[Af_List] Af_List Digest, Vol 28, Issue 5

[Sam Hamilton]

> Working there was even kinda cool for a while, buying
> Chris Heazlewood's old vinyl before it made it onto the shelves, getting
> the
> only copies of corpus hermeticum releases, ordering in too much Swans and
> Skinny Puppy, asking older staff "whats this Flies Inside the Sun cd?"
> Etc etc etc.
>
> Len
>


yeah, i  also spend way to much time down there sifting through records, but
they when you could actually ask an older staff member what something as
obscure as Flies in side the Sun was are long gone with the replacement of
people who could tell you which hair colour was more appropriate for which
music genre.
i think one of the reasons i just kinda stopped going there after a while
was because if i wonted specifically to find something of a similar nature
to a Flies record i would actually head straight to the dance music section
as continuous misplacement of anything not top 20 was almost a given for a
while there, Haino or Zbigniew Karkowski in the dance section, Alan Licht in
the world section, Scandanavian talentless improv with screaming lunacy in
the story book section. i don't expect them to hire people who are
specialists in uber weird shit, but it became apparent after a few years
that music knowledge was becoming one of the lesser priorities of hiring
staff.

anyhow, hating hating hating. i dont wont to  hate on them and i will miss
it if it disappears.

if anything i hate the fact that all these places previously mentioned cant
all just fucking exist together. i remember when Real Groovy squeezed out
about 3 of the second hand record traders in Auckland when they started
pushing trade-ins really heavily.
blanket market tactics are to blame for part of it, but increasing overheads
make it impossible to compete with that.
we used to have a huge number (comparatively) of record stores which seemed
to all coexist fine? i mean, im sure none of them where making a killing,
but they where all surviving, which is all you needed at the least.

and yeah Paul/Kiran, Aucklands ace!!! despite the lack of small indie record
stores AK is blazingly wonderful! i dearly miss some of those record stores
(i used to work in a couple of them), but i havent the right to complain
really.

anyhow, if Real Groovy does go ad all we're left with is JB hi-fi then its
only a matter of time before someone gets fed up and does something about
it, things go up, then down, then up again
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