HMV - In Memoram

Just under two years ago, I was in Year 10 in high school, and taking the morning off to see a woman in a town near where I live to arrange my work experience placement. I was walking back to the bus stop, through the town. And I saw that HMV was all boarded up and closed. It had closed down.

I walked up to the entrance, peered inside. It just looked like a big, empty hall, dusty and dark. There were a few stepladders slung about. The shelves were all gone. I pressed my palm against the door, with some vague notion that it would still swing open. I think I had this image in my head of walking around in the empty room and just taking in what had happened but it was locked, of course.

That was the record store where I bought my copy of Imogen Heap's Ellipse, in late 2009. The girl at the desk there was telling me that they had it playing in the store all morning and she loved it. I bought some of my favourite albums there, some I'd set out to get intentionally and some because they were just on offer for 2 for £10, and I ended up loving them just the same.

I have always had this kind of love/hate relationship with HMV. I am forever complaining about the crap that they put on the Recommended shelf. Sometimes I obnoxiously reorganise it, and put up things I think deserve more attention in hope that someone will stumble past them. This always annoyed my friends.

An example, from Chester some time in 2011. Observe the top row.

Of course I support independent businesses, and would much prefer to go and buy vinyl in a little record store owned by a caring man and covered in dust, but I have to admit this was probably my favourite place to buy CDs. Partly because I had nowhere else to go. It was to HMV I ran, sprinting, at five minutes to closing time to pick up my copy of Babel on September 24th. It was also where I bought The Lizzie McGuire Movie with my pocket money when I was nine.

I just have so many little anecdotes about HMV, too many to fit in one blog post. Like just a few weeks ago I was in the store on Manchester's Market Street, carrying a stack of CDs under my arm and flicking through shelves looking for something. And a woman approached me and asked if I'd help her.

I said, "I don't work here, sorry."

"Oh." She frowned. "Can you help me anyway? You look like you know about music."

Kid you not.

I felt pretty on the spot but it was Christmas and the shop was really busy, so I sort of shrugged and offered to. And to my relief she asked which Elbow album she should buy, because she'd heard them on a stereo in a bar she was in. So I just talked her through them all, and told her which my favourite songs of theirs were, and helped her work out which the song she knew was by humming it ("One Day Like This", of course).

Then there was the time I asked if they had Amanda Palmer's Theatre is Evil and they said they didn't, only "Trout Heart Replica" was playing in the store at the time.

HMV went into administration today.

There's lots of opinions going around. "Oh, this will be great for independent record stores!" It won't, it means that downloads are drowning the industry, whether physical CD sales are led by a chain store or not. This will effect distributors, artists, and, of course, the 4,000 employed by HMV.

I am not excited about their closing sale, just really hoping for good news.