Song, by Toad

Introduce Your Record Shop #3: Townsend Records

[The third in our Introduce Your Local Record Shop series is the first celebrity post, in which local pop superstar and all round glamorous lothario, the Russell Brand of Edinburgh, Rob St. John describes his deprived upbringing in a tiny little village in Hobbiton somewhere.  He's going to kill me for this, isn't he.]

Independent record shops have a pivotal role in the expansion and evolution of many people’s listening habits and I’m no exception. I grew up in village in rural Lancashire, and Townsend Records was the only record shop (ok, I’m definitely excluding Woolworths) in the nearest market town, Clitheroe. Now, in communities this size, to be viewed as ‘indie’ or ‘alternative’ is as easy as watching MTV2 or dabbing on a bit of black mascara. There’s very little of the one-upmanship (“what do you mean you don’t own Tigermilk on vinyl, you philistine!?”) I later encountered and wholeheartedly avoid in the inevitable move to the big-ish city. Even the “The band” explosion of the Libertines/Strokes/White Stripes in my late teens caused barely a ripple outside a devoted few. Mentioning Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy brought a response of “yeah, he’s that Scottish guy – dead, isn’t he?”

Yet in this musical backwater, with no bands (except, ahem, Zydeco Blues, lets say little more on that..) and aside from one multimillion white elephant of a venue run by religious zealots who wouldn’t allow gigs, no venues, Townsend did, and still does, pretty well. We had sporadic and slow internet, and very little preconception of what was “in” and what wasn’t. Hearing new music was pretty much the Peel Show or mate’s compilations. This was two or three years before file-sharing became accessible to us. As a result, the varied, even unashamedly random stocking policy in store led to adventures in buying CDs for their name/cover art/vague recommendation etc, resulting in some huge successes (Television, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mercury Rev, Pavement, The Beta Band) and some shockers which I still look at ruefully in my CD collection (Athlete remain the main culprits here).

There was a 3 for £20 deal on all but the newest CDs, but the stock at the shop was so low that there were barely ever three CDs you cared to buy. So we learnt to covertly accumulate viable purchases in out-of-the-way and dusty parts of the shop like classical and “golden oldies” and hope that in the next week new stock would arrive to make up the deficit. Sometimes, of course they would disappear in the interim, though I do like the idea that a classical music fan happened upon and subsequently bought the GY!BE or Soundgarden CD I was stashing. Compared to these (slightly wealthier, but not much) days, I bought so much more music then. We were the poorest patrons around, and that the shop still survives in such a musically stagnant town heartens me, particularly when bigger and more varied independent shops in cities are closing their doors. As ever, if you are in the area (and I would recommend it for a day or a week, though not 18 years), pop in, have a look, keep tiny indie shops like this alive, some of my 3 for £20 stashes will probably still be in the free jazz section, slowly eroding.

Here’s three discoveries from albums that still remain favourites:

Gomez – Get Miles (from Bring It On)
Mercury Rev – Holes (from Deserter’s Songs)
Television – Friction (from Marquee Moon)