There are six record stores - donning mostly vinyl - within a 15 minutes walk from my small apartment here in Oslo. Six! And only two of them are secondhands.
They offer a lot - a whole damn lot of progressive rock, jazz, latino, folk, psych, industrial, metal, hardcore and alternative/indie. Good to be alive, European and a Norwegian music fan. Costly, though...
"Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
"[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM
Yeah, I can't say I would've reacted much differently than the store clerk (who doesn't appear to be much a music fan... He looks a little to dorky to be working by passion in a record store in 72... he looks more like a later-70's used-car lot gardian/salesman.
there is another video about Neil and his heeps of near)abandinned automobile junk out in the middle of nature ... Not too environmental friendly (leaks into the grounds) if you ask me
Another video of him "chilling" on his ranch... sort of unintelligible mumbo...
Most of them in Brussels mix the two (new & used) and I'm not very comfortable with that... even those still dealing with CDs do the same (new & used).
As for what they have in stock, yeah, there is an unusual amount of prog within their offer, but my guess is it is partially more about eye--catching album cover intriguing and wanting to discover it and finally selling the record to hipsters
Last edited by Trane; 04-03-2017 at 05:08 AM.
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
Partly true, I suspect. Most "insiders" will be well aware that many of these titles are cheaper to get through webretailers than from the local store, where it's often more a case of curiosa. As when I bought the Aksak Maboul or the Weidorje; none of those shops apparently restocked these titles. It isn't as if all of a sudden that Weidorje vinyl becomes an intensely wanted asset for the hipster masses.
Unfortunately.
"Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
"[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM
Felt exactly the same, the total opposite from the 'Hi Fidelity' character in the movie. But I have more compassion for him then for Neil Young actually. He works late shift , he doesn't care about music (but he puts on Magical Mystery tour when Young enters, 'Your Mother Should Know, probably his mother had 'Harvest' at home)
Anyway, Young walks in with the camera person and the clerk does obviously not recognize Young, (how should he, there is no photo of Young on the cover of 'Harvest') The camera is kind of Youngs credential : I am important because I have a camera following me and I can do whatever I want etc.
So he goes to the J section and looks for Jethro Tull : Too Old Too Rock n'Roll, Too Young Too Die and they don't have it and then he goes to the C section where his former band mates are filed and he finds 2!!!! concert Bootlegs, (not to speak of the Korean bootleg of 'Harvest' filed under Y , but he didn't get this far. So while the camera makes close-ups of the shop equipment in a Stanley Kubrick like plan sequence shot, Young goes to the counter, shows the clerk the two bootlegs and says : "This Is My Record, I composed the song ..."
And the clerk should have said : "No Sir, it's not your record, it maybe be a counterfeit object and you may get royalties for the songs you composed , but it’s actually NOT your record." But he did not and Young walks out of the shop with the record under his arm and the clerk like, how do I explain THIS to my boss follows Young on the street. While Young waits remorse ridden on the street and says to himself: maybe the clerk is not the real bad guy in this story . So he goes back in the shop with the clerk and they call Barry on the phone, Barry the middle aged local senior manager, who agrees apparently that Young takes the record, because A, he is aware that boots are illegal and B he will get it off the paycheck of the clerk.
So Young is on the leave and gets a second wave of guilt rush and thinks how he can make the clerk feel better and he decides to buy something in the shop : A green candle, because THIS will make the life of the clerk so much better ,he will eternally be grateful to this long haired guy for having bought a candle in the shop.
Pathetic....
Last edited by alucard; 04-03-2017 at 07:35 AM.
Dieter Moebius : "Art people like things they don’t understand!"
I don't give a shit about Neil Young or his bootlegs, but it was really cool to view the inside of a real 1970s indie record shop. I remember when there were dozens like that in Greenwich Village alone when I would occasionally visit NYC as a kid. Good memories!
EDIT: It was also cool to hear "Green Eyed Lady". I haven't heard that in about 35 years.
Last edited by arturs; 04-03-2017 at 10:33 AM.
Don't forget getting sued by David Geffen because he kept insisting on handing in records of music not representative" of what's associated with the name Neil Young (or however it was phrased in the legal documents). I think it's absolutely hilarious that Geffen presumably expected music like what's on Harvest or Rust Never Sleeps, but instead got a synth pop record (well, mostly a synth pop record, plus two or three "tropical" songs), followed by a rockabilly/doo-wop record, followed by a country record, etc. That must have driven Geffen up the wall. Come to think of it, that probably makes Neil some kind of genius, especially since I think he won that particular round of litigation.
I really wouldn't care if anybody took to mocking Norway. I wouldn't take it to heart myself, to put it like that.
Re: hipsters. What we refer to as "hipster culture" in Norway is a certain leisure-style aesthetic and attitude to clothing and physical appearance in general (espec facial hair, glasses etc.), to foods and arts and urbanist diction. It's typically apolitical but profoundly middle-to-lower-upper-class, and as such a kind of semi-expensive fashion of social representation - thus also something right at home here, where even adolescents can afford to have their daily lunch at the nearby salad deli. And they're actually quite visible in the (caucasian) music circuits too. They're not bad people, simply just terribly tedious ones when compared to generational subcultures of yore. And what's most sincerely striking about them is their rather shallow and uninformed - though still not exactly ignorant - relation to historical phenomena which may have preceded themselves.
"Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
"[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM
College film project
The very point precisely; their "style" is a mishmash of numerous former styles, yet they apparently display minimal interest even in the prehistoric context of their own connotation. Cyberpunks, emos, squatters/autonomen, punk rockers, mods, hippies - they were all to one extent or the other rather consciously positioned against the past. Hipsters seem to think themselves above external pigeonholing - as if somehow others "wouldn't know" their motives or creeds.
"Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
"[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM
hipsters have laid nests in almost every spot that is not islamist or animist over this planet
The amazing thing is that most hipster claim to be more aware than the mainstream, but yesssss in many ways they're profoundly ignorant of everything outside their scopes of interests.
Isn't that the finality of being a hipster all about... Being the only worthy creature and snobbing the rest of the human race?
In Europe, we have bisons/buffaloes, mooses and caribous (called elans) but they're all significantly smaller than their North American cousin
AAMOF, the Europeans bisons (still found in wilder areas of Poland and Ukraine) look like very sickly member of the family, especially next to the majesty of the North American alpha-male
No doubts wolves and Sioux would've chosen it first to chase it as the easier prey.
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
As someone who has been a little too close to American bison, moose, and elk...yeah, they're large and intimidating.
I have a young cousin who is in his mid twenties and totally a hipster, right down to a MFA degree. He could name every indie band of his generation but when I put Wish You Were Here on the turntable he was utterly baffled. If I had done that to his older brother he would have just said "I only have the CD, I should probably get this on vinyl".
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
I'm gonna share just this headline, which I just read on NPR - one of the funnier headlines I've come across!
"Broth-Loving Hipsters Are Pushing Up The Price Of Bones"
LOL -- damned hipsters!
I recall a music writer talking about being in a NYC record store in the 70s and pulling out a Stones boot. He turned to see an angry Keith Richards a few feet away. Then Keith and a couple roadies approached the counter while the writer skedaddled.
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
Bookmarks