Dinosaurs are not all dead. The last
of them slumber on the high street. Their strength gone. Their great bulk
powerless against the oncoming download based ice age. I tiptoe across the
slippery pavement as I pass by, avoiding the digital flurries already in the
air. Don't breathe in - that could be Michael Bubble's latest album floating
wirelessly towards someone's phone in frozen bits and bytes. Ugh, I got some in
my mouth. The taste is bitter and strange.
I too am a dinosaur. Sustained on low-hanging nostalgia, and the sickly
memories that foolishly stray too far from the herd. I am a ghastly figure from
another age. I can still remember the great beasts: Tower Records. Virgin
Megastore. HMV. The thunderous sounds as you approached. Row upon row of vinyl
scales stretching down their flanks. Laser Discs for eyes. Anger one, and it
would rise up on its hind legs - a vast, terrifying display of posters fanning
out from its neck, clacking back and forth in their numbered metal frames.
Number 47, please, the attractive young blonde lady gazing out through a window. Ah. All
gone. Oh well. Number 23, Animal out of The Muppets then. Yeah.
They were magnificent. But their day is done. Their time over.
I quicken my pace down the high street. It's quiet. Quiet and cold.
Later, I'm in a pub, talking to a girl dressed as a sexy vampire. I realise while I'm speaking I'm no longer telling girls in bars what I want to do with my life, but what I wish I had done. I'm briefly confused as the realisation takes hold, and the vampire lady asks me what I've come dressed as.
"A dinosaur," I say.
"But you don't have a costume."
Exactly.
They were magnificent. But their day is done. Their time over.
I quicken my pace down the high street. It's quiet. Quiet and cold.
Later, I'm in a pub, talking to a girl dressed as a sexy vampire. I realise while I'm speaking I'm no longer telling girls in bars what I want to do with my life, but what I wish I had done. I'm briefly confused as the realisation takes hold, and the vampire lady asks me what I've come dressed as.
"A dinosaur," I say.
"But you don't have a costume."
Exactly.
I leave the pub, it wasn’t my party,
I was just there. I head home back down the high street. I pass the old GAME
store, closed and boarded up. I stroll past HMV. It is the last of its kind, the last entertainment store, the last big record shop. It is
dying.
It occurs to me that the day is coming soon when I may have to explain to a child what a record shop was, and the child will look back at me with no idea what I'm talking about.
And on that day we shall all be a bit older. And weeping as we trudge round a Pound Land.
It occurs to me that the day is coming soon when I may have to explain to a child what a record shop was, and the child will look back at me with no idea what I'm talking about.
And on that day we shall all be a bit older. And weeping as we trudge round a Pound Land.
this reminded me of the old record shop we had around here when i was a kid. it was the only one around here that wasn't a chain shop, that i know of, and they had the best jingle EVAR! i thought they'd closed their doors several years ago, but apparently the daughter of the original owner re-opened it in a new location.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-xOG4lNlk4
Extremely local advertising like that is something we really don't have here. I feel that on some level we're missing out.
DeleteI am a proud, melancholic relic:-) My poor children don't know what to do with me... I cry when I miss out on the limited release of the new Josh Ritter on vinyl because I prefer the sound. I wake them every Christmas with melodies from my past spinning about the turntable at full blast. And I get lost in the Antiques Mall nearby which houses an entire record section because I will never own enough albums... *sighs* I was meant for another time.
ReplyDeleteI'm happy to see you writing... You do it so brilliantly. Perhaps you can inspire me to begin my page here again, I started then became sidetracked and I've been nattering drivel on 3x0 again simply waiting for it to die taking my nonsense with it:-) I am going to listen to my records now...
~m
Thank you. It does seem remarkable that Multiply is still there. Like a cursed monkey's paw that returns each time you hurl it away from yourself.
DeleteGreat piece of work Marcus - My kids and I went into HMV on Saturday... they just didn't get it. Why would anyone spend time searching through racks of CDs which cost twice as much as they do in Tesco?
ReplyDeleteIf they only knew how much time I spent when I was their age... endlessly thumbing through the LP and single sections of my local record shops. The endless hours I spent just hanging out in the shop, getting to know the staff so you could get to hear the latest stuff as soon as it came out or maybe get first refusal on all the display material. Record shops were a critical part of my teenage years but now, just like Woolworths Pick and Mix, they are dying. They are part of the endless conversion of our High Streets from places where people buy things to places where people drink coffee. Don't get me wrong - I like coffee shops - but the lack of variety in a 21st century town centre will ultimately make it a ghetto.
And Blockbuster has gone today too. Though I did speak briefly to a teenager earlier who, when I explained the concept of renting a video or DVD, looked at me as though I was talking in the language of The Clangers.
DeleteI am one of the dwindling number of people who like to hold an object in my hands before deciding whether to buy it. I like to feel it and weigh it up in an environment where there are other people around ... I might want to enter into a light-hearted conversation with someone standing next to me ...
ReplyDeleteWe only have ourselves to blame of course. Too many of us want to buy the cheapest version of whatever it is we're wanting to buy whilst sipping our Starbucks coffee and complaining there's no choice in the shops ... and we'll end up feathering the nest of Amazon or one of the other soul destroying behemoths who corner the market and who probably don't pay enough tax in the UK.
I don't want to buy my CDs in Sainsbury's or Tesco either.
Like me it seems as though the days of the High Street are numbered.
Entering into light-hearted conversations is becoming something of a lost art.
Delete