Bath Compact Discs – which regularly featured on lists of the type ‘The Best Little Shops in Bath’ – has now closed. The website is still going (although the directions to the shop are still there as I write this) and business continues online, but after a big sell-off in December (in which I picked up some recordings I’m very glad to have) the former premises in Broad Street await another occupant.
It’s a standard comment on such events to lament high business rates and competition from the internet, and to regret that one cannot now serendipitously find interesting CDs by browsing through a physical rack. But there are so many more things about the shop that I miss:
- the flyers and posters for local events (admittedly the posters came and went. At one point they used to fall off the wall and set off the burglar alarm). And with this the advertising opportunity for one’s own concerts
- the information about new releases put out by record companies and left on display
- the possibility of bumping into music-loving friends, or just striking up a conversation with a fellow music-lover over a rack of CDs
- trying to identify the music playing as you came in
- comparing reviews in the published CD review guides. Yes, you can do something similar on the internet but it’s not as easy
- the knowledgeable staff
- teaching children about repertoire by showing them the names of composers on the racks. One of mine liked going through the composers one by one: ‘Delius – isn’t he the one you don’t like?’