Record Store Day: Rough Trade East

17 April 2011, 21:29

As I step out of Old Street station in the crisp early hours of the morning, last night’s revellers are still stumbling through the streets which find themselves lined with abandoned kebabs. The reason I’m out this early on a Saturday, well it’s Record Store Day of course. Turning the corner of the Old Truman Brewery around 7am, the queue is already around 100 deep and the sense of excitement is palpable. Keeping my ears warm underneath my headphones as the odd obnoxious drunk staggers past, I am suddenly aware that I’m being a bit unsocial. I mean here I am in a queue to buy records from an independent store, with people who I am assuming are as enthusiastic about music as I am, and are certainly as geekily early and I’ve got my headphones on and am engaging in a spot of shoe-gazing!

It’s not long before I’m waxing lyrical about Record Store Day to the lovely folks behind me and we compare our ‘wants’ list for the day: top of my list Kate Bush, top of theirs The Beach Boys. With an inordinate amount of caffeine in my system, the two hours until opening doors disappear in no time. Running about half an hour late, the stampede finally begins around 9:30am and I feel like a kid in a candy store. While eager record collectors search for the items on their hand-written lists, the entire staff are courteous, friendly, cheery and helpful. Cries of “have you got the White Stripes 7 inch” and “are there any Kate Bush vinyl’s around” echo around the room before a single till has rung out, only to be met with a resounding “no, they’re not in store yet” and “I haven’t seen any all morning.”

Despite the inevitably delayed, missing and extremely rare releases it doesn’t take long until I’ve accumulated more than I could have hoped for and I soon find myself in a queue for the cash register. A new queue brings with it the same folks from outside, who have also managed to tick everything they possibly can off their checklist. Having given Rough Trade a miss last year in favour of Berwick Street, I wasn’t really sure how things this morning compared to Record Store Day 2010. Within 15/20 minutes we’re at the till and by this point pretty much everyone around me is in agreement that today has been a more enjoyable experience: a lot more organised, less riotous and much less stressful. With some very limited releases on the shelves there is still definitely an element of “to the victor go the spoils” in the air, but for the most part there is a real spirit of camaraderie.

My newfound friends invite me to join them for breakfast after our respective vinyl splurges. This, amongst many other things, is why I love independent record stores: I got chatting to some strangers in the queue behind me and less than three hours later I find myself with a bag full of vinyl getting to know these like-minded people over a Full English and a coffee. Perfect.

Heading back inside for the first in-store of the day, Chilly Gonzales’ set is already in full swing. Weaving my way through racks of records to the front, Canadian born artist Jason Charles Beck can be seen leaning over his piano keys, feverishly creating infectious and witty numbers. “I love playing somewhere that you can hear the cash registers ring out over the top of the music. I love that people want to buy records” he yells before announcing his next orchestral hip-hop number.

Put simply, Chilly Gonzales’ recital is amazing. He jokes about his recent commercial jingle, yelling “Chilly Gonzales is the mother-fucking iPad, you got it?!” before creating ‘Never Stop’ on the Mac tablet. The beats splutter along as he quips “oh shit, Gonzales is a fucking DJ…bring it back…or make it more skippy, you know whatever.” He finishes the song off with a generated trombone solo and shouts “artistic expression rules!”

He spends the second half the set taking songs from the records that people are purchasing, which results in a great, one-song rock ‘n’ roll medly of ‘I Love Rock N Roll’, ‘Tainted Love’ and ‘Come As You Are’, a rendition of Beastie Boys ‘Sabotage’ and a hilarious country version of Van Halen’s ‘Jump’ after a mis-understanding over Josh T. Pearson’s ‘Country Dumb.’ But the thing to remember is that for all his comedic bravado, Gonzales is an incredibly talented pianist, MC and musician.

Before long it’s Gaggle turn on the microphone or more accurately microphones, plural. The impressive 20-piece female choir all crowd onto the small stage at the back of the store. Led by the classically trained Deborah Coughlin and cloaked in colourful robes, the Transgressive signed group sing about alcohol, cigarettes and love. Abrasive, sonorous and overwhelming from the start – Gaggle completely blow the stereotype of choirs being a dull, fancy and serious thing out of the water; but for the most part I don’t really enjoy their performance. The underlying beats whilst compelling are complimented only by clichéd, slightly chavy lyrics about getting pissed, being thin and fighting over men.

After a few more hours of rummaging around for limited editions, chatting to staff and an expedition to get burgers we return for Wild Beasts. By the time we get back inside, the band are already on stage and you can barely move, let alone get down the front. With soft sweeping vocals and delicate guitars, the four-piece play a beautiful acoustic set, including a hushed rendition of forthcoming single (and today’s limited edition vinyl release) ‘Albatross.’ Filtering forth from the speaker stacks over the vinyl racks the band finish on a beautiful version of ‘Invisible.’

As the store begins to empty out and all that is left on the shelves are over priced Vaccines records I think we can safely say that Record Store Day has been a great day for music lovers, independent record stores and musicians.