I've had a good, old raggedy day.

I watched the grey fluff sky grow into something much more blue and appealing over a watermelon breakfast. I felt good about the day because I knew I wouldn't be in waiting for e-mails or phone-calls. That's the routine that I've got in to, recently. But not today. Today I had a place to go to and an idea to execute.



Today would see the inception of Record Shop Road-Trip: a Pilgrimage Around Wales' Independent Record Shops.

I'm not planning on doing it all in one go.

It could take months. Years. even.

But I wanted to reflect this most important and overlooked aspect of Welsh music culture.

I'd bet my promo CD copy of the new Super Furry's album [which I'm loving more than anything they've done since Mwng] that shops like Cob have done much more for Welsh music over the years than my show. Shops like Cob are the real wells that people draw their music from. We're more like an occasional advert for those wells [and the water that goes in them].

I left Chester with a bundle of recording equipment and my wife's sat nav spilling out of my arms. I took the new Mr Huw album along for company, too. [But I locked it in the boot. I've got it on now, it's very good.]

I needed the Sat Nav to find Soundhog's house. He lives in Ruthin, but up a lane so bumpy my brain is omelette before I reach him. Which explains the torrent of wibble and flaff I then subject him to for the whole journey to Bangor.

Sorry, Ben!

We arrive late. I have grand ideas to record my impressions of the shop as I get close to it. However, as Soundhog kindly points out, I look like "one of those nutters" as I walk down the road with headphones on talking into a microphone. In my embarrassment, I throw my M-Audio portable recorder at the pavement. For a stomach-churning moment I am convinced that I have broken it. This whole journey, for nothing! I'd have to make some planet-sized excuses to the staff at Cob.

But, of course, I hadn't broken it.

Alan and Owen, the proprietors of Cob, are there with a friendly, slightly bemused welcome. My mouth becomes an incessant fountain of bullshit when I'm a little nervous and Alan and Owen get the full force of it until I've calmed down a bit.

Once that's out of the way, Ben and I go for a mooch in the 2nd hand vinyl section.

This is the true beauty of the 2nd hand record shop, the reason that enthusiasts travel, sometimes, 100's of miles to visit their favourite stores. It's that sense of wandering into the unknown and having no idea what you might stumble across. I used to think that real enthusiasts were on the hunt for bargains... that there was a speculate-to-accumulate aspect to being a vinyl hound. That may be the case with certain carboot sales or some of the less clued-up second-hand shops, but a shop as authoritative as Cob knows the right price to charge... the people who scour the racks here are here only for the music.

Now, of course, you can browse shelves filled with music in HMV.

In the corporate, high street shops the shelves are arranged in such a way that even I can find what I'm looking for. But shops like Cob operate to an entirely different principle. There the vinyl is arranged in such a way that you can find what you don't know you're looking for.

There's a delightful randomness to it, and in an age where everything is computerized and can be sorted at the touch of a button [if you can find the right button] it adds to the record shop's otherworldliness that such rules do not apply.

I go home with Melanie's first album on Buddha [excellent!], Fox's second album 'Tails of Illusion' [mostly shit] and the J. Geil's Band's 'Bloodshot' [which I haven't listened to, yet].

Alan is amused that I'm a little wary of showing him what I've picked up,

"We don't judge people on what they buy, you know."

I'd like to believe him!



Dic Ben from the Peth has come down to tell us how important Cob [both Cobs] have been to him with regards to giving him somewhere to get hold of decent music and also to stock the bands that he and his mates have been in.

You can see how much this place and it's vinyl halls of mystery means to Dic. It's almost as if he's talking about a family member as he expounds on his affection for Cob.

I talk to Guto, one of the shops regular customers. Guto is the antithesis of the stereotypical patron of an indie record shop: he looks smart in a suit and he pays in cash and not IOU's!

Even in our short time in the shop a broad range of characters comes in to have a shuffle through the stock.

Alan, Owen and the rest of the staff know them all by name and the kind of tuneage that they're looking for.

Our stay is all too brief [to us].

I'll definitely be back. Next time they won't have to worry about me wielding a microphone! Back to the top of the page...