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I am of the generation that hung out in record shops, in my case Ken's of Castle Street in Derry. It didn't have the cultural significance of Good Vibrations, of course. It didn't provide a focus for a musical movement. Ken (still don't know his surname) just sold records, but in 1977 Derry that was good enough. The fact that musicians didn't hang around the shop, exchanging opinions about the latest releases, was of no great loss to me. My small circle of friends (five people) provided me with all the opinion that I needed about music. The New Musical Express filled in the gaps. Ken's was great because it was all up to you. You could spend hours flipping the LPs towards you and occasionally lifting one out to read the back of it. Sometimes the hours I spent there were supposed to be spent in the classrooms of the Strand Tech in Derry but by 1977 I had realised the regime in third level education was less strict when it came to time keeping than secondary school had been. Record Store Day has had a lot of coverage this weekend, but my own memories say more about the logistics of music selling in the 1970s than it does about music itself. One abiding memory is walking into Ken's and getting 'White Riot' , the first Clash single, in a plain non-picture sleeve.
I think it may have been the only one in the shop. Another is ordering a reissue of the New York Dolls two LPs, which were out of print by 1977 (only three years after the band broke up.) Downloads were still thirty years away, likewise online shopping and next day delivery. Unless you ordered from a mail order company advertised in the back pages of the NME, you relied on Ken's. Which we did. For a good couple of weeks. Every second day, one of my musical circle would go into Ken's to see if the New York Dolls double LP was in yet. 'Not yet' said Ken, in his American accent. It was OK, he was actually American. After a week, the message was "It'll be in on Tuesday". Eventually, one Tuesday it did arrive and we were introduced to the joys of actually hearing 'Personality Crisis' , 'Jet Boy' and 'Trash' instead of just reading about them.
Since that day, the phrase 'It'll be Tooosday' still brings back to me the waiting and hoping that record buying sometimes brought to you in 1977. Would I have the patience today ?