Tuesday 29 June 2010

Reform Street and The Credit Crunch

Talking of Reform Street, I recall as a child that this street was the city centre hub of the financial sector where banks and building societies were the mainstay. Whilst the remnants of this activity remain, two former banks are now pubs selling cheap beers, and there are four charity shops, which are always busy, selling second-hand clothes, books, crockery etc. This invasion of the charity shops is also evident in Lochee High Street and I think maybe the British Heart Foundation shop is in a former bank also.

Old Dundee Record Shops

Where do we buy music from these days? I can't think of any independent record stores that are around now but at one time record shops were run by local enthusiasts and, when I was aged about 19 or 20 I used to dream of having my own shop, selling quality music with the big advantage that I could listen to music all day long and get paid for it.

Alas, national brands, supermarkets and downloading have all but kicked the little record shop into touch, save for Groucho's which relies on a second-hand market which is thriving in these days of poverty.

Records (that's vinyl to the uninitiated) and record shops used to be like unexplored gold mines just waiting for their treasures to be discovered. The city centre was like a treasure map of record shops. Chalmers & Joy was a little shop the corner of Gellatly Street and Seagate. When you bought an album it would be put in a pink bag with the lettering, "Another Record From Chalmers & Joy". I also remember it had an upstairs bit where all the albums were housed and a large selection of posters could be bought too.

The first album I bought when I started getting into music seriously was "Exotic Birds and Fruit" by Procol Harum. I have no idea why I chose this particular album, as it was not an obvious choice and I hadn't heard songs from it before buying it. I know I did like "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and subsequently bought several other albums by this band so maybe it had something to do with that. I bought this album form John Menzies department store which at that time was at the end of the Murraygate and you entered on the corner in what is now the body shop. They had a large record department upstairs and this would be one stop on my tour of the record shops, and a shortage of cash meant that this was more often than not for browsing purposes rather than buying. I was only 14 at the time so I was getting into buying albums by respected artists at quite an early age and this habit (or musical snobbishness perhaps) has persisted to the present day.

Another shop I visited regularly was Comet in West Henderson's Wynd. Now I don't recall many people talking about this but at one time, Comet had a huge array of hi-fi separates and a record department that sold albums at a significant discount. I can't remember the prices exactly but if an album was costing say £2.99 in John Menzies etc. then at Comet, the same album was selling for £2.49. Not only was this a significant saving to a teenager on a budget, but the big attraction was that Comet was open till 8pm in the evening. It meant that I could indulge my love of music, and drool over the hi-fi equipment on display after school mid-week.

As a young teenager of 14 I was getting I think about £1.50 pocket money a week. I can remember I was on about 40p a week and my grandfather put it up by what seemed like an enormous amount. It thus meant that I could indulge my love of music at Groucho's in the Perth Road to the tune of a second-hand album every week or so. This was usually in cassette form because, a. I didn't have a decent stereo, b. second-hand cassettes were less likely to be damaged whereas second-hand vinyl was often scratched and noisy. The other BIG attraction about Groucho's was that they did custom-made badges. You brought in a little picture and they put it into a badge with a clear cover. For a while everybody seemed to be getting badges made there. Being Mr. Individual I never went for the obvious bands (apart from The Who) and I was to be found with my Steve Hillage and Tubular Bells badges proudly displayed on my Wrangler jacket.

Groucho's has largely become an institution, having opened its first shop on the Perth Road in 1976 (roughly where The Parrot Cafe is now) it moved to the Overgate Centre just along from The Angus Hotel and in 1999 moved to the Nethergate where it is still trading. The vinyl and cassettes have been replaced by CDs and it now has branched out into concert ticket sales, but Groucho's remains an iconic figure in the local record scene.

When I started playing the guitar (at 17) and getting into "authentic" music there was a shop at the bottom of Commercial Street (now a tattoo and piercing place) run by a guy called Rob Adams called BG Forbes. This shop sold lots of jazz and jazz rock music that was stocked by nobody else in the city. Rob, as well as being a shopkeeper, was also a bass player and now works as a music journalist for The Herald.

A bit further back in time was Cathie McCabe's record shop in Reform Street. It was not a shop I went into often as it sold a lot of Scottish music. My main memory is that my gran knew Cathy as apparently they used to work together when my gran worked in a shop in the old Wellgate.

It would be difficult to comment on Dundee Record Shops without mentioning I & N Records at the top of Crichton Street. This place was a bit more mainstream than specialist. My most vivid memory of this shop, from 1979, was not a pleasant one. At that time I had a Saturday job at William Low (Willie Low's) in the Overgate and the manager there asked me to go and purchase copy of Lena Martell's "One Day At A Time." Not what any budding 17 year old rock guitarist wants to be seen doing.

England's 2010 World Cup Campaign

It's not often I would venture to write about the World Cup but we have had some hilarity in the office at England's expense as these jokes circulated.

OXO have created a new cube, it is white with a red cross on it and it is to be known as "the laughing stock."

Following the England - Germany match, there has been a flash flood alert for the whole of Scotland as 5 million Scots are pissing themselves laughing.

It has been announced that the England team's flight home has been diverted via Glasgow in order that the team can receive a hero's welcome.

Drugs, Drugs and Drugs

I seem to be thinking about drugs. No not about taking them, it just seems that everywhere I go I am reminded about Dundee and drugs. Yesterday morning on the way into work I was listening to the car radio and there was a programme about drugs on Radio Scotland. A couple of people from Dundee phoned in. One being a woman who must sit on some sort of drugs forum as a lay member. She was criticising glossy documents and actions plans published by the Government as being a lot of hot air (true) and that the bottom line is that nothing ever changes and all the time the drugs problem is getting worse and worse and worse (also true). Next on was some guy who described "junkies" as "parasites". I didn't hear the rest of his phone-in as I had parked the car by then but he was conveying what is a very typical public view of drug users and one that I think my daughter has cottoned onto albeit she is only 11.

At lunchtime today the city centre was populated by swathes of doddering, loud, young men and women with grey skin and bleary eyes as a result of malnutrition and over nutrition respectively.

It turns out that this programme on Radio Scotland falls on the back of a World Drug Report 2010 by the United Nations:

The World Drug Report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said the "annual prevalence of cocaine use" among the adult population in Scotland was 3.7% in 2005 and 2009.

In England it was 3.0% last year and 2.4% in 2008 and in Spain it was 3.0% in 2008.

The report said: "The world's second largest flow of cocaine is directed towards Europe, and this flow has been growing rapidly.

"The largest national cocaine market within Europe is the United Kingdom, followed by Spain, Italy, Germany and France. Cocaine use prevalence levels are higher in the United Kingdom and Spain than in the United States.

"Recent data suggest that the rapid growth of the European cocaine market is beginning to level off in some of the biggest national markets such as Italy, Spain and Germany.

"Consumption is still growing in the United Kingdom and in some of the smaller European markets, however."

North America is the largest regional cocaine market, with close to 40% of the global cocaine-using population, with the report stating: "In 2008, it appears that 196 metric tons of pure cocaine were required to satisfy North American demand."

The report, which was released on Thursday, also said the global area under opium poppy cultivation declined to 181,400 hectares in 2009 or by 23% since 2007.

The global area under coca cultivation declined from 167,600 hectares in 2008 to 158,800 hectares in 2009, or by 13% since 2007 or by 28% since 2000.

The estimated global cocaine production fell from 1,024 metric tons in 2007 to 865 metric tons in 2008.

Globally, UNODC estimated that between 155 and 250 million people, aged 15 to 64, used illicit substances at least once in 2008 and cannabis users made up the largest number of illicit drug users at 129 to 190 million people.