The music stops

The day has suddenly become unutterably gloomy. I've just heard that Cob Records/Recordiau Cob in Bangor is closing down. This one place is where I became an adult, where I developed my tastes, where I felt accepted and welcome (and frequently laughed at).

In the heady days of Britpop, I arrived at university in 1993 with two cassette tapes (a Best of Vaughan Williams and R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People) played on a crappy white double-tape player from Argos - soon replaced by a rubbish 1970s record player from my parents' attic. Determined to become a hip young gunslinger, I put on the black leather biker's jacket a friend had abandoned in my room at school, bought some Doc Martens and headed down to Cob Records. I must have cut a pathetic figure.

Record shops those days weren't comfortable. Customer service was anathema. You crossed the threshold knowing that handing your choices over the counter was volunteering to be judged. It was terrifying and exciting. Cob was staffed by looming, burly men who thought nothing of teaming male pattern baldness with tie-dye t-shirts or Datblygu merchandise. They revelled in being the local arbiters of taste. They would take my purchases and make judgmental remarks about them to their colleagues - in Welsh for added alienation. I struck lucky with my very first choices: a Tindersticks 10" EP and a 10" Gorky's Zygotic Mynci album, Patio. The Tindersticks scored for being sophisticated, while the Gorky's album was local, in Welsh and unhinged - exactly what Cob's staff loved. The weird format also helped my credibility too. I still have them, lovingly looked after.

My first purchase: Tindersticks' cover of Townes Van Zandt's 'Sweet Kathleen' b/w E-Type Joe

The whole process was terrifying. Cob stocked CDs at the front for the yuppies, and a massive selection of vinyl records: wading through the dust floating in the limited daylight which pierced the murk to get to the vinyl earned you a few credibility points. Handwritten placards divided the soul from the indie from the Welsh-language from the metal from the rave. Learning which sections to avoid was a rite of passage, as was acquiring the manual handling skills which enabled you to nonchalantly flick through a rack of albums while avoiding cuts from the plastic sleeves. As I gradually became inducted into the cult, I'd learn to spot side-projects from bands I liked, or labels whose output I'd buy whether or not I'd heard of the individual band (Ankst, Too Pure, Bella Union, Fierce Panda, Sain, Secretly Canadian, Les Disques du Crepuscule, Sarah/Shinkansen, PIAS, Elefant, Chemikal Underground, Ché, Creeping Bent, Domino, Damaged Goods, Wiija and so many more). The secret references in band names and album titles became a hermeneutic code to which I'd been granted access. Slowly, mind you: I was a slave to the opinions of the NME, much to the scorn of Cob's staff.

But eventually, I became an object of kindly contempt rather than a sucker. They started to talk to me rather than wave my purchases around for the amusement of the cool kids. As my addiction grew, they'd show me the pre-release list every Thursday so I could order next week's new sounds. On Monday, I'd call in hopefully. On Tuesday, I'd get my hands on the loot, stuffed into Cob's distinctive yellow plastic bags, of which I still have a few lying around. Each 7", 10", picture disc or LP bore a little sticker with my name and the price - I reckon I spent £20,000 or more there over 7 years, but never a discount did I get, despite effectively putting their kids through college! Before long, the number of bags increased, and Alan, Owen and the others got bold: they decided that I needed educating, and started adding records they thought I should have - mostly comprising stuff they couldn't sell, or records by their own bands: Ectogram, Y Seirff / The Serpents and a whole range of krautrock/psych/hippy/drone experimentalist Welsh-language material. Through them, I discovered the limitations of Britpop and my tastes expanded to cover the past and the hidden corners of music: minor labels, the Celtic fringe, the underground. I started going to see their bands - one memorable gig at a horrible pub called The Barrels featured David Wrench (still a favourite) backed by various members of Gorky's, Super Furry Animals, Melys and Ectogram. The paying audience was: me. They still played - superbly - and David bought me a pint. For a 19 year-old geek, that was my equivalent of doing coke with Led Zeppelin in 1973, or sharing a burger with Elvis.

