Showing posts with label Volume. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Volume. Show all posts

Thursday 17 May 2018

You Can Guru, You Can! - Visiting Vinyl Guru?


You know what they say about buses, well it's not usually true of record shops, but the take off of Vinyl sales kicked off possibly by the rise of Record Store Day seems to have sparked that in Newcastle.

I noticed Beyond Vinyl while wandering around the Clayton Street / West Road area where Kazbat's Den  and The Star and Black Swan are located and was well impressed. They have plans similar to the excellent Pop Recs in Sunderland.

On Record Store Day I recommended Beyond Vinyl to Kirsty and Mark as Mark is into Vinyl, and she phoned me to ask where it was as they had just come out of Vinyl Guru. I asked them where that was and they told me and was shocked because I was completely unaware of it. So that's two  new vinyl record shops in Newcastle and if you rope in Empire Records / Long Play Cafe which has been around for twelve months or so that is three new vinyl stores in Newcastle to sit alongside RPM, Reflex and Beatdown, though I still miss Volume and Hitsville USA.

Anyway I finally got to visit Vinyl Guru yesterday and the guy was friendly and knows his stuff. They have a growing selection of new and second hand vinyl, one piece that I am very tempted by but managed to resist. They have a complete section for Bowie stuff and lots of vinyl related artwork and accessories. This means you have two excellent vinyl record shops within two hundred yards of each other.

They are also invoved in a Punk Art Exhibition "Never Mind The Punk 45" with Gallagher and Turner at The Late Shows in Black Swan this weekend so they are not a one trick pony.

The title comes from "The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles" interlude from Jethro Tull's "Passion Play" the excellent follow up to "Thick As A Brick". I was surprised to find a video for this on Youtube so thought I would include it, it is rather silly but some of the music is excellent.

Newcastle now has a healthy number of excellent Vinyl shops as well as a brilliant music scene and is one of the many reasons I stayed when I came up in the late eighties. Things have changed and a lot of those have been majorly for the better.