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Friday, July 23, 2010

Last Shop Standing - a book by Graham Jones


An often hilarious investigation into the music industry's suicidal decline.

Author Jones takes a trip around Britain seeking survivors of an industry ravaged by newspaper promotional giveaways, supermarkets sellind CDs and the impact of computer downloads.

The result: an entertaining tale of encounters with shops both good and bad - one in Bolton the worst, apparently - and customers so outrageous, that they defy belief.

There are revelations about Van Morrison's ever-grumpy relationship with indie shops, a personal appearance by Billy Bragg to promote his album "Life's a Riot" that ended with no sales and one terse observation that it's "Just a pile of shite", and a Brummie customer who believed that if he bought a Japanese Sinatra pressing, it would feature Frank actually singing in Japanese. Brilliant!

Indeed.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

i could point you to a bbc radio documentary about the history and decline of record shops, and a video doc of the oldest record shop in the world (spiller's) if you're interested...

i've been subscribing to your posts for a while and would like to say "thanks" for your efforts, glad you discovered tortoise... and keep up the good work. it's always interesting to see such tube and goto exotica that i would never be able to afford, although i find your latest concept of the studio away from home a bit baffling, but if it works for you then great.. also great post re: the fahey guitar... thanks again and have fun,

-matt

twogoodears said...

You're welcome, Matt... thanks for your comments and encouragement, always MUCH welcome, indeed;-)
Re. the studio-away-from-home... this topic and situation has been ALSO baffling for me, down to sickness!
I had to do so and I do not regret it... I still have my home and family, BUT sweating and all considered - the audio-related relationship with my wife has improved considerably;-)
The problem wasn't "music", BUT "bulkiness" of gears and record collection and instruments...
So, if life has seasons, this is... late summer?!?! Maybe autumn;-)
Thanks for your support.

twogoodears said...

... almost forgetting: YES, definitely... I'd love to know the links you quoted.