Cob Records is a scruffy place. The decor was old posters and peeling paint. There were no easy chairs, no coffee outlets, no pseudo-friendly recommendations. Going in there was a test, and I often failed. Just because you gave them money didn't buy you obsequiousness: they'd sell you this stuff but they made damn sure you understood what a load of shit it was - until you earned their respect, and then a whole new world opened up to you.

I moved to Wolverhampton to do a PhD. There was a big record shop - Mike Lloyd's - for at least the first six weeks. Then it became (and remains) the biggest KFC in the Midlands, as far as I know. Birmingham has Swordfish and Tempus, and used to have the wonderful Plastic Factory, but I only feel like a customer there - at Cob, I was a neophyte member of a small, spiky, odd cult, and I miss it. Whenever I go back to Bangor, I call in at Cob, and regress to that speechless rake-thin (I wish) teenage nerd. The guys behind the counter (it was a very geek-male place) grin and produce some unsold tat and I buy it without question. It feels like home. Friends joked that I kept that place going: they might have been right.

Without Cob and places like it, music becomes nothing more than a commodity, lacking range, depth and emotion, something to be consumed like fast food. From Cob I gained friends, an identity, taste, enthusiasm for the unknown and the alternative. They showed me new worlds in a way Amazon never can. More specifically, record shops generate and sustain local cultures, from which new bands and movements spring. Without Cob, the Welsh language scene which produced so many great bands would have struggled: Amazon doesn't care what's happening in North Wales, or King's Lynn or Macclesfield.

I'll miss their scorn, the dust, the smell, the time never wasted while searching for that new/old sound, the fading flyers for long-vanished bands, the mix of enthusiasm and weariness, the sense that selling music was about sharing a way of life rather than shifting units, the idea that music promised a set of emotions and experiences rather than a means to riches. Cob Records wasn't a shop. It was a culture.

Bye Cob. I'm sorry I left you.

Is that the acetate test pressing?

Last Saturday was Independent Record Shop day, on which we were meant to give our money to small capitalists rather than big ones.

Actually, the independent record shop is my natural habitat. Weeks of my life have been spent leafing through racks of dusty records by bands who reached No. 78 on the Indie charts with a split single on Fierce Panda or some such label. It's difficult to point to the indiest record in my collection, though Spare Snare's acoustic, Scottish cover of 'Say My Name', Teen Anthems' 'Welsh Bands Suck' and The Period Pains' 'We Hate The Spice Girls' all spring to mind.









Going to an indie store is a special experience though - far better than the fake mateyness of HMV and the like. The checkout monkey recently addressed me thus 'Find everything you needed, buddy?' and added 'buddy' to every subsequent sentence. I didn't 'need' anything I'd bought, I couldn't find what I actually wanted, and we'd never met previously. Buddy, indeed.

No, go to a proper record shop and there's no false bonhomie. It's like an assault course - difficult, often humiliating, but ultimately good for you. I spent a good chunk of my life at Cob Records in Bangor: seeing one of their yellow plastic bags is my madeleine.

Cob was especially difficult for non-locals because as well as convincing the staff you were worthy to buy one of their records, you had to either speak Welsh or look apologetic for not being able to do so - learning a few phrases was essential (and a pleasure, I should add). Similarly, occasionally purchasing 7" singles by the staff's bands helped (this was the high point of Welsh indie - most of them produced, played on or supported Gorky's/Super Furries/David Wrench/Ectogram (with whom I'm still friends)/Melys/Serpents etc) and learning their children's names made it more likely that you'd leave the shop with only a few mocking comments about your taste in music. Buying music on the 'wrong' label was enough to attract opprobrium. OK, they would imply, you're feeding our kids, but don't expect gratitude if you think that Creation is socially acceptable. I got away with it, I think: my first two purchases (made blindly) were Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's Patio on 10" and Tindersticks' Kathleen, also on 10" - credible enough to serve as an entrée.









