Mike's Night in Soho
Tonight I took my Thursday Night Out to run an errand and do some exploring in London.
From Liverpool Street I took the Central Line to Oxford Circus, heading down Regent Street to my first destination: the Apple Store, where I got a radio tuner for our iPod. One of the things I've been keen to experience is UK radio.
Then, barely a block away, I walked the length of Saville Row (it's a short walk). There was shop after shop of bespoke tailors given men's names like Rupert Greene and James Cromwell (I made those up). Some even sold cloth by the yard. And ... you know how discount stores have clothes crammed into every nook, and boutique shops have hardly any clothes on display? And that the logical culmination would be a store that has just one item of clothing, and it's so expensive that to buy it would keep the store going another month? Well, I passed a store like that. Floor to ceiling windows. All white, brightly lit. No colours. Not even signage. I honestly didn't know the name of the store. And against the back wall - there weren't even racks or shelves - but against the back wall were a few dozen items. On hangers. And they were all black. I picked a bad day to walk Saville Row, too: I'd taken my bike to the Ipswich station so here I was walking around in my grey Oregon Columbia Omni-Tech Titanium weatherproof jacket. I should be glad the bobbies weren't called after me.
Then I doubled back across Regent Street (not far from Trafalgar Square) to my next destination for Dedicated Followers of Fashion: Carnaby Street. This is a pedestrian-only high street, and again, not a very long walk. In contrast, the shops were much more mainstream (plebian?): surfwear, sportswear, things teens would buy, plus some pubs and restaurants, including one I remembered named Shakespeare's Head, and sure enough, above its corner entrance, looking down from a window, is Shakespeare's Head. (I've learned that the reason pubs are given names like The Flying Rat and The Brown Cow and having a picture of the same prominently displayed is that it gave illiterate patrons a better chance of finding it.) This walk took me to Oxford Street, where I ended up at the HMV megastore to do a bit of music shopping.
Now at this point I will digress a bit about music shopping in the UK. Since my earliest college days I've had the good fortune to always be living in cities that boasted fine independent record shops, and my collection has been growing constantly as a result. Give me some free time, and chances are good you'd find me in a record shop. I've been especially spoiled by Portland shops like Everyday Music and Music Millennium with in-store stocks of thousands of CDs.
The UK is disappointing in this regard. I visited Avalanche Records in Edinburgh and Glasgow; the stocks were nice but quite small, barely in the hundreds. Months ago I trekked out to Notting Hill and visited the legendary Rough Trade off Portobello Road: the store was tiny, with barely enough room to walk around, much less browse in comfort. I was a bit more impressed with Sister Ray in Soho, but it's still nothing like the shops I've been used to. Independent record stores are in crisis in the UK: it's hard to survive against online retailers and the big two high street shops, HMV and Virgin, plus CDs sold for discount at places like Woolworths and Tesco. Several of the record shops I've researched online have since closed down, and Spillers Records in Cardiff (claiming to be the world's oldest record store) is fighting closure.
I used to get the biggest satisfaction buying used CDs for $8.50, $6, even $4.25. It's cheaper than buying per-song online, plus you get the full, uncompressed music, with no digital rights management. Used CDs here are more expensive: maybe £7-8 apiece, just a few pounds less than new releases (usually £10-11). Instead, the bargains I've seen are in HVM and Virgin, and they come in two forms. There are greatest-hits packages, and what seem to be overstock. So, for example, I've scooped up compilations of singles by The Who and The Kinks and Roxy Music, as well as classics from Pulp, Genesis, and The Smiths, for about £4-5 each.
So that's how I ended up with a £5 collection of Joe Jackson singles at HMV, plus something I've been looking for for quite a while, and not finding at any of the aforementioned indie stores: Where The Night Goes by Infantjoy, an ambient electronica exploration of the music of classical composer Erik Satie. Infantjoy includes Paul Morley of the Art of Noise, and I enjoyed AoN's exploration of Debussy's music in, um, The Seduction of Claude Debussy, so I'm looking forward to listening to this one.
On the train ride back to Ipswich, I raided the buffet car to get a BLT sandwich and a can of Strongbow cider, then I prised open the bulletproof Apple packaging of the radio tuner (why can't their packaging be as friendly as their products?) and started browsing the FM dial from London to Ipswich, picking up XFM, BBC Radio 1 through 4, BBC Radio Essex, SGR Colchester, and BBC Radio Suffolk.
