Catshanghai

Shanghai has a distinct lack of music shops stocking the latest range of European and American underground CDs. You have to download this music or go without. Shanghai is hardly a backwater, but it was a real boon to get back to Europe and plunder the CD shops in search of undiscovered gems.
I found one at the Rough Trade Shop in a basement under Slam City Skates in London’s Covent Garden. I used to go there in the early 90s looking for albums that I could not afford by the likes of Silverfish and Fugazi. The shop still looks the same. It even has the same ex bassist from loop working there. The dusty CD cases still follow an impossible to fathom filing system and everything is so tightly packed together that you can’t see what you’re looking at even if you are lucky enough to find it. I trust Rough Trade for its good taste more than its filing skills.

The UK used to be blessed or littered with at least a couple opf decent independent and second hand record shops in every noteworthy city. The number of indie shops was always a benchmark of a city’s level of development and civilisation. Now we are in the digital-Walmart age when independent retailers have become an endangered species only to be replaced by the Virgins, HMVs and Fopps of this world. The big empires have their economies of scale and just-in-time supply chains. So it is a relief to still be able to step into a basement of a dusty, independent clutching its quill and ledger book. I wonder how long they can occupy this niche before they too are overhwlemed by Amazon, I-Tunes and the high street retail chains.

Independent bands will always produce interesting, artistically minded music free of the commercial shackles of recording contracts. They will always find a way to recruit new converts and maybe even earn a living. Who knows? Maybe the independent CD shops will even maintain their niche so I can continue to find new exciting music when I return to the UK every two years.

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