Death of folk in Sydney?
LokoOne
1,823 Posts
Got this off SMH site. Personally ive never bothered shopping there, but you gotta give the guy props for representing hard for what he loves... Worth reading just for the Barry Manilow anedote....Folkways hits the fade button on an era of silencing pop papBy Richard Jinman April 25, 2009In 1973, the year Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree topped the Australian pop charts, a small record shop opened on Oxford Street, Paddington.A sign on the awning read: "Real Music In A Sea Of Shit!"It was a warning to unwary customers seeking the new LP by 10cc or Elton John to look elsewhere. Folkways' racks were stocked with recordings of African pygmies, Inuits, Irish fiddle players and avant-garde American composers.When the American pop singer Barry Manilow dropped by and asked, "Do you stock me?" the shop's founder, Warren Fahey, failed to recognise him."I assumed he was after some rock group called 'Meo'," Fahey said. "I responded, 'No, we don't carry pop crap here.' "For almost four decades, Folkways was a musical landmark: a reliable source of folk, world music and other esoteric sounds. It also encouraged thousands of people to make their own music, selling an estimated 75,000 harmonicas, 50,000 tin whistles and 5000 jaw harps during its first 20 years of operation.But tomorrow it will close its doors for the last time, a victim, according to the current owner, Jon Foo, of changes sweeping the music industry and the dwindling number of customers on Oxford Street."I'm losing money," said Foo, who bought Folkways 17 years ago. His turnover has plunged from a peak of $1.5 million a year to less than $500,000.In the same period, rents have risen sharply, music downloads have made a dent in sales and profit margins have withered. In 1998, the average unit value of a CD was $12.57; in 2007 it was $8.22, according to figures compiled by the Australian Recording Industry Association."The old customers are still coming, but there are no new customers," said Foo, 60, who remembers the Oxford Street of the late 1980s as "a nice little shopping area with distinctive shops". Since then, an influx of chain stores has turned it into a more generic strip lacking the parking offered by its arch rival, Westfield Bondi Junction.Foo is going back to his job at a computer company; Folkways is to become a shoe shop.Fahey, 63, who went on to found the Larrikin record label and make a name as an oral historian and performer, is too busy to mourn the passing of the shop he once rented for $38 a week. "But it's a bit of Sydney's history gone down the gurgler," he said. "And that is sad."
Comments