Music Master Catalogue

Music Master 1990

Long before the Internet and Google search, if you wanted to look up information about a record/song/artist, you had to find out the old fashioned way by looking in a book.

Retail record stores across the country had to subscribe to a music catalogue that was so big it made the bible look like a pamphlet. Imagine a book that listed all formats, all track listings, all catalogue numbers, record labels & release dates for EVERY record that is currently available to buy.

That book was Music Master.

With monthly supplements to keep the information up to date and a full yearly reprint, thIs book was the music bible for the Retail music industry.

If anyone wanted to order a record this was the place to start. To order a title you needed three important pieces of information.

1. Is it still available?. 2. What label is it on? (Or more importantly who's distributing it?) 3. What's the catalogue number.

This book had it all. It cost an absolute fortune to buy and was a pain in the bum to flick through but I spent many happy hours looking though it trying to find classic stuff to purchase for myself never mind customers. You may have needed a magnifying glass to read the writing and the paper was so thin it could tear very easily, but it was an essential part of any proper record shop. I can find very little information on the net about when they started or stopped printing this book, how many editions there were or if anyone else remembers its existence. But, for me, it's a nice bit of nostalgia Just to see it again.

 

Oasis CD Singles Display

Found this the other day. Seems a shame not to hang it up again. A original piece of shop display material from the 1990s

Oasis CD Singles

 

Kate Bush Rubberband Girl

 

Chart Machine

The indie store i worked in was a Chart Return shop.

This meant that we gave our sales data to whoever compiled the charts at the time. During my time it moved from The British Market Research Bureau, to Gallup to CIN to Millward Brown. Initially it was via Pen and paper, but then they introduced computers. Every record has a catalogue number and all you had to do was type this number into the machine and press enter. If you flick through your record collection you will notice that Catalogue numbers changed in the late 80s to accommodate this. There were less nonsensical numbers and letters like epc345278 and more short straight forward wordy ones like BONG3 or FIC 42. It made it easier for sales staff to remember and type them out. You will also notice that once these machines moved away from typed in data to barcode wands, the catalogue numbers on your records dropped letters all together and stuck to really long numbers instead.

But God forbid anyone should forget to type a sale in back then. Anything to make sure you did, anything to make it easy. One miss type would be classed as a missed sale for a record company and every entry was important. Which made any shop contibuting to the top 40 of interest to a record company.

Each night when you closed the shop you had to remember to turn the machine off. In retrospect i now know that by turning it off i was actually flicking it over to a fax like modem that would answer the phone and send the days data direct to Gallup. If you had forgotten to turn it off it couldn't communicate with their main computer and nothing was sent. Sometime during the night Gallup would call, collect the data and add it to that collected from all the other shops on the panel. The charts were actually compiled on a daily basis and they even released a mid week chart to the record companies so they could see how well (or bad) their singles and albums were doing so far that week.

It cost money to rent these little computers and in the end you also had to pay to have your own data sent back to you in chart form. But it was worth every penny. The deals and free stock you received from record companies, just because you were on the chart return panel, far outweighed anything they charged.

One rep once told me in the 80s that they could always tell who was on the chart panel without even going to the shop. All they had to do was ring them at night. If the machine answered the phone they knew they were worth a visit.

 

Independent Record Stores (Last Shop Standing)

I bought a book the other day called Last Shop Standing - Whatever happened to Record Shops ? By Graham Jones.

I'm only half way through reading it so i shouldn't perhaps be reviewing it yet. But it's all very interesting.

However it doesn't seem to be written by someone who Set up and owned a small independent records shop himself. So far as i can see it's taken from the point of view of someone interviewing people who did. And like all people you interview who work in any shop they tell you the salacious stuff and leave out the mundane nitty gritty of trying to stay in business.

For me the hardest part was trying to keep going whilst every record company and his mother tried to sell me every record that has ever been released in every format going. Whilst trying to satisfy the needs of all those potential customers with cash to be had. Graham worked at HMV. But HMV was a multiple as far as i am concerned. A good one i'll grant you that. But a corporate multiple all the same. When you have such buying power you don't have the same financial restraints as a small indie and your whole perspective of selling music is warped. Nothing seems to be said in this book of owners only buying three copies of the most brilliant record you have ever heard because you know that only you will like it and maybe two customers you know you can push it to. Whilst having to purchase a bucket load of absolute shite in the full knowledge that you will sell out within days and it will probably be top 10 next week. That's what working in a record shop was all about. It was like gambling. You have to pay for all that stock so if you buy more than you sell you lose money and if you don't buy enough and you loose as well. Cold hard business wrapped up in your love of music and all the baggage that comes with it.

Perhaps i should add a few of my own stories here at some point. They might not be as glamorous but it would be a bit more realistic. If i ever wrote a book it would be called the 'Life and Death of a record shop'. I started in the 80s and ended my days in 2000 when you buggers started burning your own copies and downloading free from the Internet.

