36 Not Out. Oops, He's Been Caught By A Googly

Morning folks - well the reindeers are coming and this years final FB was meant to be a traditional (well if you can call a handful of years traditional) Christmas Round Robin of "this is what I did this year . . blah blah blah." 

But as we all know the taste in the world isn't for "blah blah" any more, so without further ado we find ourselves cast adrift into a Dickensian world, of empty grates, fingerless gloves and "HUMBUG!".

Oh and there's NO Photography in it either.

Y'see, in this lovely, grey, arse-end of the year, I have found myself caught out. 

Back in 1985, after graduating, applying for bloody millions of jobs and being told on more than on occasion that I was "far too qualified for Scotland" (! - true answer to job application) and had to move to London for any chance of work etc etc.

"Blah blah."

I found myself faced with the prospect of penury.

However in a rather timeous manner (in those Thatcherian, "on yer bike" times) I was fortunate enough to be interviewed for a job by a bloke in a baked bean-stained Virgin Aberdeen tee-shirt and torn pixie boots; he looked a bit down-at-heel (literally) but had a demeanour, knowledge and humour that I found utterly charming. 

His name was Dougie Anderson (R. I. P.). 

He was the Scottish Regional Manager for Virgin Retail and there was something about the cut of my jib he liked, so he employed me.

Like a kid being given the keys to the sweet shop, I was excited because I was going to work in a Record Shop!

The only thing was, it wasn't what I really wanted to do.

Whether there was something in the water at Duncan Of Jordanstone, I don't know, but I graduated knowing that what I really wanted to do was 'fine art' printing. 

Not graphics (my Degree) no. 

Indeed the majority of my Degree show was landscape photography, not graphic design, much to the chagrin of my lecturers 

I'll blame Joe McKenzie for lighting a fire which still still burns bright over 40 years later.

However in line with Thatcherian Britain at the time, I was a poor ex-student with no financial backup or contacts; to become a printer would definitely have involved me getting on my bike and moving to London *** (see below).

It was a vicious circle with no way out.

So I was effectively stuck here, drowning if truth be told, until some bloke who looked a fair bit like Nigel Tufnel put out his hand and pulled me free . . . and so began 36 years of work in my other passion, MUSIC.

To-wit, Music Retail.

Virgin Dundee Circa 1987.
© DC Thompson.

That's me at the back, far left, rifling through the racks . . the one with the hair, and to the right at the far back you can see the door to my kingdom . . . the stockroom.

I think even in those hirsute days I was too hairy for public consumption, so like a troll in its lair, the stockroom it was.

But before we even got there, I shrink-wrapped pretty much the entire shop stock on a spare floor (where the concessions were) in the Glasgow Megastore. I travelled to Aberdeen for what seemed like ages, to learn stock control, filing, more wrapping, cataloguing etc.

When we moved into the Wellgate in Dundee I travelled in the back of a van from Glasgow, alongside some of my compadres, with stock, more stock, security tags and what must have been nearly a ton-and-a-bit of shrink-wrap machine. 

Try getting one of those up two flights of stairs with tight corners!

Once esconced, I estimate that I probably shrink-wrapped the best part of a million pieces of vinyl in my time there.

Having been brought up with the sanctity of handling records - y'know the drill: the open palm support, the gentle twist to the B-side, the careful cleaning with every single play - you quickly lose your awe at handling so much. 

Proprietry goes out of the window.

It was a real mill - roughly 35 boxes from suppliers A DAY.

Lugging THREE 100 size boxes of vinyl at a time (the most I could carry) up two flights of stairs - yes that's approximately 300 pieces of nice n'cheap old school vinyl with each journey up.

Then opening each box, checking the quantities on the advice note were correct, breaking it down into price points, and then writing that up on a SUP (never knew what that meant) sheet, before security tagging, price stickering and putting aside for shrink-wrapping.

When you had enough LPs sitting you got going:

Bend, pick up LP, slide it onto plattern between a sheet of 2-ply PVC wrap; pull forward with your right hand; bring down heated L-shaped 'cutter' to pinch off the PVC; use left hand to move LP onto rollers.

The rollers took the bag of plastic and sound into a heated tunnel (that didn't look too dissimilar to an airport security device) and out it came, shrink-wrap shrunk, to fall into a box, ready for collection and transport out onto the shop floor.

The PVC released really nasty fumes, and I operated like this for months until Virgin stumped up and got proper ventilation. 

This was a large electrostatic fan - the air moving through two charged grids and the floaty bits of loose plastic (from the L-shaped frame's heated cutting wires) collecting on the grids. 

It was a great system, except that said burning PVC had to pass by my head (and mouth and nostrils) before reaching the vents.

