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PATTY
GRIFFIN.
Her album 1000 Kisses was excellent.
The follow up "Impossible Dream" was even better.
Its one of those that after a few listens you're not
sure about, then you find that it's never out of the
CD player. The UK release includes three bonus tracks,
recorded live with Emmylou Harris
that are not on the US version.
February 2007 and it's deja vu !!
Patty's next album "Children Running Through" - and I went through
exactly the same scenario as before.
On
the first few listens I was not impressed, and at one stage I took it
out of the CD player to listen to something else. Mistake.... Stick
with it and its a fantastic album.
Her latest album, the self titled "Patty Griffin" was released 8th March 2019.
Check out pattygriffin.net for the latest
news etc. |
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A few years ago Lucinda Williams played locally in Leamington Spa, at the Assembly.
I managed to catch up with "Lu" backstage afterwards for a chat and she
signed my gig poster and "Little Honey"
album sleeve.
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I have been collecting records since about 1970.The
first album I purchased was "With the Beatles" in 1963, but my
collecting days really started
with the
purchase of the "School's Out" album by Alice Cooper.
In
the good old days there were plenty of record shops in Coventry to get
your vinyl fix.
Fennells, Jill
Hansons, Paynes, Cranes, The Sound Centre and The
Forum Hi-Fi centre
were the local
ones, and not forgetting Hits And Misses Vintage Records. Dealing
mainly in
second hand
albums and singles, they had two shops for a short time before closing
the one in
the City
Centre (Corporation Street) just leaving the original one in
Far Gosford Street. Many a
bargain was to
be found here.
As with every other City there
were W H Smiths, Boots, Woolworths and record departments in
the
Co-op and Owen
Owen.
All these
establishments were frequently visited.
Then
in the '70s along came the original Virgin records in the City Arcade.
I could be found in
here a few
lunch times during the week, listening to albums, and again
on Friday lunchtimes spending a couple
of quid from my
weekly pay packet !
Upstairs
at Virgin, Pete Waterman, who at the time was virtually unknown outside
of the
Coventry area owned the "Soul Hole".
As the name suggests they sold mainly soul music, although I do recall
buying Gary
Wright's
"Dream Weaver" single there.
Virgin
eventually closed down and it was a number of years before they returned
to Coventry
with the "Megastore" format, before selling out to "Zavvi" in 2008,
who eventually
went into
receivership and in early 2009, and the shop closed down.
The
EMI record shop opened in Hertford Street, later to become HMV record
shop.
Then they opened another shop in The Precinct, then relocated both
shops into one larger
shop not far from the original shop in Hertford Street.
Ironically they have recently relocated again, into the premises
previously occupied by
Virgin Megastore and Zavvi !
They have now relocated yet again, into smaller premises near the main library.
Any Coventry readers of a certain age will remember the shop as "Barnabys" back in the '60's, the childrens toy shop of choice.
We
have also had Our Price, Revolver, Way Ahead Records, the much
missed
Spinadisc (who
also had shops in Northampton and Rugby), Soundhouse,
Discovery, MVC and Borders.
Not far away In
Kenilworth there was
Discotrak, tucked away in the corner of Talisman Square.
They also had
a place in Warwick.
Whilst I was working at Peugeot offices alongside the NEC at Birmingham, I
would jump in the car at lunchtime and drive to Discotrak in
Kenilworth or Discovery in Solihull to browse through the days new
releases.
A little further outside Coventry was Rugby.
Apart from some of the national chains there was the delightful
Berwicks. I'm guessing it had been in the same family for years. It was
stacked full of vinyl albums and singles. If you discovered a band that
was new on your radar, but had been around for ages it was a great
place to hunt out their back catalogue.
When the CD was introduced they were displayed on the wall in carousel's.
You couldn't browse the contents as they were locked in !
All have now
ceased to trade and all we are left with is a solitary HMV
shop.
In January 2013
HMV themselves went into liquidation, a victim of the online resellers
and downloaders.
They have been
rescued by Hilco, the same company who took control of HMV
Canada in 2011.
Unfortunately
many stores in the UK have been closed.
The Coventry
store survived but Leamington Spa was closed permanently.
Unfortunately, on 28th December 2018 HMV went into administration for the second time in 6 years.