But it's all gone now. Anyone who still owns a record shop nowadays must be mad. Surely they are living on borrowed time ?. But good luck to them i say, if only they could stay there forever.
Anyway this is a recommended read.

Take That 1992

Back together again after all these years. Mark my words it'll all end in tears. But for a laugh here's a great Picture of Robbie Williams looking like his mum just cut his hair.

For the record i actually liked this when it came out but didn't think 'they would get anywhere'. New Kids on the Block had cornered the market !.

Take That The early years



Cassette Singles

They were the same price as a 7" single but if you were lucky the 12" version and the 7" versions were included on the same piece of tape no more than 15 minutes long.
On the down side, like all tape, a few plays in and the sound quality started to go all weird and if you kept them in the car during cold weather it sounded like they were singing underwater.

The Cassette single, or the "Cassingle" as no one i know ever called them, was born in 1980 as far as i am concerned, although i read somewhere that the first was Howard Hughes by the Tights in 1978 (who ???...exactly!).
The first cassette single i ever owned was by Bow Wow Wow called Your Cassette Pet. Bought in 1980. It reached No 58 (UK) in December of that year and if i'm being honest i only bought it because it was sold as the first of it's kind.

Not that i didn't like the single, i just preferred Vinyl to Cassette and after trawling through a pile of old tapes tonight i can understand why. (they take forever to rewind and fast forward).
I don't think they ever really started to take off big style until the early 90s but It was of no surprise to me that they never replaced the vinyl version. However, when i worked in a record shop i was always surprised how many we did sell sometimes.

It all depended on the music though. Big Cassette single sellers were Boybands and Kids stuff (Take That, Mr Blobby) Crap sellers always seemed to be heavy rock and Indie music. In fact in the end a lot of rock bands didn't seem to bother with a cassingle version of a release. The reason was simple. Kids had little Sony Walkmans or cassette players, grown ups had record players and eventually CD Players.

But dance and rap fell somewhere in between the two. Credible dance music only sold on 12" Vinyl, mainly for budding DJs to bedroom mix with. Pop/Dance on the other hand sold by the bucket load in tape form to the masses. Probably the biggest selling Cassette single i remember from my shop days was Snap Rhythm is a Dancer. Outselling in quantity the 7" & 12" put together for us.

But then again, Vinyl singles were just starting to show signs of a huge decline in 1992. Who was to know that record shops themselves would go the same way ?. Like cassette singles, record shops are a remnant of the past that the next generation of kids will soon be asking, "What's a record shop ?". Before you can answer the question, you might first need to explain what a record was. I wonder what they will think of Car Compilation TDK C-90 tape ?.

How much is your record collection worth ? (A Pop Quiz)

As i continue to sell my life away on E-bay i find flogging old CD's & Vinyl is a bit like gambling. Or perhaps i should say 'playing a game of Russian roulette'. The value of music has plummeted so much over the years that i seem to have no idea nowadays what is rare and collectable and what is worthless.

This means that i either waste money trying to flog stuff that no-one is interested in or i suddenly find i've quite clearly undervalued an item because 30 people are watching it and are waiting to pounce in the last 30 seconds before the auction ends, just to get it as cheap as possible.

Anyway this brings me to a great new pop quiz for you.
Every now and then i'll show you 4 items i've listed to sell at some point. All you have to do is guess which one went for the most amount of money and which sold for the least (or perhaps didn't sell at all). I'll post the values tomorrow in the comments section below with a short description of the interest shown by bidders.

You might find it interesting if you yourself own some of these records and are thinking of flogging them (or throwing them away). All are listed as "Used" and "in Excellent condition, both Sleeve and Vinyl/CD" as well as being originals from the time of release, not re-issues or re pressings. It's always a gamble of course and i could have got different prices at a different times, but this is how much i got when i tried selling them.

Queen-One Vision 12", Awesome 3-Hard up CD single, Jean-Michel Jarre-Zoolookologie 12" and Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson-Say say say 12".

I'll give you a clue with these first four. Three sold, one didn't.

Four Favourite Forgotten Oldies for Friday

JJ72 Formulae, Blue Oyster Cult Don't fear the reaper, The Sundays Can't be sure & Wedding Present why are you being so reasonable now. Not massive hits but still being played on my Pod.

And a couple of extra ones for good measure

Trash Can Sinatra's Obscurity Knocks 1990

Jellyfish The king is half undressed 1991

A Load of balls

There are certain people who should never really make records. Comedians, Politicians, X Factor contestants and of course footballers. But did you know that former Arsenal striker and England footballer Ian Wright made a record with the Pet Shop Boys ?

Well one of the Pet Shop Boys anyway (Chris Lowe)
It's not as bad as it all sounds.

In fact i thought it was OK at the time. I remember selling about about 10 copies, mostly to Pet Shop Boy Fans and the rest went to the type of person who bought footy records by the likes of Manchester United and Liverpool, slightly nutty and obsessive people who still wore scarfs in the middle of summer.

It actually reached No 43(UK) in Aug 1993 and no-one remembers it. Or do they ?