When we cleaned the vents, a thick grey sludge accumulated in the sink - it was the dickens to clean off.

All I can say is that I had a really fine lung-capacity when I started, and now I can't really puff for Puffins.

I eventually got an assistant (Hi Earl!) and between us we shifted tons and tons of 'product' in what sometimes approached 90 degrees of dry, smelly heat, in a small windowless room.

Earl eventually left to become a commando - I'll bet his basic training was on a par with working in a Virgin stockroom!

It was highly tough (OK, not like digging graves or shunting dustbins) work, but it was FUN. It stimulated the senses, both in sound, sight (all those classic 12" square covers!) and smell - all that burning acrid plastic. 

It kept you fitter than a butcher's dog, because the work was constant and heavy. It destroyed skin tone, concreted lungs, helped RSI, and was both physically and mentally exhausting,  but at the end of the day it got the ackers into the money-making machine that was Virgin Records, so that was all that mattered eh!

Sir Richard should think about his ex-employees when he is gadding about in space - if I am anything to go by, a lot of his ex-stockroom folk are either dead or pretty buggered health-wise.

But back to the FUN - in those halcyon days, you could buy a brand new chart LP for £4.99. 

Nowadays it's £19.99+. 

Back catalogue, the real grist to the mill, started at £3.49 for premium titles like Led Zeppelin, and so on and then worked down from there. 

The average 12" single was a strangely expensive £1.99.

7"'ers were around a pound. 

Cassettes were similarly priced to LPs. 

The new-fangled Compact Disc ran to around £10+ - they were expensive. 

Seeing as I have made my life's living off of selling them, I'll maybe write about them more.

They were initially the ground of the:

 

"Hey baby, wanna come back and listen to my new CD player" 

working man!

That's true, oh you tucked-in jumper, white-socked smoothies with your beefy pay-packets!

God bless you.

We stocked on opening approximately 350 CDs - that was just about it for UK production, but as their popularity quickly disseminated out into general use, manufacturers got on board pretty fast, and a tidal wave of both UK, European and the delightfully environmentally unfriendly American anti-pilfering long box came onboard. 

It still astounds me that in 1987, people were paying £20+ for Japanese imports of Pink Floyd albums on CD, because EMI over here hadn't really cottoned on yet.

Weird how the world changes when music becomes devalued by online retail and then streaming becomes the norm and people ditch CDs like they're anathema.

For all that the humble silver disc is slagged off as being hopeless these days, you know, these wonderful little 5"ers are still valid. 

Aside from the fact they've put a roof over my head and expanded my knowledge of the wonderful world of recorded music and catalogue, they're so fecking easy to deal with.

I find the 'vinyl revolution' very interesting - one drunken stumble with your favourite premium £35 copy of 'Are You Experienced' and you're stuffed. 

I know because I did it in 1974 with my copy of 'Mott' - I wasn't drunk, but it slipped, bounced off the edge of my Dansette and forever (even today) - I still hear that click during 'The Ballad of Mott the Hoople (26th March 1972, Zürich)'.

But back to Virgin - gosh I miss that shop (and I never thought I'd hear myself saying that). 

I was lucky enough to work with a fantasticly talented team of people - all of them PUMPED about the music they loved, all knowledgable (y'know, like the geeky assistant in Hi-Fidelity) in ways that probably wouldn't seem normal these days. 

We covered the breadth of music, from Be-bop and Swing (Hi Stuart!) through Punk (Hi Graham!) R&B and Funk (Hi Libby!) Disco (Hi Audrey!) Ghastly Chart Pop (Hi Jan!) ALL back catalogue (Hi Jim!) weird pre-Americana (Hi Brian!) standard stuff (Hi Jill!) through others and back to me and my love for rock, metal, and guitar instrumental music.

We worked bloody hard for Richard Branson and for a smaller Virgin shop (albeit on two floors) we sold a TON of stuff. 

We would rack out say every Iron Maiden 12" single available to that point (approximately 7 or 8 titles - most of them imports at around £6) 25 deep on a Friday and they'd be gone on a Monday. 

Dundee is a music town. 

At the time is was delineated by its tribes, and they mostly all bought music (some nicked it of course but that is another story).

When they excavate Tayside in 20,000 years time I am sure they'll find a layer of Talking Heads 12" singles, with sub-layers of The Mission and The Cult; pockets of Led Zeppelin and Neil Young and Van Morrison; a Smiths magma, Dirty Dancing Soundtrack shale and don't forget the Farley Jackmaster Funk sub-layer . . .

Then in 1988 disaster happened and the Virgin group, in their bid for world domination, sold off 67 smaller shops to Our Price to fund said operation.

Everything changed overnight. 

