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In a record shop, under headphones, scales falling from ears moments

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    In a record shop, under headphones, scales falling from ears moments

    Okay, it's probably a very niche phenomenon, these days, but...

    The times you first listened to something in a record shop, having heard or read recommendations or reviews, and you were utterly transported. Just barely registered the world around you while you were hearing the stuff.

    For me, two moments spring to mind:

    Dead Can Dance - 'De Profundis'

    Underworld - 'Spikee'

    I think that, on both occasions, someone or other tried to speak to me whilst I 'was under' and I could barely speak to them, as I had to totally re-orient myself. Pesky humans!

    #2
    Nope.

    Closest I came was one night in high school...so '85 or '86...when I was delivering pizza late at night. It was raining and pitch black, and I was on my way to a house on Danzig Street (that's how vividly I remember this, still). This song came on the radio on 102.1 and I was mesmerized. It was like a country and western song as played by Kraftwerk.

    I sat there, in the car in the rain, letting this poor schmuck's pizza get cold, waiting for the end so I could hear the title and the artist. And, of course, they didn't announce it, but just went into the next song.

    Years later, wandering drunk through New Orleans with Hugh Fatbastard, I learned that the song was Orange Blossom Special...the old blue grass tune. And many, many years after that, I learned it was by Age of Mirrors. After that, it was just a matter of google-stalking before I tracked down a band member who could hook me up with an MP3 of the song.

    Still love it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i3YcFLXwwM

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      #3
      Hungover as anything the day after Millwall away in 2015. We'd stayed in a hostel in Kings Cross and had some time to kill before the train home so we went to Covent Garden. We were in Fopp and they were playing Sleep by Max Richter. The hangover was one of those where something like using a self-service checkout can reduce you to whimpers, and the album had exactly the same effect on me.

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        #4
        I don't like to hang around too long in record shops. Enter, browse quickly, buy, leave. This is possibly linked to a traumatic episode in the late '80s when I went into one of the independent record shops in Birmingham to buy a single by Cath Carroll's band Miaow and the two hardcore looking guys behind the counter could barely contain their laughter and actually miaowed at me all the way from the counter to the door. However, I still have the record and the shop closed twenty years ago, so I won in the long term.

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          #5
          Originally posted by Giggler View Post
          Hungover as anything the day after Millwall away in 2015. We'd stayed in a hostel in Kings Cross and had some time to kill before the train home so we went to Covent Garden. We were in Fopp and they were playing Sleep by Max Richter. The hangover was one of those where something like using a self-service checkout can reduce you to whimpers, and the album had exactly the same effect on me.
          I keep umming and erring on whether to buy Sleep, Giggler. Someone briefly got the full 8-hour version uploaded to YouTube the other week and I did indeed fall asleep to it a couple of nights, it's rather gorgeous and quite stunning. There's the one-disc version of tracks recorded in the same sessions, From Sleep, which I might try getting instead though as I reckon if you just put it on repeat it probably sounds much the same...

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            #6
            I remember when I worked in advertising, going in for a meeting with a recruiter. Must have been 2005 or 2006. Was sitting in reception when what I later found out to be Trains To Brazil by Guillemots came on the receptionist's radio - it's hard to conceive of a song more custom built for me in terms of melody - swooping and hummable, mixing yearning and triumph. It's always reminded me of Party Fears Two. Can't remember anything about the meeting, but I remember thinking that I had to find out what that song was and who was responsible for it.

            Nothing else they ever did was as good, though there were other strong moments. And I always gave them the benefit of the doubt cos of that first brilliant rush.

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              #7
              This’ll sound like predictable cliche or complete invention but God Save the Queen, through headphones, in the record dept of a dept store in Roermond in Nederland. I bought it, pic sleeve and all.

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                #8
                A rather epic Santa Cruz by a (then) unknown act - Fatboy Slim, on white label. Music Stop, Gloucester Road, BS6. And If I'm going to go by Discogs, 1995.

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                  #9
                  I have two very different stories about record stores, neither of which involves headphones. In 1985 The Jesus and Marychain played a very short set at the Roxy in Hollywood. At the time I was 15 and living in Orange County. I would often be able to talk my mom into grocery shopping way out her way so I could spend time in Camel Records in Huntington Beach. The shop owner and two or three other guys were engaged in a heated conversation about whether or not the Marychain had ripped off the fans by playing 20 minutes. At the time I perceived them to be guys in their 40s or 50s but now that I fall squarely in between those ages I understand that they were probably in their mid-20s. But I appreciated the fact that they let this dumb teenager stand around in their half circle (shop owner behind the counter and the rest of in that half circle) and listen to the debate. A week later I went back to the shop and bought the record. I probably didn't buy it then because I didn't want too seem to eager to hear this band and probably had something else on my mind when I arrived.

