A short photo-essay on the oldest record shop in the world - handily located in Cardiff. I love this place, and tried to capture it in all it's analogue glory, while still maintaining a gloss of journalistic objectivity. Again, photos will follow when I've worked them out.
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Cardiff isn’t a city that hides its landmarks away. As you come in to the city by train, it’s easy to see the Millennium Stadium, its contemporary design standing as a motif for the modern city of the future – a mass of identical chain-fashion stores, easy-access entertainment and overpriced city centre nightclubs. However, hidden opposite the massive building site of a new, ‘exciting’, shopping experience on the Hayes, lies a true gem of Cardiff culture – Spillers Records, the oldest record shop in the world.
Established over 100 years ago, in 1894 by a certain Henry Spiller, Spillers remains largely untouched by the clinical, hospital-like atmospheres of larger chain stores such as HMV. Remaining independent throughout its history, the store, owned by the enthusiastic Nick Todd, hides the dream of any true music aficionado behind its simple red façade. Wallpapered in posters for gigs large and small, past and future, the racks hold row upon row of CDs, catering from a wide variety of music tastes, but leaning toward those who are as enthusiastic about music as Spillers employees – and that is, to put it bluntly, very. Enquiring about whether or not they had an album by instrumental rockers Mogwai, Nick’s daughter greeted me with genuine enthusiasm, apologising first about disturbed stock deliveries due to the band’s record label moving base, before telling me that if I was a fan I should check out a gig at Cardiff’s Clwb Ifor Bach that night for a band that had a similar sound. A similar depth of information was thrown the way of the wide and varied clientele, from a suited gentleman asking about Nina Simone recordings to a fluorescent-vested workman inquiring after Iron Maiden DVDs. In Spillers, everything from local scene gossip to the tectonic movements of worldwide rock superstars flows between enthusiasts with a keenness that leaves the homogenous consumer mass miles behind, preferably somewhere they can purchase their soulless aural novacaine from a pre-pubescent teenager in a Zavvi T-shirt. I don’t want to be greeted with (at worst) a grunt, or (at best) a semi-enthusiastic offer of a storecard. I want to ask for a recommendation, be handed a disc, and be told ‘you need this album in your life’.
Unfortunately, the shop hasn’t enjoyed plain sailing over the last few years. With the threat of rent increases, and unfortunate placement facing the new St. Davids 2 development, there have been multiple instances of this fantastic monument to music being permanently closed. However, support from both the local area (particularly students), and from the upper echelons of rock stardom have, so far, managed to keep Spillers in business. The Manic Street Preachers have registered their support, as well as Columbia Records, and closer to home, politicians in the Welsh Assembly have encouraged support from the wider community for the store. For the moment, rent increases have been held, and so Spillers remains in business. As the name of the highly successful facebook group states, ‘justice for music, innit.’
The wide scale regeneration efforts in Cardiff have been largely successful on a commercial level over the last few years, turning the city from one that was declining into a bustling multicultural city of the future. However, while walking around it’s easy to believe that in the process, it may have already started to lose its identity. To many people the city doesn’t show any level of uniqueness through its main shopping street, or the millionth Oceana. However, along with the fantastic undercover market, the beautiful gardens of the university, and the castle, there’s Spillers. There has always been Spillers. And hopefully there will always be Spillers, fighting the impersonality of the internet age with a charm and charisma that isn’t available in .mp3.
- Published in the Warwick Boar, 2008
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