Fopp is closing down

Fopp, the newest large chain of (reasonably) independent record shops is closing down.
It appears that Fopp had serious cashflow problems after the purchase of the "Music Zone" stores. I suppose it is a a bit like an anaconda bursting after trying to eat a crocodile.

Everybody has to accept that the way we listen to, buy and store music is evolving as it has always done. We see single stores and chains close all the time - and for all other areas of retail I rarely bat an eyelid - but when your favorite record shop goes under - that really hurts.

As a dedicated fan of Fopp and a loyal purchaser of their goods for many years, this came as a big shock to me. I have visited the Fopp stores in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Sheffield and come away from each with wonderful things. Fopp introduced me to Boards of Canada (I bought their entire back catalogue at the Glasgow store). I bought my LCD Soundsystem there, fifteen Miles Davis albums, all my Jimmy Smith, my Doves collection, my unusual Brazil, Latin, Samba and loungecore collections all came from the upstairs gallery at the Cambridge Circus branch - Saturday afternoons were always fun times as a result.

As a 30th birthday present to myself I bought nearly 30 discs, but usually I would come away with between 8-20 in a single transaction. You see - whilst HMV and Virgin would sell reissue or back catalogue albums for as much as £16, Fopp had found a way to sell them for £7, £5 or even £3, and this generous underpricing of the back catalogues of selected artists made for compelling shopping.

Like millions of music afficionados, I grew up visiting record stores. As a fifteen year old I took pilgrimages to central London to visit the vast, flourescent caverns that were the West End Virgin Megastores and HMVs. The HMV had a formidable selection, but Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus always sucked - they geared their collections to chart-heads and tourists. I soon became disenchanted with these mainstream outlets and sought out better places to buy music. I could never get on with the second hand record exchanges in Notting Hill and Camden, and was disappointed with the Soho record stores and their snobby staff and high prices. I turned to the internet in 1997 (and made my first purchase from CD-WOW in 1997) but have always been turned off by the very disconnected feel - you can't REALLY browse a site in the same manner than you can flip through the racks at your local sound emporium.

Enter Fopp and its refreshing approach: Take discs and organize them thematically with "featured" sections, highlight special offers ("the £5 wall") and throw in more than a smattering of the obscure. Through this foraging or "digging" as DJs call it, I found albums I wouldn't have normally been exposed to there - in my hands, before me. Essentially, Fopp organized discs as the internet is trying to do now - in a "If you like this you might like this" sort of fashion. It felt organic. It felt good. The stores were mostly small and well organized and the staff cheerful. But most of all, I visited Fopp to fill in the albums in my collection I couldn't buy at college or earlier in my life, now reduced to £7, £5 or even £3.

With Fopp's entrance into receivership and the immediate closure of all of their stores, that is all gone now and I miss it terribly.

RIP FOPP.