Today is record store day.  Well in America it is anyway. Ozzy is the ambassador for the day.  I wonder how many people took note and went and supported an independent record store.

I have to admit I didn't.  But I do.  It actually made me a little sad.  If I was older I suspect it would make me even sadder.  The older you are the more time there's been for things to change.  I thought back to my teenage years and my favourite record stores.  There were the ones in Camden market that for a brief 18 month period I visited every few months.  My favourite place of all without question, was a little place sort of in the subway by the old bus station in Bristol.  You could even smoke in there.  I didn't even have a record player and yet I used to go in and buy vinyl.  I'm not a complete idiot or anything; I did have friends with record players.  I spent hours and hours and hours in that place, and it never got old lighting up in a shop.  I smoked more in there than I did in any pub.  Partly because I was always slightly nervous, and partly because it gave me a little rush of adrenalin every time I did it.  I probably looked high as a kite; trembling and twitching away!  It was full of old punks with brown paper bags, a floor that I cannot begin to describe without making it sound wholly repulsive, and staff that nobody would have dared to steal from.  It was a grotto.  I'd forgotten until today that at 16 I actually did a little trading and managed to turn around a few hundred pounds in old punk records.  So I got to thinking about where there was an independent record store and there aren't many that spring to mind.  There is one here that I can think of.  Badlands.  But that's it.  And I do tend to go to them.  I certainly avoid HMV.  Always packed.  In recent years all my CDs have been given to me, or bought at gigs and festivals.  I can't remember the last time I was in a record shop of any description.  As I understand it, even the chains are struggling.  Anyway, I raise my glass of wine to the days of the sub-way vinyl. 

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