The terror of the first record shops

There is a very specific age in life when music suddenly becomes the most very important thing in the world. It's usually around the time that puberty kicks in and there are big decisions to be made at this time - the type of music doesn't fully define who you are and who you are going to be, but it can be a fucking big signpost on that path. 

I spent my childhood in bookstores, but I was always fascinated by the record shops, and the old weirdos who filled them. It wasn't as intimidating as something like the pub, where kids were definitely not allowed, but it was still a little scary - I just didn't understand all the genres and styles, and record shops were stacked with old music and weird ephemera. 

It can be especially daunting when you're not sure about the music you're choosing, and you're flailing around, trying all sorts of things, and never knowing what is going to speak to you, and really get through to your soul. 

My first big music love was for Pink Floyd, and I had no access to internet knowledge, or even much in the way in books, so I knew nothing about them, and that was the kick in the arse that got me going to the record stores regularly, where I would spend countless hours, trying to figure out if Relics was a 'proper' Floyd album.

They reckon that smell is the easiest way to trigger memories, and I totally believe that's true. Sometimes I smell 1995 at the cinema, and the other day I smelt a pile of dusty albums sitting in an old record store and was taken all the way back.

There were several kinds of record store - there were the big neon mega-stores, almost all gone now, and loads of middle of the road outfits, full of top 20 and not much else, which definitely did not survive. And then there was the record shops that all had the strange stuff, usually run by very surly older men who were obviously judging you just by the way you browsed.

It wasn't just the places themselves that gave me the existential shits, it was the vast amounts of unknown music they represented, and how unsure I was in my own tentative steps. 

In the end, it was the grumpy guys who survived, because they provided a curation service, and while they were definitely the scariest places to start off with, they were also the ones where I later became extremely comfortable, a regular who the owner could recommend new tunes to. 

It really wasn't long before I became one of those scary old crusties, and I remain one of them to this day. I just try not to judge the kids who keep coming in, looking for their path, and let them figure it out for themselves.