Good Old-Fashioned Record Shop

In my last post, I talked about the lovely holiday I enjoyed in Devon. I was going to include this in the post, but I decided to give this story it's own post, as I think it warrants special mention :)

I would often prefer to relax and stay at the cottage most of the time on holiday, but I did make an exception one afternoon and head out to the town of Okehampton, making a beeline for a fantastic little record store I'd found the year before - Rockhen's Coop.


I had stumbled across it by accident last year, and was crossing my fingers hoping that it wouldn't be closed - but it was still there, alive and well. It's a wonderful store, a proper old-fashioned record store, with a deceptive exterior - out front are chart CDs and some Beatles LPs, as well as several guitars. But hidden inside the store are just a complete miriad of rock 'n' roll albums and records, some of which you will never knew had ever existed, as well as general music equipment, t-shirts, and music magazines.

The owner is an interesting one as well - a European metal-loving middle-aged woman who can talk at great length about any element of rock 'n' roll history. Both times I've wound up in there I've ended up having lengthy conversations with her about various gigs, tours and bands.

The first time through, I departed with my now-beloved Rolling Stones t-shirt, as well as a No Doubt singles collection and a Pennywise LP. This year, I came away with a fair bit more. The day I came in, I inadvertandly stumbled upon a treasure trove - an assistant was sorting through several boxes full of used CDs which had been passed on for the store to then sell on. When I say used, don't be fooled - as the lady said, in such mint condition were the records, she could sell them on at £10 a CD, as if they were brand new. If I showed you any of the records I wound up buying in the store, you will be pretty convinced they are new - labels and everything. Instead, they were going at £6 a hit, with a 4-for-£10 offer in place as well. So when the assistant pointed to a door at the back and said "there's 6 more boxes out the back, feel free to browse" my eyes completly lit up.

For an hour or so, that dusty grey backroom of the store became my proverbial Aladdin's cave, and I literally immersed myself in hundreds of albums from rock history. If I tell you I stumbled over a very rare pressing of Jimi Hendrix's 'Electric Ladyland' and found a Bad Religion album I've never seen on disc in any store in this country (not even my beloved Rough Trade!), then you'll begin to get the jist. The last 30-40 years of rock were fabulously represented in these boxes, along with other eclectic choices. I could've bought any number of around 30 CDs, but I managed to pare it down to just 11 (he says, just 11! :P), and here they are, with a mini-review of each:



Rancid - And Out Come The Wolves
Yup, sacriledge I know that I didn't already own this. In fact, more sacriledge - I never used to see the mass appeal in Rancid. I used to think they are vastly overhyped, and that, although I do like gritty vocals, Tim Armstrong's completly tuneless hollering just grated the hell out of me. One spin of this disc from start to finish changed my mind - the barking vocal delivary is a perfect fit to the gritty, crackling energy that emenates from this disc in waves. What makes this record so great is the quality of the melodies - I've not heard a record packed so chock-full of catchy chord progressions and tunes for quite a while. Highly enjoyable :)

Standout tracks: '11th Hour', 'Time Bomb', 'Ruby Soho'



Rancid - Indestructable
Very much a similar story to '...Wolves', except that the decade-odd between the two albums has seen a further increase in Rancid's already very capable songwriting abilities, and that coupled with having more money to lavish on production means that this one is equally as fun, if not more, than their mid-90s classic. The title is a tribute to the Ramones' 'Too Tough To Die' LP, and it's certainly worthy of sitting alongside such legendary punk dignaties comfortably - great fun and great energy.

Standout Tracks: 'Fall Back Down', 'Out Of Control', 'Django'.




Feeder - Polythene





















One listen of this record, and you'd be hard-pushed to guess that this is the Feeder that everyone knows and loves, of whom have built up such an enviable collection of hits across the 2000s. This is their debut from 1997, and in all honesty, sounds at times like something a mid-90s US grunge band would put out - it has hints of Pearl Jam about it, and apparantly the singer from Korn rates it highly. However, what is recognisable is Grant Nicholas's delicate/aggressive vocals (depending on the circumstances) and ertswhile knack for finding a great tune, and this one is chock full of them.

Standout Tracks: 'Cement', 'Descend', 'Stereo World'.



Feeder - Echo Park
This should be more familiar to most of you - or at least, some of the tracks should be. It might just be because I got into them off the back of their Singles compilation, but I've always seen them as a great singles band, without a great consistant album under their belts. This is a very decent effort though, their breakthrough from 2001, and it has two key elements for a great album - an awesome start and an awesome finish. It also has a great mix of songs, including the timeless hits 'Buck Rogers' and 'Seven Days in the Sun', and despite the usual melancholy efforts which mar most Feeder album, this is the best overall and most consistant of their career thus far.

Standout tracks: 'Standing on the Edge', 'Seven Days in the Sun', 'Bug'.



