Murdoch is on the landing sounds like a book you should write. 😉
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Oct 29, 2019 @ 09:30:28
And it has places in Birmingham that are still there! Ha – yes, I might get Susan Hill after me for the copyright, though! I was mulling over publishing my essays on re-reading the books but still not sure. I have time to decide.
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Oct 29, 2019 @ 16:37:09
Might have to get this one for myself as well as my brother for Christmas! I loved lps so much. Sadly I sold nearly all of them being an early adopter of CDs, but lps were always so much better.
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Oct 29, 2019 @ 17:28:01
I kept a lot of my records although I fear they’ve got a bit damp recently being in a funny corner of the sitting room. You know when you don’t dare look? I have a lot of CDs too and this does cover them and the resurgence of vinyl. It is good, hope you can get hold of a copy or two!
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Oct 29, 2019 @ 16:57:56
From what I’ve read, vinyl albums are big in the US again, which pleases me no end. We held onto ours, though they weren’t played for years until we bought a new turntable and set up an area for playing records and CDs. I’m still buying vinyl, too. There was a lovely scene in the movie Fisherman’s Friends (have you seen it?) where a young woman talks of how she loves playing records.
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Oct 29, 2019 @ 17:29:00
I’ve not seen that yet, but that’s great. I have a lot of records and still buy them occasionally – I have a new record player where you can record onto MP3 and it has a tape deck and CD tray, too. No point in throwing stuff out but I would like to archive some of my old mix-tapes!
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Oct 30, 2019 @ 12:18:31
I love the sound of this book and I think my husband would really enjoy this one so I might get him it for Christmas. We’re slowly re-building our record collection (having got rid of our originals back in the day when CDs seemed to be the future!). We even have a new(ish) indie record shop in the town, which makes me happy.
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Oct 30, 2019 @ 13:28:30
Oh, that’s pretty amazing, how lovely! Our local one has many more records than CDs now which has been a change over the years! I hope you manage to find a copy.
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Oct 31, 2019 @ 11:09:12
Putting a Terrible Pile in front of books I have acquired recently to force me to read ones that have been neglected for far too long sounds like an excellent idea. Or I could put my Terrible Ironing Pile in front of the books I really want to read so I’d have to do the ironing to access them.
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Oct 31, 2019 @ 11:54:34
I was alternating books from each end of the shelves which was quite fun – in fact I might read my most recent acquisition next, as I can get to it, because it’s not shelved yet!
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Oct 31, 2019 @ 14:00:01
My reading unintentionally works along those lines because my new books are ones I have to read for my book club, but I’m also trying to read the ‘oldest’ books on my shelves. Thematic reading challenges help me get to the ones in the middle. Of course, you only seem to have one TBR shelf, whereas I have about 15!
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Oct 31, 2019 @ 14:32:49
Well it’s one shelf but doubled up, so two and a bit, really! I try to only do challenges if I can do them from the TBR, though that doesn’t always work!
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