Fifty years at the vinyl frontier... could it be a record?
THEY were once a common sight on the high street, selling the latest chart hits and letting music lovers hear their favourites in popular listening booths.
In recent years our once-bustling record shops suffered dwindling sales with the arrival of CDs and later digital downloads – and now few remain.
But Scotland’s oldest surviving vinyl specialist has beaten the odds to celebrate its 50th anniversary, thanks to a major surge in the format’s popularity.
Concorde Music, in Perth, was opened on October 30, 1967, by Norman and Rena Smith. They bought a business – owned by Scottish music legend Sir Jimmy Shand – that had gone into liquidation and paid £2,640 for the leftover stock and fittings.
Concorde is now run by their son Garry – who has worked in the shop since it opened – his wife Hazel and son Craig.
Garry Smith said: ‘A lot of people out there wonder how we manage to survive... you have to diversify and move with trends.’ He added: ‘Vinyl probably accounts for about half of our business operation nowadays.
‘Kids aged 13, 14 or 15 are buying classics like Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Led Zeppelin I, The Beatles’ Abbey Road or Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon to start off their collection.
‘Our biggest market is people who either had a collection and are starting again, or they’ve dug their collection out and started to add to it.’
Sales of vinyl hit a 25-year high last year, according to the British Phonographic Industry, with more than 3.2million LPs sold. But threequarters of independent record shops closed between 2000 and 2010, with fewer than 300 now left in the UK.
Mr Smith said: ‘Going back a few years I probably did wonder if we’d see this anniversary but thankfully customers come into the shop from all over Scotland, as well as further afield.’
Yesterday, London-based Graham Jones, record shop expert and author of the book and documentary Last Shop Standing, said: ‘I’ve spent 31 years visiting the record shops of the UK and am confident that Concorde is the oldest record shop in Scotland.’