Ash - Free All Angels

















From one British Isles rock band to another - we head from Wales to Ireland to find a band whom are, to my mind, actually quite similar to Feeder. Ash have a similar knack for a top quality, summer rock anthem, demonstrated perfectly here on track 3 of this record, with the amazing 'Burn Baby Burn'. However, this record isn't a great single and a collection of so-so B-sides - it's a good overall album, and taken in context of how the band were going at the time, an excellant return to form after a few years in the wilderness. It's a sunny record, perfect to be played in hot July evenings - just my kind of record then :)

Standout tracks: 'Walking Barefoot', 'Burn Baby Burn', 'Shark'.



Anti-Flag - The Terror State


















Whilst Green Day desperatly try to fumble through their bloated political protest opera thingy, Anti-Flag have been doing the whole political protest rock thing on a much more low-key (and more direct) level for years, and this effort from 2004 lays it's heart (and beliefs) firmly on it's sleeve. It is stunningly intense, and barely lets up - you do have to be in a certain frame of mind to listen to this from start to finish, as being pummelled with bellowed vocals about the legality of the Iraq war and crashing riffs and drumbeats for 45 minutes is not for the faint hearted. When you do take the plunge and press play, however, you will be treated to a fantastic collection of aggressive yet instantly melodic punk rock 'n' roll, recalling the similar crackling intensity of Irish punk legends The Stiff Little Fingers - and that, from me, is one of the best compliments I can give a record :)

Standout Tracks: 'Wake Up', 'Power to the Peaceful', 'One People One Struggle'.



The Prodigy - Music for the Jilted Generation
Okay, so it's not strictly rock per se, but...it feels like a rock record, for sure. The main reason The Prodigy have been so successful and garnered such appeal (Pendulum, listen carefully) is that, although they move in the sphere of electronic music, they create tracks with all the power and energy of a live rock 'n' roll band. This, their second album, is the one where this simple but very effective crossover formula comes to the fore. What also helps, of course, is that they know a good tune when they hear it, and that's the main reason that this record is so strong, and one that everyone, no matter what your allegience is to electronic beat music normally, should give a spin at least once.

Standout tracks: 'Break & Enter', 'Voodoo People', 'Poison'.



Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth

I picked this up on the basis of "hmm, I've heard a fair bit about them, let's give this a try." There were a number of N.I.N. discs in storage, but I chose this one as I at least know that I like the lead single from it, the excellant 'The Hand That Feeds'. It's a tough album to get into, and this is certainly no easily digestable piece - it's dark and menacing, moving in a world of sinister bleeps and synths mixed with industrial guitars and pounding, metallic drums, all lead by the raw growlling of band leader and singer Trent Reznor. There is certainly much to admire here.

Standout Tracks: 'All The Love In The World', 'The Hand That Feeds', 'Getting Smaller'.




Marilyn Manson - Holy Wood (In The Shadow Of The Valley Of Death)

I owe a debt of thanks to my great friend Emily for getting me into Marilyn Manson, and it was her recent influence that prompted me to pick this one up and give it a spin. The overriding concepts investigated in the miriad of tracks centre around the accusations Manson faced at the time of being an overriding influence behind the Colombine high-school massacre. On this, he not only deftly rebukes such flimsy accusations, but provides his own theories about the causation of the massacre - the influence of the American media, high school culture, martyrdom, and a culturual obsession with guns, religion and fame. What we are left with is a sprawling journey of sinister sounds, very few easily digestable songs (the excellant singles 'The Fight Song' and 'Disposable Teens' notwithstanding) but an overriding air of scatching, dark critisicm of the American culture model, and for that he and his bandmates should be praised for having the gall to create something so stark and menacing.

Standout Tracks: 'The Love Song', 'The Fight Song', 'Disposable Teens', 'The Nobodies'.




The Beatles - Let It Be

Little bit of a curve-ball to finish, but I've wanted a Beatles record in my collection for a while now, and having digested the famous rooftop concert (of which the setlist is comprised of songs from this album), I thought this, ironically their very last album released when they were still together, would be a nice place to start. You can see, to a degree, the different elements pulling apart from each other, and certain songs sound a little flat, even in comparision to the variants played and recorded on the rooftop concert. However, they didn't become one of the biggest-selling and most popular bands of all time by accident, and even in this, their darkest hour, the time where certain members of the band could barely look each other in the eye during some sessions, they still create some wonderful tracks - the soulful Lennon-led 'Dig a Pony', the quasi-Motown 'I've Got A Feeling' (no relation and a million times better than the Black Eyed Peas song of the same name), and the brilliant 'Get Back'. Hit and miss could be a good way of describing it, with the misses being very bad, and the hits being very good.

Standout Tracks: 'Dig A Pony', 'One After 909', 'Get Back'.



All of these discs, plus a pack of Rotosound guitar strings all came to just over £40 - complete and utter bargain! Aside from Rough Trade Records up in Brick Lane, there are very few proper little record stores left to my knowledge, and this is one of them. I would certainly kill for a store like this near me - a friend of mine tells me there is such a store in Gravesend, which I'll have to investigate at some stage, but for now, I can only recommend you to head to this store if you ever happen to be in the area in the near future and support it all you can :)