                  About 6 or 7 years ago I took my daughter with me to Los Angeles to visit family. While we were there, I took her to Headline Records, which focuses primarily on various kind of punk. There were 3 or 4 people in the shop at the time discussing a variety of old and new records. A flashback to my experience at Camel in terms of the shop being a site for conversation about music. We left and I told my daughter that I missed that experience. She said: "What, a place where people basically say the 'F word" five or six times in every sentence followed by a band name." As a kid who wasn't and isn't into punk, she missed all the nuances but her general summary was probably pretty accurate.

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                    #10
                    I remember a college mate lending me Japan's Tin Drum album not long after it came out at the end of 1981. I think I'd heard the re-released Quiet Life single which was charting but TD was on a completely different level when I took it home and played it through. There were tracks unlike anything I'd ever heard before, in particular Ghosts and Sons of Pinoeers. I found the relentless drum/bass line throughout the latter quite mesmerising.

                    That was it and Japan were "my" band from then on, culminating with a concert on the farewell tour at Hammersmith Odeon in late 1982. My first gig, I was 18. I don't listen to Japan very often now but they have a place in my heart.


                    Sons of Pioneers

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                      #11
                      Originally posted by Various Artist View Post
                      I keep umming and erring on whether to buy Sleep, Giggler. Someone briefly got the full 8-hour version uploaded to YouTube the other week and I did indeed fall asleep to it a couple of nights, it's rather gorgeous and quite stunning. There's the one-disc version of tracks recorded in the same sessions, From Sleep, which I might try getting instead though as I reckon if you just put it on repeat it probably sounds much the same...
                      A slightly red-faced confession: it was indeed From Sleep that I bought.

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                        #12
                        Originally posted by Various Artist View Post
                        I keep umming and erring on whether to buy Sleep, Giggler. Someone briefly got the full 8-hour version uploaded to YouTube the other week and I did indeed fall asleep to it a couple of nights, it's rather gorgeous and quite stunning. There's the one-disc version of tracks recorded in the same sessions, From Sleep, which I might try getting instead though as I reckon if you just put it on repeat it probably sounds much the same...
                        It is also in Spotify now, and I am currently listening to various parts of it for a few hours a day. When I can find time I hope to be able to do an all-night listen dozing on and off as you are supposed to do to that record.

                        Anyway, If I Should Fall From Grace With God (the album) by the Pogues is the one I most vividly remember being blown away by while listening with headphones in a record store.
                        That must have been in 1988.
                        Last edited by Belhaven; 10-04-2018, 15:45.

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                          #13
                          Two records I specifically remember going "Oh wow...what's that?" at record shops was No Mercy by The Stranglers and The Boy With The Arab Strap by Belle and Sebastian. Both of which I still own and love.

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                            #14
                            1. As a young provincial visiting the record shop in the big town of Stockport, Mott the Hoople with Honaloochie Boogie (probably the first time I had ever listened to anything on headphones).

                            2. In the big HMV store in London, Miles Davis and Kind of Blue (played in-store, not on headphones); when I asked the guy at the counter who and what it was, he looked at me as though I was a young provincial visiting the big city.

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by Aitch View Post
                              ..when I asked the guy at the counter who and what it was, he looked at me as though I was a young provincial visiting the big city.
                              It's a rite of passage, isn't it, to be made to feel like a know-nothing ass by a loser working the counter at a record shop. That and DIY shops / lumber yards.

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                                #16
                                That's why I liked buying records in Rotherham; I knew more than the record shop staff...

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                                  #17
                                  Originally posted by Gangster Octopus View Post
                                  That's why I liked buying records in Rotherham; I knew more than the record shop staff...
                                  In an uncanny case of music imitating football, there's quite a good record shop (Sounds Of The Suburbs) in Ruislip, for those times when circumstances won't allow you to go music shopping in the old country.

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                                    #18
                                    Yeah, I've heard of Sounds Of The Suburbs. Never been, mind. And I can't remember the last time that I bought any music...

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                                      #19
                                      You wouldn't even be buying music now, you'd just be buying noise. Now, in my day...

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                                        #20
                                        Originally posted by WOM View Post
                                        That and DIY shops / lumber yards.

                                        Gosh yes! “ Will that be self-tapping or self-drilling, sir?”
                                        Last edited by Aitch; 12-04-2018, 15:44.

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                                          #21
                                          Originally posted by Aitch View Post
                                          1. As a young provincial visiting the record shop in the big town of Stockport, Mott the Hoople with Honaloochie Boogie (probably the first time I had ever listened to anything on headphones).

                                          2. In the big HMV store in London, Miles Davis and Kind of Blue (played in-store, not on headphones); when I asked the guy at the counter who and what it was, he looked at me as though I was a young provincial visiting the big city.
                                          Did he ask you if you wanted slimline salad dressing and a bag on your head?

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