With 20 minutes to kill, I stumbled into HMV on Oxford Street. And now I realise the real reason why I haven’t been to a record shop for ages.
The truth is: My ability to work my way through a record shop (or an entertainment/ media emporium as I’m sure they see themselves) have been eroded by the net, just like my skills at mental arithmetic have been whittled away by using a calculator.
Without stars, reader reviews, audio samples and ‘people who bought this also bought’…I’m completely lost. I stand at the front of the store, rather like a pensioner waiting for someone to help them cross the road.
If my trip hadn’t been cut short, I would either have bought a load of the cheap back catalogue stuff that’s filling up the front of the shop and I feel I ought to own (more Bowie/ Clash/ Pet Sounds which I’ve never got round to buying…and have lived perfectly well without all these years. But at least I’d know what I was buying.
Or I would have bravely ventured into the new music area, where I would have been buying on the basis of ‘what have I vaguely heard of?’ and’what’s got the coolest cover?’. Unfortunately, I have bought too much shit, too many times to go down that route.
Oh, and I’m obviously devastated to find that most of what I think of as quite new and cool is either in the charts, or reduced at the front of the store.
Do they offer a personal shopper service, me wonders?
Tampoco nos pasemos con el titular, porque a veces s