Music store ‘has had its time’ says owner

AN iconic Tayside music shop will close for good at the end of the month after four decades in business.

Pete Caban, 66, says the time has come to call an end to his shop, Bandwagon, on St Paul’s Square in Perth.

For the past 37 years, Pete has sold tens of thousands of guitars and other musical instruments, however with the rise of internet sales, the ongoing construction work around St Paul’s Square and the lack of live music during the coronavirus pandemic, Pete has decided to call it a day.

He said: “Unfortunately it is the end of an era and I am closing the shop at the end of the month.

“It had to come to an end at some point and with one thing or another – the pandemic, the building works, no gigs for musicians – it was time.

“I am the last of the music shops now, there is nothing else left in the town.

“There used to be two or three, there has been a specialist music shop in the town for 60 years now, maybe more.

“I have sold probably tens of thousands of guitars over the years, it is hard to put a definite figure on it, as well as banjos, fiddles, keyboards, god only knows what else.

“It was a tough decision to write ‘closing down’ on a poster and put it up in the shop.

“When you have been doing this for so long, those are tough letters to write down, but once they are written there is no going back.”

Pete will now sell off what stock he has left and will shut up shop at the end of August.

He continued: “It’s been great and I don’t regret any of it, there have been a lot of people through the years and a lot of memories. In my heyday in the late 90s and early 00s people would come from all over – Edinburgh, Stirling, up north – and travel to see the guitars I was dealing, particularly the high-end professional stuff.

“But over the last five or six years with the internet there is no need for that and you lose your demographic, so it is mostly just locals who need stuff coming in now.

“But I have had my time and I would not have had it any other way.

“Turning a hobby, a passion, into a business, that is the Holy Grail, you can’t get better than that.

“I have been able to work with guitars all day, play guitars, sell them and make a living from it.”

Shop owner Pete Caban has decided to close his music shop, Bandwagon, after more than 40 years in business.

Bandwagon in St Paul’s Square.