Institute of Contemporary Arts

Old School

Date: 18 December 2006

Turntable at Good Records, Lower East Side, New York

We have been working for over a month, and suddenly, it feels like we've done rather a lot in a short space of time. We've gone from arriving and gearing up to filming, to finding ourselves with over 30 interviews completed and more than 16 hours of footage in place.

The shape of the film is definitely starting to emerge, themes are recurring, and groups of stores and people are forming. It seems that there are three main types of record store that we're dealing with. The first is the 'old school' original store, around for years and perhaps the most typically imagined record stop. Alongside these, there are the specialist stores, offering up rare groove, supplying to narrow and niche underground music markets and servicing die hard collectors, and finally, the new breed of record store - Other Music, Sound Fix and Eat Records are just three that we've found in New York - which are about a more complex notion of musical experience, tying in live shows in the store, ticket booking, a cafe, a bar, preview listening parties and various other seductive ways of enticing customers into the store and its wider creative community.

But for now, I'm starting at the beginning, and reflecting on the remaining record stores that have been in New York since the 60s. Mostly based in Greenwich Village on the lower west side of Manhattan, an area that was home to the first New York record store 'scene'.

Bleecker Bob's on West 3rd Street has been in business since the early sixties, and was first set up to feed Bob's own penchant for doo wop records, and gradually transformed into a business, which is now a historic mecca for record collectors, and an example of the most stereotypical type of store you might imagine - a cluttered, jam-packed and not wholly clean space, stuffed full with crates of vinyl, all slightly dusty and musty, pasted floor to ceiling with old rock and punk posters, records split into sub-sections with hand-written dividers (rock, psychedelia, jazz, folk, blues, country, avant garde, punk, new wave, no wave, experimental...), $2 bargain bins scattered across the floor, rock stickers covering the cash till and counter, and a handful of morose, or scowling middle aged men, peppering the dark corners of the store - staff and customers both.

Something of a time-warp, you can't imagine this place has changed much in the last few decades, including the management. The store is both a grimy treasure trove of historic treasures and new pleasures waiting to be discovered, and also slightly tired, as though it's past its prime, and early excitement and proudly superior but knowledgeable staff assistance has given way to a feeling that everything's just a bit of an effort, that friendly customers are just trying too hard, and things, well, they just aren't like they were 'in the old days'.

To be honest, these feelings have been reinforced by a somewhat uphill struggle with the guy we've been interviewing, who has been a bit tricky to work with and pretty unhelpful - which is a shame, as I think it has probably tarnished our view of the place, which might have been different if we'd dealt with someone else.

Apart from Bob's, Greenwich Village probably houses a further dozen or so other stores that have been there for ages; Rebel Rebel, which has been serving up British imports and copies of the NME for the last 20 years or so; Vinyl Mania, dance music specialists for 28 years, run by Italian American 12 inch expert Charlie, who also has a vinyl warehouse of mythical proportions stored out in Coney Island, and the fantastic House of Oldies, run by the wonderful Bob Abrahams, who has been running the store for maybe 40 years, and serves up 'oldies' - mainly 45s from the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s, as well as a variety of other formats. He thinks there are around 700,000 pieces of vinyl inside the store itself, which is like a shoe box, and stacked floor to ceiling with an alphabetical catalogue of high quality and rare vinyl, ranging in value from $10 - $1000, but he also has a huge store room out back, and another storage space out of the city, which makes you wonder whether it could possibly ever all be seen or sold.

Speaking to Abrahams, who is pretty much an international celebrity, serving up music to David Bowie, John Lennon and Robert Plant over the years - it made me realise what a hugely significant and comprehensive historical archive and record of a part of contemporary music that record stores like House of Oldies offer. Not only does it satisfy and service the collections and listening pleasures of thousands of individuals, but it also celebrates and commemorates an incredible music history, format and obsession, and the layers of popular culture, politics, fashion, technological development and social history that the mere production of a piece of vinyl can represent and chart.