Cocktails and Records

On a recent trip to give my spare money to Rough Trade I noticed that the staff were amiable, attentive and even chipper you could say.

I really don’t know what’s going on here.

It all started a few months back when I set out one sunny morning to Soho to buy the boy a Roy Ayers LP and myself, well, anything interesting that came along. I went to Sounds of the Universe and the people behind the counter were strangely pleasant and helpful.

This was surprising, but I could handle it.

Then the same thing happened again in Ray’s Jazz and then in Vinyl Junkies where a staff member actually left the security of the counter and asked me if I needed help with anything. We then had a conversation about how great Art Blakey is/was.

Since this auspicious day, the record store staff of London have been positively oozing good humour and cheerfulness. A guy in HMV spent at least 10 minutes searching through the racks looking for a 12” I was after and the proprietor of a local vinyl emporium waxed enthusiastically to me about the delights of Steely Dan.

This has now culminated in not one, not two, but three Rough Trade staff in one visit asking me if was finding what I wanted (and telling me not to buy the new LCD Soundsystem record). In any other shop this could be irritating, but I am just so shocked that I am prepared to deal with it.

Have record store staff suddenly realised that being nice to customers might help keep them in business or is it just me?

It has come to my attention that for a site entitled cocktailsandrecords there has been little mention of either. This has been largely due to the serious lack of either in my life recently. For the past few weeks our house has had no:

• gin
• vodka
• malt whisky
• blended whisky
• cointreau

A truly awful situation.

I have attempted to remedy this sorry state of affairs over the past couple of days and was planning on celebrating this Friday evening with both a cocktail and the new Von Sudenfed LP.

Well, I’ve got the cocktail, a martini (that’s a proper martini with gin and just a smidgeon of vermouth + necessary olive) but Rough Trade have failed to deliver on the music front. I went to the Dray Walk store this lunchtime and they have, in the words of the strangely helpful guy behind the counter, “suddenly run out of Von Sudenfed records”. A rush on Mark E Smith? Unbelievable.

I am instead basking in the early 90s with Monie Love…