A New Record Shop for Milton Keynes!

I am really, really thrilled to learn that my hometown is soon to be enlivened by the launch of a second-hand record shop!

Station Records will be popping up at the new community initiative, The Buszy, former Milton Keynes bus station, close to the train station.

The Buszy came to my attention when I spotted - on a visit to MK - a sign that said THRIFT STORE. Then I came across the Twitter account for Moments in Wax, a new regular club night hosted there that plays a classic vinyl album in its entirety (the first one was Dark Side of the Moon, by Pink Floyd). I then heard about all kinds of fun goings on for youths at The Buszy, such as dance classes, skateboarding shows, vintage clothes/books/bric-a-brac and more on sale, and new skills for young people to learn in this community space.

It sounds like exactly what Milton Keynes has been missing. I spent my early 20s plotting indie club nights and various ways to make my hometown more musically richer. Even in the last year or so I have still found myself dreaming up independent record shop ideas and wanting to set something up myself - the thing is to make a quiet suburban place better, and try to create what you want, not just bemoan the place. Yes, I live in London now, but I still go back to Milton Keynes, and I still have a little place for it in my heart - I defy the detractors' uneducated diatribes against the city, since I have a slew of amazing aspects I can readily name that give the city a heart, and uniqueness. People make assumptions, people ridicule, people just haven't been there properly to know more. There might be shortcomings, but, well, why not kick something off to make the place your happier haven? It was here that I first started making music fanzines, and got to interview all kinds of amazing bands. I have many fond memories of gigs, music shops, record fairs, that first bought guitar, and music fandom and community. And so... a new record shop for Milton Keynes!


It is true that for some time in recent years musical stuff has been a bit more lacking than in former years. The late 90s saw bands such as REM, Mansun, Placebo, Blur, and so on play in Milton Keynes. There were regular decent gigs. There was a really worthy second-hand record shop in Wolverton in the shape of Fish Music (sadly, now closed, as many small music shops have in the UK). That record shop shaped my musical tastes, assisted my life story. We also had excellent secondhand music stalls on the market, which fuelled my liking of The Cure at a time when The Cure had gone all quiet and had not been resurrected as extremely cool and name-check worthy again (it took a huge number of years for that in the UK, and it still baffles me).

With the demise of so many music shops in Milton Keynes over the years (in my teens there were at least three or four: Andy's, Our Price, Fish Music, and possibly HMV at that same one time, if memory serves), I was bowled over to hear an announcement on Twitter that there is to be a new second hand record shop introduced at The Buszy premises! How ace will that be?



Open every Saturday from the 29th June, the shop will stock tapes, vinyl, and more. At last check, the stock has reached treble figures.

Profits from the project are going to go to a youth work charity called Make a Difference. And Station Records is also seeking to stock local artists.

The store is run by Warren Smith whose music fandom once reached into making a music fanzine local to Milton Keynes.

The All Thrills No Frills Music Bill paper fanzine (counterpart to this very blog) looks set to be stocked in Station Records, too. So look out for it on the 29th, when the store launches! We are working on a Milton Keynes music memories special.

Here's to runaway success for a wonderfully welcome and exciting independent initiative in Milton Keynes.

www.facebook.com/stationrecordsmk

www.twitter.com/stationrecmk

EMAIL: stationrecordsmk AT live.com

http://www.thebuszy.com/spotlight-products

Moments in Wax club night

Further thoughts on music buying/HMV

Here's a genuine overheard person on a mobile phone - the location was a little secondhand book shop:

'I'm in a book shop'
[pause]
'I'm old school - I still buy CDs!'

My heart sank. And I just felt the really strong urge that I am not of these times. It was someone not that much younger than me. Something like that makes me feel so sad - it's so odd and alien to me that buying any kind of physical music product can be seen as, what, kitsch? A stylistic choice? Or just plain old fashioned.

I enjoyed Stuart Braithwaite's addition to the great HMV debate, recently.

He has a good point about extremely low pricing making CDs seem disposable when once they were £15. I remember paying £15.99 for CD albums that weren't even new release, and I remember cassette albums in their last days in the album charts being £15.99 too, which is pretty shocking to look back on. The in between always seems fair to me - and a lot of independent record shops have got that right, eg new releases at anywhere between £8.99 and £12.99.

And the below is too true to:

'As a trusted brand, HMV could quite easily have used its position to establish digital music sales far earlier and far better than it did. Filling its shop floors with iPods was surely an act of cutting one’s own throat, and I had a discussion with someone working in Waterstones recently who felt the same way about its stores selling ­Kindles.'

It will be interesting to see what changes get made to the stock/store policies should a buyer take over HMV.

It's incredibly hard for me to comment or get my head around any potential for there to be a next generation who expect all their music free and therefore for music buying to end totally, as I don't know anyone that feels that way, and the most hardcore music fans I know all adore and use record shops in towns and cities - they also tend to see the urgent need to support bands direct, buying albums and t-shirts at gigs so the band get the money direct, and so on. The thought occurs that new music is so much more ubiquitous now than when I was a teenager, there is almost no escape, and TV shows and advertising in particular have gone indie soundtrack in a way that baffles me that would not baffle those growing up now - a song by Clinic in a Weetabix advert is still beyond comprehension to me! Music seems to mean much less in many ways, too - it is fashion, it is commodity more than ever.

I was recently excited to visit a new shop in the provincial town I grew up in, which specialised in band t-shirts (I'd harboured dreams about opening up a record shop there, selling albums and merchandise, as I didn't think just albums would be a success, in such a shopping-centre-driven place). Then I realised the horror that it was all in the name of fashion - it was all stuff that is worn more as a logo of cool/identity than fervent music fandom - a Ramones t-shirt now can sit alongside a Jack Wills one, it is just a style choice. I'm not the first music fan to find themselves seeing band t-shirts in trendy high street stores, and to see people wearing them in the street, and find myself wondering if they even own albums by this band. I once had a flatmate who worked for a major record company but whom owned about 20 CDs, and I once saw on her packing list for a festival trip - 'Rolling Stones tee'. There wasn't a Rolling Stones record in the house, and no other reference to them to be seen/heard from her either. And there is huge peril there that that's a big part of how music has come to seem disposable to people...

On a brighter note, the staff at HMV Curzon Cinema seemed positive about the cinema remaining functional, due to the part ownership by Curzon - which is such a relief. Had some drinks there and celebrated. Also, bought a few items in the actual HMV store.

I leave the mini free versions of this 'zine in there regularly, but I do wonder who is picking it up, and I do wonder if there are that many 'old school'(!) music fans out there that are bothered about/interested in such a thing as a printed music fanzine anymore. Unless it becomes fashionable via an article in the mainstream press and is generally seen as some hip current phenomenon, it does seem to be a niche/dying art for a perhaps soon-to-be-lost generation - and it makes me very reluctantly... twee.