I ran this gauntlet several times a week. I'd go in on Friday and go through the list of next week's releases, having perused NME on Wednesday. Then I'd return on Monday to pick up the loot. Usually, this would be a couple of plastic bags full of vinyl (I didn't have a CD player until 1998), sometimes more. Added to my order, the men (yes, all men) would have added 'stuff we thought you'd like/should listen to', which usually consisted of their own releases, or any old crap ordered in error and lingering in dark corners. I would, intimidated and pleased by their kindness, gratefully take whatever they recommended. The bags would be hauled over the counter (which was festooned by stickers and posters for bands which lasted, on average, for one gig or a single mention by sainted John Peel) and the pattern would repeat itself every week. I'd also call in at random times just in case interesting second-hand stuff had come in - leading to my large collection of Ankst's back catalogue and a big pile of Datblygu records.

Leaving North Wales was a huge wrench for many reasons, but Cob was a part of this. My current location had an OK shop which closed within weeks of my arrival. Birmingham had a couple of good shops, but they're closing. Trips to Manchester are always fruitful, but I'm no longer so tribal. After having to sell 400 7" singles one summer to stay in my house and eat, something was lost. Internet shopping isn't the same. The very best indie outlets on the web are Action Records and Norman's Records (huge range, friendly people, authentic indie snobbiness) but the social aspects are lost: the smells, the cameraderie of slipping a record out of its sleeve to spin it under the light or work out which pressing it was before loudly declaring it inauthentic, the quiet nods of recognition when fellow victims are spotted, the shameful pleasure of purchasing a records despite the shop owner loudly announcing that 'this is shit, mate' and pressing a load of other things on you  - you can't get this on the web.

Go to your local shop. If you don't, their employees will roam the streets. Record shops are Care in the Community for nerds. Download anything on a major label - buy the rest in your local shop.

A miseryguts writes…

Happy Monday you lot! There used to be a tradition called St. Monday in Northern cities, including Stoke. A heavy weekend required a day off - a religious festival. In industries with highly specialised skills such as pottery, enough individuals absent meant that a whole crew couldn't do any work - so men took turns a few times a year. This is how I feel today, except that I'm at work and absolutely nobody else is other than the cleaners, who are always very cheery.

It's hot, sticky and horrible, yet I've already seen one student (advice: don't nick your resit from the internet and characters with speaking parts usually aren't dead in Renaissance literature). I've got to write a conference paper for Wednesday ('O. M. Edwards, Travel Writing and Definitions of Welshness' or something similar and the beer festival is still weighing heavily on my guts.

We all had a good time, without getting hammered. Except for Mr. Radford Sallow, who arrived many hours late and proceeded to catch up in spectacular fashion. Poor old man isn't used to drinking. He took the pledge in 1934…

Many of you seem horrified that I'm indifferent to Michael Jackson's oeuvre. Sorry, I just didn't listen to much pop at that formative age. My parents didn't believe in radios in every room, and they listened to mainstream classical, bits of folk, and a lot of religious music. Dad's concession to Irish culture was a U2 cassette and one by the Dubliners, and Mum played a lot more music than she listens to.

If it's any consolation, I watched Blur's performance at Glastonbury last night. All the presenters were talking about it being a seminal, wondrous, amazing set. I didn't. I thought they were quite good. Maybe I'm just getting grumpy. Wonder how the Nightingales went down? The BBC didn't see fit to broadcast any of their set.

On arrival at university I owned a cassette of Automatic for the People given to me by a schoolmate. A few days later I walked into the fabulous Recordiau Cob Records in Bangor and opened up a financial vein which flowed freely for many years to com. I bought two interesting looking records: Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's Patio and Tindersticks Kathleen/ E-Type Joe, both on 10" vinyl - not bad for a random pick. Henceforth, I'd go in on Thursday and pore over the list of next week's releases, making a list. On Monday, I'd collect several groaning plastic bags, to which the helpful gimps behind the counter would add 'some things we thought you'd like'. Years later, I realised that this meant 'our own records because nobody else will buy them [hello, Ectogram] and anything we've ordered in and realised won't sell'. Add to this the stuff I bought because I trusted the record label and all the secondhand bits, and you get the beginnings of my 30,000 collection, surprisingly little of which I now regret. Except for Cast's album: played once, put away for ever. I had to sell some once - 250 7" singles to Norman's Records simply to survive one summer. very depressingly. The collection is now like a smile with several teeth missing.