Goths sacked for making the place "look too dingy"; colleagues told on a Wednesday that they were starting in a different branch on the other side of the country on the following Monday; myself, banned from serving the public because my hair was long; managers placed under so much pressure that the Voddie bottle in the filing cabinet was de rigueur.

It was a Pogrom. 

Our Price only wanted their own people in charge and as such made it as difficult as possible for ex-Virgin staff who asked too many questions.

On the whole, to us seasoned vets, Our Price People seemed to know little about music save what they'd seen on Top Of The Pops, and they were consistently placed in charge of people who breathed, slept and ate at the broad table of The Gods that was Modern Music.

The Regional Manager for Scotland and his henchman were like the Batman and Robin of rules. 

They had precious little musical knowledge between them, but knew what to say (sound familiar?) and knew how to enforce the new house rules. 

Having engaged their ire (like the Eye Of Sauron) by standing up for a part-time Saturday girl (who was brilliant at her job but got sacked all the same) the pressure came to bear, and I found myself (after a period of great pressure and angst) in the position of having to resign.

Bastards.

It was difficult.

They call it Constructive Dismissal - being forced into a corner where your only option is to resign.

And then like a hand reaching down into the mire of despond, Rock City came along (Hi Graham!).

You've never heard of them, but they were a secondhand and new shop based in St. Andrews in Scotland in the late 80's/early 90's. 

And they gave me a job. 

I think the proto-KT Tunstall bought some records there.

It was a great little business - furiously busy at times, and then tumble-weed at 11am on a Winter's Tuesday morning. 

I really enjoyed my brief time there; discovered great new/old records; learned the ins and outs of the used vinyl trade; bought stuff; sold stuff; had big laughs with customers; cleared the shop with the then virtually unheard of  Nirvana's 'Negative Creep' and just generally had a good time that kept the wolf from the door.

Then one day I got a phone call:

"Are you Herman Sheephouse?"

"Yes."

"The same Sheephouse that worked for Virgin?"

"'Yes."

"Would you like a job?"

Well it paid more (and more importantly had access to all those luscious guitar import CDs that weren't available in the UK) and so I found myself in the longest stretch of my career.

Hello CDS!

For 31 years I have dealt with customers that are wonderful, weird, annoying, funny. knowledgable, kind, appreciative and generous. All of us linked by that one thing - music.

It has been the bread of my working life.

I have handled and processed boxes of stock from literally around the world.

I have dealt with and sold music to people from the UK through Europe to Turkey and into Asia, Japan, and Australia and New Zealand, and on into Polynesia, making the jump across the Pacific into the whole of the Americas from Alaska and Canada right the way down to Patagonia.

Every phone call has been a discovery, pretty much, from funny regulars through to people who were/are quite frankly cracked. 

We've had loonies, freaks, 'normal' people, passionate music fans, celebrities, musicians, all sorts.

I've fielded questions and sourced the impossibly rare.

It's been a blast actually.

Back at the start in CDS, pre-internet days, it was a brain and a bunch of catalogues that got you there; that and the ability to follow leads and jump, Sherlock-like, on a trail long-gone cold, in search of that elusive catalogue number. 

Wonderfully logical, cats (that's a 'trade' term) were Willie Wonka's Golden Ticket, so long as you could match them up to the correct distributor.

Once all the tumblers clicked into place, you then had to assume the item was actually still in stock - not always the case when dealing with catalogues that were out of date as soon as they were printed. 

This was the days before live computerised stock control too.

But like I said, you got your magnifying glass out and followed the bloodhound!

Navigating the seas of Asian catalogues, replete with Asian characters, transposed Ls and Rs (Yes, Beatres, Lolling Stones etc); through to Russian broadsheets printed on the thinnest paper ever; underground dance culture catalogues that arrived incognito through the post; home-made affairs cobbled up from a typewriter, photocopier and proper old school punk cut and paste; glossy corporate affairs through to the firm favourite single-sheet faxed over.

I saw it all, and reacted appropriately.

Ordered.

Imported.

Paid the MCPS sticker.

Sold the disc.

I was going to write a bit here about how massive online retailers, well one in particular, selling at cost or below cost have pretty much destroyed an industry I loved, but I won't because what I was going to write was so full of piss and vinegar and sheer bile, it frightened me, and was probably all too easily misinterpreted as the rantings of someone who is just about to lose their job (4 days and counting down folks!)

I will say one thing though to you, the buyer and your need to save a couple of quid with the easy lazy click - you're playing into some strange hands and you're dreaming yourselves into the most bizarre Dystopian future that nobody could have imagined.

I'm not criticising though, just pointing a few things out, because they're coming for you too.

