No, that wasn’t a tear on my cheek. There’d been a little light rain.
But I will admit to a great sadness following the closure this month of one of New Zealand’s longest-lived music stores, Everyman Records, right here in my adopted home of Nelson.
Said to be the oldest independent record store in the country, the place had been operating from the same site since 1975, when two local high school teachers followed their love of music and literature and opened what was then known as the Everyman Book and Record Shop.
In the intervening decades the books were gradually edged out in favour of music, while an impressively diverse roll-call of the blessed and the damned served as staff members. Esteemed author Maurice Gee even manned the counter on occasion while the staff buggered off to grab some lunch. In recent years, the shop had been going for so long that several children of former staff members had become staff members themselves.
The place was a magnet for local eccentrics, musical obsessives and wastrels of every stripe. On any Friday night throughout the boom years of the 80s and 90s the place was rammed with opinionated punters, arguing over the merits and shortcomings of new releases and spending up large. Around the back, if you happened to wander into the car park, assorted reprobates gathered to smoke spliffs and continue the musical conversation.
Back then, the store was a bright beacon of alternative culture in a conservative provincial backwater; a meeting place for collectors of rare books, band members, vinyl addicts, lost souls, and passing drunks who’d only wandered in because it was warm and busy.
As that egalitarian name suggests, The Everyman crossed all social, economic and taste boundaries, being equally happy to supply the soundtrack du jour for young and old, rich and poor, classical and country fans, hippies, bogans, rastas, squares and punks. I suspect it was this unusually broad cross-section of loyal buyers that helped it survive for so long, despite intense competition from cut-price chain stores and digital downloading.
For more than 20 years I loved the place. It felt like a second home. Churches aside, I regularly darken the door of most cultural institutions – art galleries, libraries, museums, cinemas, concert halls, bars – but my favourite forum for community engagement, enlightenment and joy remains a good record store, and The Everyman was one of the great ones.
A former customer himself, current owner Greg Shaw was behind the counter for 28 years, his legendary grumpiness matched only by his generosity. When I was employed one summer setting up a community radio station in nearby Motueka, he lent us CDs for the playlist. When I first moved to Nelson and couldn’t find a place to stay, he let me doss for a month rent-free in the basement flat under his house.
In an earlier life, before record companies began to bombard me with review CDs, I bought so many records in the store that the weight of them caused major structural issues in my rumpty old villa and I had to have it repiled.
Ad Feedback
Not only did I squander my wages on LPs in there, I also found myself the perfect wife. My beloved Josephine’s mum was part-owner for a couple of decades, back when it sold books as well as records. During breaks from university in Dunedin, her daughter – my future missus – would work part-time in the store, and I would spend my lunch breaks lusting after her while sifting through the record racks.
I knew I was onto a winner when we argued one day over the merits of an obscure funk album. Outgunned by my superior musical knowledge, she resorted to personal attacks, disparaging me for my height. “Stand up when you’re talking to me!” she said, and from that moment on, I was in love. Still am.
But now this citadel of music and culture and romance is no more. Yet another casualty of iTunes and Spotify, rising rents and changing technology, The Everyman went into voluntary liquidation in early July. Even the recent vinyl revival wasn’t enough to keep the nation’s oldest record store afloat.
Things ended badly, with the business mired in more than $200,000 of debt. To recoup a little cash for creditors, there was a liquidation sale.
A sadder sight I’ve seldom seen, with hundreds of former customers gathering around the cold corpse – a flock of reluctant vultures, picking over the bones. I was there myself, a mourner at the graveside, scooping up armfuls of cut-price jazz and punk LPs.
In the queue heading for the counter, former customers exchanged memories of happier times. One of them recalled a rock’n’roll-addled staffer declining to order an obscure free jazz LP they’d asked for because this was clearly “tugger’s music”.
Another reminded me of a typically iconoclastic event The Everyman had sponsored: an anti-talent show called Nelson Idle, set up to find Nelson’s least-gifted performer and staged during the local arts festival to undercut the notion that our fair city was awash with artistry.
Now, for the first time in 39 years, Nelson joins the growing ranks of New Zealand towns and cities which no longer have a dedicated record store. Of course, those looking for cut-price CDs or Top 40 albums can still find them in The Warehouse. And anyone with an internet connection can download music without paying a cent or even having to venture out of their house.
But anyone searching for obscure, back-catalogue albums, second-hand vinyl, unusual New Zealand releases or even just a spirited chinwag with fellow music fans among the record bins is now out of luck. Seems a crying shame to me, but that dampness on my cheek That’s just a few stray spots of winter rain.
– Sunday Star Times