Offers have been made and KPMG are evaluating them.
Hopefully, after trading for 97 years HMV is not about to disapear from the high street.
Some good new broke on Tuesday 5th Februray 2019, when it was announced that a Canadian record store chain, Sunrise Records,
had aquired HMV retail. Interestingly, when HMV Canada went into receivership in 2017, it was rescued by Sunrise records also.
Sunrise
will contine the HMV and Fopp brands, and put more emphasis on Vinyl,
but there was some bad news. 23 HMV, and 4 Fopp locations would be
closed immediately, one of them being the companies iconic HMV Oxford Street London Store.
For live music we had a
choice of venues.
The Coventry Theatre, which had been hosting live music for many years.
Alot of bands came to
play there. Amongst those that I recall seeing were Deep
Purple, Nazareth, Ian Dury and The Blockheads
and
Elton John. I missed David Bowie, who played on a
Sunday
night in 1973. I had my first CSE exam the following
morning, so being a conscientious 16 year old I stayed at home and
revised. Looking back I hope I passed that exam !!
I should also mention that I trod the boards here many times
when performing in the
Coventry Boy Scouts annual GangShow
At the time we also had the Lanchester Polytecnic, later to become
Coventry University. This was a smaller
venue than the Coventry Theatre. I saw AC/DC with Bon Scott
here and also Suzi Quattro. If there wasn't a
band on there would be a disco, no soul music but a selection of rock
and progressive.
We also had a Tiffany's. More of a night club (It was a
Locarno previously) they used to have live music
occasionally. Saw Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel and Be Bop Deluxe.
Another night club was Mr George. Cant remember them having alot of
live stuff on, but one band who played
there were called SPOT. It was a bit of a low key gig, because
the band concerned had made the headlines for all the
wrong reasons, and venues were not eager to host their
gigs. Who were they ??
"Sex Pistols On Tour"
Although not based in Coventry city centre, we were fortunate to have 2
Fopp outlets locally.
One on the campus at Warwick University and one in Leamington Spa.
Fopp found it difficult to attract new money into the business, despite
some of its shops being
profitable, the inevitable happened and all stores closed down. Opening
the flagship store in
London's Tottenham Court Road was one of the reasons cited, and another
was their
purchase of some of the Music Zone stores, a chain which itself had
gone into liquidation
only a matter of months before.
Renowned
for their no nonsense pricing policy with many CD starting at £5, Fopp
was a great
place
to pick up those 70's and 80's reissues, together with DVD's and books.
Some
good news however, is that HMV has saved six Fopp branches and 70
jobs.
The
stores will continue to trade under the Fopp name, independently of
HMV.
Their
old premises in Leamington Spa has been moved into by a new
retailer, "Head".
Their
policy is following the same as Fopp's, although they seem to
be doing more DVD's and less CD's.
In 2011
they moved into smaller premises, carrying even less CD stock.
They
do continue to do a range of back catalogue CD's at
great prices.
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The early 80s saw the advent of Record Fairs, and the magazine "The
record collector" was born out of
"The Beatles Monthly", both giving a new method of buying records and
memoribillia.
I
had been trying to track down a copy of the Split Enz single
"Another Great Divide"
(green
Chrysalis label) for many
years without success, and remember the
feeling of
delight when thumbing
through the boxes of 7" singles at Coventry
Record fair I came across two copies next to each other it in
mint condition.
Looking back I wish I had brought both copies, as it occasionally crops up on eBay and sells for £15 !
Nowadays you just tap
your requirements into a search engine or more likely into eBay and within five minutes
you've found what you want AND paid for it. Yes,
the internet is a great thing but you just don't get the same feeling
when
you finally locate and hold in your hand that disc
that's been evading you for years !
After
over forty years of collecting, I now have in excess of 1900 albums and
1700 singles and am running
out of space to
keep them all.
Sales
of vinyl slowed down and then the same happened to
CD's, with downloading becoming the most
popular way of
purchasing music,
i'm glad to say
I still buy CD's, although the number of outlets has drastically reduced.
I
have been forced into the ocassional download where the item I want has
been deleted or is only available by downloading.
In
the last couple of years vinyl has become fashionable again, with most
new releases being available in both vinyl and CD format.
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This page
was last
updated
1st April 2022
© A S
Mackness 2022