So in the future, when you're in a lovely new care home, that was made possible because you released the equity in your house to a super-massive corporation, and you're currently having your drool wiped by a Care-bot, branded by the same, whilst shitting into a nappy branded by the same, you'll be able to watch a lovely drama, starring a holo-actor that used to be someone to do with Star Trek and laugh and point and remember a time when freedom and choice went hand in hand.

Y'see, unfortunately in the process of this worldwide application of megalomania, my beloved Music Industry has been hit and left at the side of the road like a squashed forgotten hedgehog.

In the UK, the small. local record shop? Pretty much gone. 

America - the Mom and Pops; the local emporium of joy and discovery? All gone.

Europe is a wasteland apart from a few small beacons of light - Hi Judith! Hi Ron!

Everywhere you look in the world something massive has taken place, and all because you the customer want the convenience of sitting on your bum and purchasing with the easy click, and more to the point, want to save money - no matter how little in real terms.

Like Isis firing missiles and lobbing grenades at Ancient Babylonian monuments, so a vital, collective culture, has been utterly destroyed.

Record shops were a right of passage. 

They held meaning. 

They were where you went and met people who weren't at all like you and you loved them, or people who were like you and you hated them.

They informed, annoyed, delighted, transported, captured, enthralled. 

In short, they gave meaning to people's lives. 

They brought joy.

And it's nearly all gone, courtesy of that easy click. 

And gee, you get that CD delivered, in a day or less. 

You don't go and rake. 

You don't go and ask to listen, or grab an opinion from another customer. 

You don't head home, wondering whether you've bought the right thing. 

You don't get that transition whereby you can't really tell if you like it or not, but you've bought it so you might as well give it a go. 

And that wonderful, slow, transition from strange taste to nectar, whereby your new purchase becomes the most important thing in your whole life. 

No, you send it back - done - not my taste man.

No wonder we're in a cultural maelstrom of shit and brilliance, that's more blended with shit than it is with brilliance.

Cultural discovery and curiosity have been poleaxed.

"Like this? You'll love this!"

As the Algorythms (yeah that is misspelled - so what!) judge your 'thing' and chance is largely by-passed, you are only fed stuff you like. 

Your whole DNA of taste is laid bare and open to what something thinks you'll like.

How fucking boring.

I've done this for long enough to know that I don't even know what I do and don't like.

That's the beauty of being a human.

You could take the super-highway to your destination and get there in double quick time, or you could go via the backways and maybe, just maybe, you'd find somewhere you liked even more.

I know which I prefer.

And that's what world-dominating online retail has done. 

I lay the blame firmly at someone well-known's feet.

Well I would except he is in space.

Saving mankind.

With an old guy.

And that as they say is that.
My work is now in the process of 'winding down'.

The future is cancelled and certainly more uncertain than I have ever known it.

To coin a phrase that weirdly and coincidentally I found pencilled on the wall of our house when redecorating a couple of years back (it is literally 3 yards away from me as I type this, buried for the future under wallpaper):

A Dickensian Requiem

"2 paid off, December (??) 1883."

God only knows what losing your job in 1883 must have been like.

My thoughts are entirely with the spirits in this, because to me it has felt like a death in the family.
And I'll draw a line under it there.

On the positive side, and to quote a meme that is entirely my own:

"Time is the most precious thing you don't own."

I'll see how things pan out - I have time to dedicate to photography and all the million things I've always meant to do, but have never had the time for.

I bless the day I met my wife - without her, things would be considerably darker.

I feel positive in the weirdest way.

So until the Solstice turns and the nights start drawing out again, this has been an unusual one and as always thank you for reading.

As you've no doubt realised there's no photography. 

Normal service will resume in the New Year - Winter is here - what better time to break out the 5x4!

To you and yours and to your attitude to the world in general, be kind to people.

Mankind needs to act now for the greater good of mankind.

I wish that the era of egotism and greed were coming to an end, but sadly I can't see that. 

As long as you keep buying and believing in these really very socially awkward people and their dominion over data and technology, then they'll continue to stamp their weirdness on our future.

Culture will start to feed on itself, instead of growing.

The future is branded and wants every last penny.

It's not the world my parent's fought for in WWII.

Nor is it the golden Space Age that my contemporaries and I foresaw back in the 60's and 70's.

It's something considerably darker; more akin to the Film Version of Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep.

And I really don't like that.

So on an end note, be good, take care and even if one of you starts thinking about how the world we're going to hand to our grandchildren is going to pan out, we can make it turn now.

For good.

We have to.

Be good and take care.

Merry Christmas

Herman XXX

*** Good buddy and long time FB commentator Bruce Robbins has told me that I was exactly the sort of guy that could have ended up in the photography department at DC Thompsons. Who knew!