Record Store Day in a Mixed Up City

Saturday 17th April 2010 is the day we celebrate the continued existence of our local independent record stores. Three Glasgow shops are listed as UK participants: Avalanche Records, Monorail Music and Mixed Up Records. There’ll be live music and limited edition discs on sale, so if you’re in the Glasgow area tomorrow, get yourself along to one or all of these worthy venues. Full list of participating UK stores here:

http://www.recordstoreday.com/Venues?country=United%20Kingdom

Mixed Up Records got a mention on the original Be Bop Wino blog way back last autumn, for it is situated in Otago Lane in the West End of Glasgow. As I mentioned back then, this little area of niche businesses on the banks of the River Kelvin is under threat from a proposed development of “luxury” flats. More details can be found here on the Save Otago Lane website:

http://saveotagolane.co.uk/

As I was feeling guilty about failing to mark last year’s Record Store Day in any way, shape or form, I pissed off from work early this afternoon and took a subway ride across the city to check out the jazz and blues vinyl at Mixed Up Records. I thought I’d also take a few pixelly photos on my phone camera to give Be Bop Winos the wide world over a flavour of what our City Council and its property developer friends can’t wait to destroy. So here’s a few photies taken around the area.

I hope you get the flavour of this wonderful higgledy piggledy mixture of mid-Victorian terraces and houses, late Victorian tenements, mews buildings, workshops, etc. Obviously it’s just the kind of place that’s crying out for a massive development of apartment blocks which will totally overshadow all those horrible old buildings.

Innumerable developments of crap flats have sprouted fungus-like all over the city in the last 15 years or so. Odd that they are nearly all advertised as “executive” apartments. Will ordinary, non-executive people still be allowed to live in Glasgow in the future? Will the Be Bop Wino be driven into exile by a combination of the forces of crass commercialism and his own inability to achieve executive status?

Whatever happens, I’m gonna be thumbing through those vinyl bins right to the very end. Say no to corporate arrogance by supporting your local independent record store! Crate dig your way to the Revolution! Every vinyl record purchased and reclaimed from the local landfill site is a blow against The Man! BTW my visit to Mixed Up was successful - I scored an Illinois Jacquet LP.