digging in london
Lawrence
125 Posts
anywhere worth visiting here? all i know of is the notting hill gate exchange.
Lawrence
125 Posts
Comments
OK, good start with the notting hill gate exchange, also in notting hill are Intoxica and Honest jons (both on portobello road, honest jons is a LONG walk down the portobello from the notting hill gate tube but well worth it)
Camden has a few good market stalls and another good exchange shop on camden high street, theres also a good shop just off camden high street that sells some good 45s but i forget the name (london strutters help!)
Oxford Street area- has berwick street and poland street coming off it, has revival records (previously wreckless), sounds of the universe (soul jazz's store) another MVE exchange shop, vinyl junkies (can be good selection but kinda always on an overpricing tip)
Islington & Angel- haggle is a good place but the owner is crazy as F*ck, theres also flashback in that area which is good but some of their wall pieces get overpriced.
Theres much more but these are the places i aim to hit if i've only got a day in london, if you're really short on time i'd say just aim for the trade stores, you can find some gold in there for next to nothing.
when i go to london, i only bother checking the record and tape exchanges on notting hill and in camden town because everything else is pretty much a giant waste of time and energy.
portebello road is very nice and close to notting hill so def. go down that way but the record shops there are just ridiculous for price. intoxica has a great selection but prices are more than double the ebay high end prices (he was trying to sell herbie mann records for more than 60 dollars american). honest john's also has awful prices and an extensive but completely bland selection.
for that matter the shops on berwick in soho have really dried up in the past little while. there used to be 6-8 decent record shops on that street and maybe there are 3 left. sounds of the universe is great if you like re-issues and stupidly over-priced common jazz and funk.
there are so many great things to do in london, i highly recommend you don;t spend too much of your time shuttling around from one record shop to the next...
However almost everyone agrees London is but a shadow of its former self these days with regards to records...
Intoxica is crazily overpriced- i said before on here that the record that shocked me the most in there was a mandrake som- sombossa being sold for ??120- double/triple the ebay price, but some hipster probably picked it up, such is what happens in a place like london. I dont know what you mean by honest jons pricing tho, i picked up my lyman woodard reissue from them for cheaper than wax poetics themselves were selling it for!! but i agree, selection is not the best but it is a small shop. SOTU- yes only for reissues, are on a crazy overpricing trip for common stuff but they still turn up some
if you can't resist a browse, hit up portobello road on market day and quickly do intoxica, honest jon's, and the og rough trade (off on some side street).
intoxica is well edited but he must own the building because it's basically a museum.
oddly enough when i was working in notting hill in '97 i encountered a record buyer who flew in from detroit to stock up. crazy what the currency rate exchange was back then!
ahhhh you're overreacting but still sort of right
what i meant is if you're visiting for a few days then don't waste time in an amazing city just to find shit like bob marley kaya ??30 or herbie mann for ??50.
my point was only directed at the tourists.
Haha, fishmongerfunk, I remember your UK digging rants from about 1-2 years ago. DJ Sheep was shitting on UK digging too as I recall. I wish I could find that thread. You still live there or are you back in (more plentiful, reasonably priced) US territory?
Seems that it's a bit more difficult to find good (and affordable) records in the UK compared to other countries. At least that's what I'm hearing from several people (not just on Soul Strut). This was the impression I got too when I was there, but that was many years ago, so I wouldn't really know.
good luck.
At the same time I've seen mental pricing - ??125 for that Ensemble Al Salaam LP was crazy - that was at intoxica though.
You just have to know where to look!
Thats the spot on Inverness St right? I scored a nice Egyptian jazz 45 for a few pounds in there... plus a few nice soul things (Sweet Charles etc) for a fiver each... there are no dollar bin / 50 pence come ups in London though.
Have always ended up getting atleast one nice record from Sounds Of The Universe... and their reish back catalogue is great.
I lived in London for a few years from 98-03 and always reckon the best spot to pick up the good stuff (though not cheap by any means) is the Kilburm Record Fair (http://www.dtrecords.co.uk/fair.htm)... some of the bigger dealers (Nick The Record etc) would be there and you'd be going up against Gilles Peterson, Norman Jay and the guys from 4Hero etc - invariably the dealers put a whole swag of stuff aside for them and everyone else got to pick through the left overs.
There are also some tiny little stores way the hell up in north London... passed them as we drove back into town last year and didn't get the chance to stop... I know some big dub, reggae collections chnage hands up that way.
http://www.verygoodplus.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=18
(You have to be a member to view that part of the site)
Run by 70s drug casualty intent on playing Graham Parker records at full volume to cynical diggers. Records randomly placed, covered with dust, packed tightly. All genres. Musty stale piss stench everywhere. Many crates on the floor; some under the racks. No room to swing a cat. Best score: Ray Munnings 'Funky Nassau' 12 for two quid. Was heavenly. Now closed. WMIC.
i have been back in north america for a minute now and have rediscovered my love of digging because here i can actually find good things that i want for decent prices on the regular.
the only thing worse than spending hours and hours of turning absolutely nothing is finding records that you really want that are obscenely priced. i'm with sheep- uk is just fucked for digging, unfortunately.
its not that one can never ever find a good record at a fair or even cheap price, it is that this happens so damn rarely. the amount of effort and hustling a person has to put in to find good records is totally out of proportion to make it worthwhile.
anyway, i like the digging here, but the consensus that there are many overpriced rubbish stores is slightly true, but very exaggerated.
Yea it came from the music and video exchange in Notting Hill - not a trade unfortunately - it's one of the best albums i've picked up over here. You planning on going to the vip record fair this weekend? I got some cool stuff at the one in November, but it was off international dealers mainly.
does cornwall have any good diggin spots?
go to ultima thule in leicester- it's probably one of the best record shops in the country and its the only one i know of that completely specializes in psych and avant european electro ish. they are the guys who did "crack in the cosmic egg" and have been doing some reissues of super rare-krautrock albums and so on. definitely worth the train fare...
ha! i grew up in guildford and i love that shop with all my heart! the good stuff is snapped up so quick (because of the nutty cheapness) that it's definately a 'right place, right time' kind of scenario - -- but everytime i go home to visit mum, i always walk away with an armfull of interesting /fun records that cost me about ??2 a pop. and he's the nicest man in the world...
I've been meaning to visit that Ultima thule shop in Leicester for years noe- - but have never got round to it. soon.
It''s pretty much off any kind of circuit you could think of, locals only care about shitty clubs and raves, there aren't droves of portable-toting diggeurs scouring the charity shops, and the few stores I know of I regularily find interesting things. Sounds OK in Falmouth is amazing, and is coincidentally where I go to uni, so if you're ever around, pop in!
Was that a joke?!
I'll go with DJ Sheep on this one - in comparison to LA and Seattle (two places where I've been digging), London and the rest of the UK is slim pickings. It wastes a lot of your time for very little return.
defo -- that'd be fun... it's not gonna be any time soon though - -i'd want to save up a bit of cash before settign foot in an all-prog store!!