Dead Head

I made a farewell trip to the latest record shop to be closing in Bristol, Head in the Broadmead Galleries. A lengthy browse, even with heavily discounted prices, still resulted in me buying nothing at all, which is what usually happens when I visit the store. I’m sad to see the store go, but I can’t say I am surprised.

Broadmead always had a record shop and the last one is HMV. Head stands where Virgin once stood and where Zavvi was until it went through the hoop. I suspect Head will be the last in the short line and HMV will stand alone.

Head has always been more of a jumble sale that a record shop. It certainly has a large variety of CDs and vinyl, a good selection of DVDs and a quite pitiful selection of books, but there are also tables full of CDs in random order. I swear most of them have been been lying around for years and one glance through and you could see why.

There were numerous bargains to be had, if you can call Cheryl Cole album a bargain at 90p, or perhaps the Very Best of Michael Bolton for £1.80, as well as numerous X Factor contestants’ albums which clearly did not shift in meaningful quantities. It goes to show that the X Factor is nothing to do with discovering new talent and everything about people voting for the best karaoke singer in the land.

If there is no record shop in the Galleries, there will no longer be anything for me but then things are getting so bad that the nearby McDonalds has closed too. Whatever next? Greggs relocating to Clifton?

The disparity with Broadmead’s richer, smarter neighbour, Cabot Circus could not be greater. It is almost as if a class apartheid system has evolved in the city centre and you can certainly see a different kind of customer in each one. I am usually in Broadmead and find Cabot Circus about as cheery and welcoming as a doctor’s surgery, but it is hard not to imagine you are in two different cities as you move from one to another.

In Broadmead, everyone seems to smoke. I felt in a tiny minority as I battled my way through the fug at the top of Union Street but a part of me admired many of the smokers who somehow manage to simultaneously devour a pasty. A diet of tobacco and a stodgy meat and potato product might not be the healthiest imaginable but it seems to suit a lot of people.

The loss of Head is immensely sad for a number of people, though mainly those who will next week lose their jobs. People in record shops are invariably highly knowledgeable and they love what they do. As records shops slowly die out, I feel all of music lovers will lose out. There were huge queues, which are rarely seen in Head, which baffled me slightly since most of the offers were little different from the last time I visited. But then, people – like me, today – are always attracted by sales even if there are few, if any, bargains really to be had.

I’ve still got HMV, Fopp (which is owned by HMV) and the excellent Rise on the Triangle. I hope they all survive although in the long term, who knows? This is the age of downloads and streaming and the hard copy of an album is becoming a museum piece.

Broadmead looks anything but a museum piece, more like something out of the ark, and like Head I tend to think the Galleries, in particular, is doomed. Cabot Circus, god help us, is the future and one I could quite happily live without and will.