Damn

Inovation Inovation Inovation

…there are no more lps to put in the recent arrivals bin….

…everything is now filed in the “General Alphabetical” or its respective “Genre” bins……so I’ve invented this……Ladies & Gentlemen I give you the “Recent Removals” bin…stock buried in the stacks…passed over (& over) for the last 18 months or so… destined to be thrown to the Trade Me wolves…but maybe worth one more flick thru…

…de-digit your sphincters….

…only 6 more Too Tone days until the end of reality as I know it.

NZ Music Month Question Mark

…NZ Music Month??….…NZ Music Month??….

….NZ  Music Every Month!!

Destination Destination Destination

…went to the secret location in the weekend….…the weather was Autumn…but I got a feed of field mushrooms……which went well with the two and a half kgs of bacon I had to make disappear after the fridge/freezer malfunction earlier in the week……replaced the stylus on the holiday home stereo and dug into my holiday crate…….mucked about in the sketch book….….did some shonky cider powered math….…and made a (second attempt) passable jig for round-frame things……worked harder than when I’m actually working…….a marvellous break from the shop….…here are some directions to the secret location….

Inner Sanctum

….3 years in the planning…

…the shelf above the “DJ” area in the library at home….

…made from re-purposed modular pine shelving from the 70s….

 

…I’m not that confident with tools, but I think this meets the spec’s….

 

 

…bring the noise!

Record Club

…the first rule of record club is…

 

….you don’t talk about record club.

So A Long Lost Customer Walks Into My Shop

…he doesn’t come so often, now that him & his partner have bought a place, their first, on the other side of town…

…great to catch up, news, rumours, appraisals of the quality of the stock…

…he’s  a customer who I wish could afford a few luxuries on top of servicing his mortgage…

…how long is it since I last saw you?…

…just over a year…

…which is about the length of time it takes to fill a plastic aeroplane full of your daily pocket change…

…which I’d forgotten he’d done last time…. till he pulled it out from under his coat.

 

…(over $100 bucks worth of new records once a year…take note folk who say they “can’t” afford vinyl…there are savings plans to suit all budgets!).

 

There’s No Pun Like A Name Pun

….I can’t decide wether it was Wayne’s parents who did this to him…

 

…or wether it was Wayne’s manager who wasn’t thinking clearly when “helping” him choose a stage name….

…or maybe, because of his busy hands, it was intentional …

…Wayne King has international appeal….

…and while he might occasionally go out with your sister…

…he sometimes prefers a quiet night in…

 

…(is it wrong of me to hope he did more than 5 albums?).

 

…(and for our American friends who may not have the particular term I’m alluding to in their lexicon…substitute Wayne with Jerry, shorten it to Jerr, and Russiannize his surname to Kingov… Jerr’ Kingov…that’s the guy).

Customer Training And Recycling

…right, bring your old bags back….

…you know, the brick red ones that I’ve been using for the last 4 1/2 years…

 

……mmmm, brick red bags…

…I went to my brick red bag supplier to purchase some more brick red bags the other day…

…seems they don’t make ’em any more…

…I got the last pack…

…so bring in your old ones to stave off the inevitable…

…because there’s now only one colour of bag that will take the shop stamp….

 

…hurry, before stocks go bright green.

Internet Disservice Announcement

…one of the founding principals of Too Tone Records was that we were going to be a record store/shop that didn’t sell on line or take phone orders…

…y’know, foster musical community, get back to the basics of flicking thru stacks, meeting people with similar or intriguing musical tastes, sharing info’ and experiences….stumbling on that rare gem you didn’t know you needed…

…the basis of this principle lies in the fact that both of my previous record store/shop employers required staff to hold back rare & interesting items to be perused, removed & sold on by the “company” website… we could get away with selling it to regulars with one outfit (so long as we got good money) but it was a firable offence with the other…

…it always struck  me that the parent companies were strip mining the local resource…thus reducing what was available to listen to &/or be inspiration for the next generation of music lovers…

..why would you bother regularly visiting a shop that sold all their interesting stuff on-line???…

…and there’d be less interesting stuff available locally to turn up again in a few years time…

…apart from selling dead stock on Trademe (if it’s been in the shop for two years I ain’t gonna sell it here!) I’m  sticking to that basic principle…

…no matter what any body says about how they’d run my business….

…that  is why I don’t engage in social media or broad cast my e-mail address…

…you just end up with a bunch of grasping  knob-ends collectors who think you will help them complete their lives if they wave enough money in your face…

…which is what I told my good friend Ian who guiltily admitted to having started one (there is more than one!) of the Too Tone records unauthorised Facebook pages….

…Ian is beginning to receive an increasing bunch of communications from knob ends people outside Dunedin….waving fists full of cash and clutching the front of their trousers (yep – all guys)…

…he dutifully draws them to my attention and always gets the same reply…

..nope, I don’t do requests or lists…or soften to pleading…

…get in a car or a plane or a combination of the two and get your spoilt, lazy, internet-oriented arses down here…I have no objection to you walking thru my door to buy stuff….in fact it’s always fun to see folk from outta town and talk crap about record shopping from around the world…it’s good for the rest of Dunedin’s economy as a whole as well, if you visit….

…make some fucking effort….I’m not in this to make bucket loads of cash, I’m in it to share my experience of music… I’m polite enough if I’m being fed regular…..

…and for those of you who are too lazy to support your local record shop on any other day than Record Store Day (clammering over a bunch of exclusive releases like they are mana from heaven) & shop on line the rest of the year….

 

 

… (there you go Ian, just link them to this, save a shit load of typing on both our parts!).