From Liverpool Street I took the Central Line to Oxford Circus, heading down Regent Street to my first destination: the Apple Store, where I got a radio tuner for our iPod. One of the things I've been keen to experience is UK radio.
Then, barely a block away, I walked the length of Saville Row (it's a short walk). There was shop after shop of bespoke tailors given men's names like Rupert Greene and James Cromwell (I made those up). Some even sold cloth by the yard. And ... you know how discount stores have clothes crammed into every nook, and boutique shops have hardly any clothes on display? And that the logical culmination would be a store that has just one item of clothing, and it's so expensive that to buy it would keep the store going another month? Well, I passed a store like that. Floor to ceiling windows. All white, brightly lit. No colours. Not even signage. I honestly didn't know the name of the store. And against the back wall - there weren't even racks or shelves - but against the back wall were a few dozen items. On hangers. And they were all black. I picked a bad day to walk Saville Row, too: I'd taken my bike to the Ipswich station so here I was walking around in my grey Oregon Columbia Omni-Tech Titanium weatherproof jacket. I should be glad the bobbies weren't called after me.
Then I doubled back across Regent Street (not far from Trafalgar Square) to my next destination for Dedicated Followers of Fashion: Carnaby Street. This is a pedestrian-only high street, and again, not a very long walk. In contrast, the shops were much more mainstream (plebian?): surfwear, sportswear, things teens would buy, plus some pubs and restaurants, including one I remembered named Shakespeare's Head, and sure enough, above its corner entrance, looking down from a window, is Shakespeare's Head. (I've learned that the reason pubs are given names like The Flying Rat and The Brown Cow and having a picture of the same prominently displayed is that it gave illiterate patrons a better chance of finding it.) This walk took me to Oxford Street, where I ended up at the HMV megastore to do a bit of music shopping.
Now at this point I will digress a bit about music shopping in the UK. Since my earliest college days I've had the good fortune to always be living in cities that boasted fine independent record shops, and my collection has been growing constantly as a result. Give me some free time, and chances are good you'd find me in a record shop. I've been especially spoiled by Portland shops like Everyday Music and Music Millennium with in-store stocks of thousands of CDs.
The UK is disappointing in this regard. I visited Avalanche Records in Edinburgh and Glasgow; the stocks were nice but quite small, barely in the hundreds. Months ago I trekked out to Notting Hill and visited the legendary Rough Trade off Portobello Road: the store was tiny, with barely enough room to walk around, much less browse in comfort. I was a bit more impressed with Sister Ray in Soho, but it's still nothing like the shops I've been used to. Independent record stores are in crisis in the UK: it's hard to survive against online retailers and the big two high street shops, HMV and Virgin, plus CDs sold for discount at places like Woolworths and Tesco. Several of the record shops I've researched online have since closed down, and Spillers Records in Cardiff (claiming to be the world's oldest record store) is fighting closure.
I used to get the biggest satisfaction buying used CDs for $8.50, $6, even $4.25. It's cheaper than buying per-song online, plus you get the full, uncompressed music, with no digital rights management. Used CDs here are more expensive: maybe £7-8 apiece, just a few pounds less than new releases (usually £10-11). Instead, the bargains I've seen are in HVM and Virgin, and they come in two forms. There are greatest-hits packages, and what seem to be overstock. So, for example, I've scooped up compilations of singles by The Who and The Kinks and Roxy Music, as well as classics from Pulp, Genesis, and The Smiths, for about £4-5 each.
So that's how I ended up with a £5 collection of Joe Jackson singles at HMV, plus something I've been looking for for quite a while, and not finding at any of the aforementioned indie stores: Where The Night Goes by Infantjoy, an ambient electronica exploration of the music of classical composer Erik Satie. Infantjoy includes Paul Morley of the Art of Noise, and I enjoyed AoN's exploration of Debussy's music in, um, The Seduction of Claude Debussy, so I'm looking forward to listening to this one.
On the train ride back to Ipswich, I raided the buffet car to get a BLT sandwich and a can of Strongbow cider, then I prised open the bulletproof Apple packaging of the radio tuner (why can't their packaging be as friendly as their products?) and started browsing the FM dial from London to Ipswich, picking up XFM, BBC Radio 1 through 4, BBC Radio Essex, SGR Colchester, and BBC Radio Suffolk.
posted by Michael Nelson at 1:00 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home