Stereo Jealousy

This coming Saturday sees International Record Store Day, a chance to celebrate the culture of the independent record shop. Started in 2007 the celebration mainly focuses on the US but this year sees two of the biggest London indies joining in the shindig. Rough Trade East is hosting a free all-dayer featuring Betty & The Werewolves, Wave Machines and many more. Pure Groove hosts Graham Coxon and Patrick Wolf in their bash. Not only this but there are some exclusive releases floating around too – with two free compilations being given out, one featuring the guitar-led style of indie, one the beats-led dance stuff.

Here on Stereo Jealousy, I’ll be running a week-long rundown of my five favourite record shops. I’ve come up with a pretty lengthy shortlist, so whittling it down to five will be tricky. Sadly, there won’t be a mention for two of the shops that shaped my young musical taste – Andy’s Records and Mike Lloyd Music, both former shops in my glorious home town of Stoke.  The latter brought me my first experience of record shop snobbery – being told that my Lightning Seeds best of wasn’t worth squat as a trade!

I think Damon Albarn sums up my feelings pretty well: “I think independent record shops will outlive the music industry as we know it because long term their value to people is far greater, because even in our era of file-sharing and blogs, you cant replace the actual look on someone’s face when they are playing something they really rate and think you should listen to it too. It’s special.“

I’d love to see comments from you too – what’s your favourite record shop? Have you got music that you treasure, solely bought on the strength of a record-shop recommendation? Have you abandoned the local store and now raid the racks online? I wanna see some comments!

Saint Etienne – I Buy American Records