Bad News from J'Bs Records

[Tenorman]

Indeed bad news
J'Bs is located in Hanway street just off Oxford street in central London. It has been the source of well over 50% of my Vinyl purchases for the past few years. Run by two guys who really know their music. Not a huge Jazz section but what is there is quality

When I was in on Saturday, they told me that they had put their lease up for sale as the premises had become non-viable. Large drop-off in Sales, not helped by central London becoming a dead zone during the Olympics.

So the message is -- support your local Jazz shop -- use it or lose it!

[page]

So sorry to hear that Ian. We've lost ours a few years ago.

[Doghouse Riley]

One of the problems for record shops now is the growth of YouTube.
You know those rare records which are hard to get, so you need a specialist shop?

Well now you don't, a lot of what you want is on Youtube and you can download it as an mp3 free.

There were several specialist record shops in Manchester, but they are long gone now.

Same with sheet music, for years I patronised Music Exchange in central Manchester, but often they didn't have what you wanted.
They got killed off by the internet. Anything I need I can get from MusicNotes at a click of a mouse.

As for 45s for my jukeboxes, they're all on eBay and thousands of LPs for those that want them.

Soon it'll be the turn of specialised musical instrument shops and we'll be left with naffin' Dawsons, who's staff "know nuffin."

"Yanagisawa? Eh?"


It's the downside of what they call "progress."

Still there's an upside, I'm waiting for a kit from the USA to convert a Rock-Ola jukebox wallbox to play mp3s through my hifi via an iPod.
So no rubbish "B" sides

[Tenorman]

Sacrilege!!

[Vaughan]

I don't think people know what they're missing before they're gone. But the day of the music store is gone, I'm afraid. I go to Berwick Street quite often. Ironically there are what, four or five independent record stores within a few blocks.

Some I don't frequent because they've gone back to vinyl, which I'm not interested in. But yes, the net has all but killed it off. Rents in the Oxford Street area must be huge.

It's a shame, but a sign of the times.

[Doghouse Riley]

Originally Posted by Vaughan

I don't think people know what they're missing before they're gone. But the day of the music store is gone, I'm afraid. I go to Berwick Street quite often. Ironically there are what, four or five independent record stores within a few blocks.

Some I don't frequent because they've gone back to vinyl, which I'm not interested in. But yes, the net has all but killed it off. Rents in the Oxford Street area must be huge.

It's a shame, but a sign of the times.

I'll say, the rents are high!

My future wife and I moved into a flat in Soho in the sixties, my wage went on the rent and we lived off her money.

[Vaughan]

And that was back when it was most fun - at its seediest and downright dirty. Now it's mostly gentrified with clothes stores and shoe shops. Berwick Street is holding out, but for how much longer?

A night in Soho used to be a right of passage. Not any more. Yuppy-fied in the 80's and 90's, it's mostly harmless and boring now.

[Doghouse Riley]

Originally Posted by Vaughan

And that was back when it was most fun - at its seediest and downright dirty. Now it's mostly gentrified with clothes stores and shoe shops. Berwick Street is holding out, but for how much longer?

A night in Soho used to be a right of passage. Not any more. Yuppy-fied in the 80's and 90's, it's mostly harmless and boring now.

In the early sixties, my other half could walk to the shops late at night on her own without any problems, the regular "girls" on the corners knew she was a resident and not "competition."
There was "bother" between rival gangs, but I don't think the phrase "innocent bystander" had yet been used, as there never had been cause. There were a multitude of different stores of different nationalities, delicatessens, inexpensive restaurants and coffee bars.

I eventually changed jobs and we moved out of London and only visited relatives in West London by car for the next twenty-five years. Then my sister who lived in Sunningdale announced they were moving to France, so I offered to buy her nearly new car. This involved a train journey from Manchester to Euston and then a trip on the tube to pick up the train at Waterloo. That tube journey was a complete culture shock, I'll say no more.

Anyway,

This is a memory I shared a while back on another board which I've copied and pasted.

Before we were married, at the age of nineteen when we both worked in the West-End, my wife and I moved into a flat in Soho. She was a shorthand typist and I worked in sales promotion and advertising. Our flat was the top one of three above a café. We had very colourful neighbours. The couple below us was a bass player in a band and his dancer girlfriend. They often had a few spats, we'd hear saucepans flying across the kitchen and once we heard his double-bass bumping down the stairs from where he kept it on the landing outside their flat.
A really nice divorcee lived in the bottom flat who was a hostess at Edmundo Ros's club. She let us watch her TV when she was out working. She used to take us by taxi to the Rice Bowl in South Kensington for the occasional meal. She knew all the taxi drivers. As we were often broke, we would take her to the park on warm Sunday afternoons!

Consequently, living in Soho, we knew all the coffee bars and we were members of Ronnie Scott's first club, which we joined when it first opened (we had single figure membership numbers, it cost 7/6d each to join). We could get in there free any week-night and for a while you could bring your own drinks until he got his drinks licence. It was certainly warmer than our flat!
I might have mentioned this before or maybe it was on another message board. One Saturday evening around 9.00pm we were coming back from the launderette in Old Compton Street. (chores first, go out later) we met someone we knew coming out of the 2is coffee bar (a place we didn't frequent, our favourite was the Chapingo), in the course of conversation he told us they had a rubbish singer on, but they were getting rid of him after that night and they'd got Joe Brown for the following week which we agreed would be great, although we wouldn't bother 'cos it was a place in which "residents of Soho wouldn't have been seen dead."

The rubbish singer to whom he was referring was of course, Cliff Richard.
We've never liked him.
It wasn't uncommon for there to be a mid-week really late session at Ronnie Scott's, a few of which we attended, after which we'd walk up to Covent Garden for a drink in one of the pubs adjacent to the market which were open as they had different licencing hours. We'd end up at a working man's cafe for breakfast, then go straight on to work.



Anyone remember those clear French form of Pyrex glass coffee cups and saucers that shattered into thousands of pieces if you dropped one?

I used to "recycle" those, every girl in my office had one!

Happy days!

[WestUpperZombie]

Nice post DR. I remember Soho from the early sixties. I was 16 in 1961 and lived in Dalston which was a longish walk (if I had spent the bus fare) from the West End and Soho.
We would often go "upwest" to hear some jazz and I looked forward to the time when I was old enough to drink and afford to go to clubs like Ronnie's. Unfortunately just before my 18th birthday my family decided to move out to the wilds of Essex away from my friends and of course the West End. Took a while before my finances allowed me to travel up at weekends.
Never mind, I'm still alive and relatively healthy.

[Tenorman]

Being a country lad in Scotland around the same time live jazz was unheard of. It was only when I went to Uni that I got to hear live stuff.

But then a couple of years later I did get to hear Miles Davis and the Duke. Both concerts somewhat unsatisfactory

[Doghouse Riley]

My first experiences of live jazz, were at the "Fighting Cocks" pub in Kingston-Upon-Thames on Saturday nights in the fifties, when I was still at school. It's still going strong there.
At fifteen whilst still at school I took a girl to see Chris Barber's band in what was then called The Recital Room at the Royal Festival Hall. Lonnie Donnigan played banjo in his band. We also saw Louis Armstrong at Earls Court or it might have been Olympia. His lineup included Trummy Young and Barrett Deems.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe was the support.