
Things used to work like this. One would get the information about new music from your favorite artist, or you would make a discovery, and you could go almost inmediately to the record shop. Buy it, order it, wait and some days later get it full of excitement. In the meantime, the visit to the shop would mean checking out new music - specially if we are talking dj orientated shops - and possibly bringing home new discoveries. As a matter of fact the walk home, rushing with excitement, would translate into checking a few times the cover and the art (vinyl, yeah) anticipating the joy of the music.
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Well, all that is basically lost in my city... Records shops are almost gone.
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I don't want to sound nostalgic or catastrophic but going to the record shop has almost become a souvenir of the past in Madrid. Some can tell you we still have a few specialized shops dealing with second hand wide genre crates, a couple of funk and rock places, but that's it. Almost none of the pioneering dj shops in the capital have remained alive. Blame it on the cd (first) and the downloads (now) the social and fun competitive routine of visiting the shops for the weekly arrivals belongs to the past. I guess some (I take part of that too) can defend the access and freedom of Internet ordering. Click click, check check, buy buy.. And the excitement of the missing mail parcels, ha ha ! But nothing like going to the shop, chat with the ever opinionated manager, sniff at the others' acquisitions...
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I've just come back from Berlin where record shops are not an image from the past. Mmm, the flavour of records in the crates, the piles of new stuff, the accidental discoveries... Apart from the expanding diggin' culture in the vinyl community the pleasure of touching, fliping and playing the record in a small joint has no parallel. Amigos: when are we getting back a good shop in Madrid?
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