Permit me a moment of old-fashionedness

If you faced the Leeds Corn Exchange and turned to your right, then at the top of the little row of shops that is known as The Calls, you would see Vinyl Tap. If you went through the door, under the awful signage (yes, it contained a stylised image of… a tap!) you found yourself in a little room maybe 20ft by 20ft square. On each side of the room were racks of vinyl records, arranged alphabetically and by genre.

If that didn’t tickle your fancy, you could always run along to Vinyl Addiction or the store in the weird ‘indoor market’ part of the Merrion Centre – that unloved outpost of 70s modernism. There in particular you would find a treasure trove of well-thumbed records. Prog records, with their beguiling sleeves that spoke of incense and Emerson… that Roxy Music cover with the two chicks on the front where you could see their pubes through the filmy knickers they were wearing… Iron Maiden records with the iconic Eddie crawling from graves and waving a Union Jack… indie records from bands that were often namechecked more than listened to – The Icicle Works… Durutti Column…

For the hardcord dance fan, you could pop along to Eastern Bloc Records – owned by one of the guys from 808 State and a source of pride to Leodensians as it was their only branch outside Manchester. And then there was Crash… Jumbo… stalls on the market where you might fancy riffling through a stack of awfulness in the hope of finding a rare record for a knock-down rate. Any and all of them preferable to the old HMV on Briggate.

I’m not a massive believer in the notion that Things Were So Much Better Then. Far more likely, I suspect, that most of us have fond memories of times when life was easier for us and give credit for that happiness to things that really weren’t that important.

But, our relationship with music has changed massively.

You had to commit to a band back then. I was an early fan of the Charlatans, based purely (I now recognise) on the haircuts which seemed somehow menacing and cool and grown up from where I was sat in my bedroom in suburban Leeds. I’d taped The Only One I Know from the top 40 and fallen in love with the record, but what I really, really wanted was Indian Rope on 12″. This was their debut single, famed for its relative rarity and also for the songs actually on it. But here was the thing… how could you even hear those songs?

The answer was there, on the wall in Vinyl Tap. Wrapped in cellophane, high beyond the reach of thieving hands with a small sticker saying “£40″.

£40!!!

This wasn’t an uncommon thing. Before music became digitised it was a properly manufactured item. Most bands released their debut single before anyone knew who they were. Consequently, the record companies would only press a small number of copies because obviously not many people were likely to buy it. So when a band actually made it into the charts, their early records were suddenly sought after for bragging rights among the cognoscenti. Anyone who actually owned a record like the 12″ of Indian Rope could be guaranteed the somewhat dubious pleasure of hero worship among local boys and a steady stream of bedroom visitors eager to hear the reputedly brilliant B-sides.

I suppose what I’m moaning about is the death of rock snobbery.

Today, you can dial up almost any song – regardless of obscurity – and for a cost between 0-99p (depending on your piratical bent) start listening straight away. Is it freer… more egalitarian… open…? Of course. But there’s something lost from the quality of the experience. That electric rush of finally finding a record you knew by reputation alone… the weighing up of cost against possible disappointment… the should you/shouldn’t you moment when you picked it up and looked at that £12 price tag, knowing that you could go buy 4 or 5 other singles for the same price. Carrying it home on the bus, wondering whether it would have been worth the money. Finally arriving home and putting it on the record deck with trembling hands.

These were the records we loved fiercely. It went so much beyond the song and the music itself in a way that is difficult to define.

It was an era that was already dying when I was  a lad. CDs were already gaining in popularity and while they were still physical objects they had a kind of impermanence about them. The last band I committed to in the sense of tracking down vinyl was Suede. Somewhere I’ve still got the first half dozen singles on 12″ – mostly bought on the day of release. History hasn’t been too kind to Suede as they were operating at the same time as Nirvana were laying waste to everything and just prior to Britpop. But even now, I can still remember the delight of seeing the cover art for the first time…