The Joy of Charity Shops

Despite being a long time music fanatic I've never had a record shop near where I live. No Virgin Megastore, no HMV, the closest thing I have a record shop is the Sainsbury's.

So that's why the charity shop has a special place in my childhood (a childhood that is very much ongoing). Raiding the charity shops has allowed me to be exposed to some great music and I probably have about 300 to 400 Cassettes/LPs/EPs/CDs that I've obtained from my rummages. I even volunteered at a charity shop about 5 minutes from my house - it was a Notting Hill Trust shop (a charity that helps provide housing for the homeless). My only payment is getting 90% on all the stuff I bought (20p an album, bargain! I still have quite a few of these albums).

I've been seeing a lot of backlash to a soon-to-be-published review of the British High Street undertaken by Mary Portas. What some people may not know is that all charity shops receive get 80% relief on the business rates tax (http://www.charityretail.org.uk/howcharityshopswork.html). So Ms Portas is claiming that these charity shops are clogging up the streets and taking up space that should be used by commercial shops. She thinks that there should be a cap on the number of charity shops that are granted this relief.

So there have been a number of articles, such as this brief blog by the Red Cross:
http://blogs.redcross.org.uk/fundraising-and-events/2011/11/why-charity-shops-are-good-for-the-high-street/

I have some agreement with David Mitchell's article on Mary Portas. Whilst there is a slight revulsion at this is attack on these bastions of British fuddy-duddy-ness, it is always refresh to see attacks on sacred cows when they are grounded in reasoned arguments. Plus, as David Mitchell notes, it's good to see government commissioned reports turning up with a concrete suggestion. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/30/david-mitchell-mary-portas-cameron

I am not sure about Mary Portas' suggestions. What I do know is that charity shops have been expanding my mind with great music (and books that I never quite get around to finishing) for years. The joy of looking through the charity shop CD rack is something I treasure. Looking through the array of names and trying to work out if you've heard of these artists before - something that's a real joy for a music geek such as moi. What you get out of a rummage corresponds directly with your musical knowledge. The cost of the albums allows you to be more risky in your musical tastes (I'm currently listening to DJ Shadow's 'Endtroducing' - something that I've always heard was a landmark turntablism/hip-hop/electronica album - something worth paying a pound for).

I like to think that this has made musical taste slightly more eclectic than most of my friends. When I play some of my favourite albums I fondly recall them as treasured finds and I remember my initial reactions: The Smiths by The Smiths (boring 80s pop - overrated), After the Gold Rush by Neil Young (strange whining girl-like voice - what's the fuss about?), Throwing Muses by Throwing Muses (really strange, crazy, erratic and unlistenable). Plus, I certainly would never had amassed my collection of cassettes, which really do feel like relics from another time and probably merit a blog piece themselves.

The great thing about surveying charity shops is that you get an idea of the regular donors. Some shops are regularly stacked with "for promotion only" CDs - this is where you'll get loads of new stuff on a pretty regular  basis. You sometimes get a wealth of cds from about 10 years ago and you can hazard a guess at why the CDs are being given up - probably a young person clearing out their old crap and moving out of the area. Sometimes you get loads of real great stuff for a period time - when this happens I always wonder whether a music fanatic has recently died, with his (avid collectors of things generally tend to be male) family boxing the stuff up and dumping it at a Charity Shop with no real knowledge of the loot's worth.