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Of Trucks, Trains, Tractors and Monorails: visiting the Monorail record
shop with Stephen Pastel and Duglas T. Stewart
by Anna Battista
It's an unusually sunny day in Glasgow. The orchids are blossoming in the
tropical Victorian dome of the botanical gardens, a man outside the local
Safeway in Byres Road is shouting "The Big Issueeee!" and students from all
over the world are rushing to Glasgow University for their classes.
Everything looks the same as it was when I left the place four years ago.
It is as if everything has been preserved under one of those plastic, tacky
but irresistible snow domes: life is relentlessly changing, but it's
essentially the same. I walk further down the street, towards Hillhead
underground station, to pay a visit to my favourite record shop on the
second floor of the John Smith bookshop. Wearing the silliest smile of the
world, possibly grinning like a Cheshire cat, I arrive in front of the shop
only to find a Starbuck Café. Somebody must have rearranged my reality. I'm
pretty sure, this was a bookshop and on the first floor there was an
independent record shop. I perfectly remember it. Musician Stephen Pastel
used to work here and the shop had become a Mecca for The Pastels' fans and
for indie music lovers. This was a place were people could meet and talk
about their music addiction. I suddenly feel lost. This can't be true. This
is not Glasgow anymore.
"The record shop in Byres Road was part of a small traditional bookseller
we had in Glasgow for several hundred years, John Smith, one of the oldest
independent booksellers in the world," Stephen Pastel starts recounting two
months after my shocking visit to Byres Road, "but the company had become
badly run and when Borders and Waterstones opened in Glasgow, they became
very weak and weren't able to respond to the challenge of bigger companies
coming in and undercutting them. As a consequence, the company went down
and John Smith became an academic bookseller, but I guess the company will
have to close really soon since it has been really a disaster for the last
ten years and the director in charge messed up the whole company and ran it
into ruin." Stephen pauses for a minute, then he continues his tale, "When
the record shop closed I said, 'OK, this is good, it will give me more time
to do more music and to direct the label.' But then the fact that there
wasn't a record shop in Glasgow that would stock all the Geographic music
became really frustrating. There just didn't seem to be any good record
shops, so we started having the idea of Rough Trade opening in Glasgow as a
franchise. We pursued that for a really long time, but then, in the end,
they weren't ready to have a franchise, there were problems on how we would
administer our Internet sales, so we decided to open our own independent
shop."
We're sitting inside the Mono Café', near King's Street, in the
centre of Glasgow. Stephen is nursing a beer, the candle on the table
flickers and casts golden shadows on his fair hair. Soft music comes from
the back of the café, where the record shop Stephen is talking about has
just opened. It is called "Monorail." "For so long we thought we were Rough
Trade, but, when we decided to open our own indie shop, we suddenly had to
get a name," Stephen says. "I just brainstormed over all these names, but I liked the sound
of the name 'Monorail'. It just felt right, because the shop is underneath
a railway track, a monorail and there was also a geographical connection
because the person who invented the monorail, Louis Brennen, was from
Scotland, from Lough Lannagh. It just seemed so perfect! So I emailed all
the other people in our collective asking them what they thought about it
and everyone liked it."
Stephen founded The Pastels in Scotland in 1982, but he ran for years the
legendary 53rd and 3rd record label that helped to launch the careers of
Scottish bands such as the Jesus & Mary Chain, Teenage Fanclub, The
Vaselines, BMX Bandits, The Shop Assistants, and the Soup Dragons, and he
worked for years in a well known independent record shop. By now The
Pastels are revered by rock luminaries such as Sonic Youth and Nirvana and
Stephen has a massive experience in the music business, which might help the
shop. "For an independent shop to survive you need to have really good
knowledge and you also need to specialise. There is a nice group of people
who are running the store, I'm just one of them. Four main people are
involved in the shop, but another ten people are really helping us in
giving good advice about things. We are confident that we will manage and
make the shop successful."
Stephen is at present busy also working with his
new record label, Geographic, which he runs together with Katrina Mitchell
and Laurence Bell. "It is important that the record shop reflects a lot of
people's tastes, because you have to survive by stocking records that
people can't find anywhere else. Whereas with a record label, I think it's
good to have a very strong sense of what the sound of such a label should
be. I like it when a record label has a specific sound and you have some
idea of what a record on that label will be like."
Geographic is responsible for launching sometimes obscure artists, but
also for being different from the other record labels for one thing: the
records released by Geographic have a distinctive sound and are a little
bit just like pieces of an art collection you can't do without buying. The
catalogue goes from cinematic International Airport to eclectic Future
Pilot AKA, from Teenage Fanclub and Jad Fair to the mysterious Japanese
semi-obscure band Maher Shalal Hash Baz. The latter are Tori and Reiko
Kudo, two Japanese music lovers whose desire to make music comes from an
innerborn passion which is a fusion of deranged love for this art and of
hidden talent. The album released on Geographic contains 27 tracks: some
are instrumental, some others such as "Street Corner College" or "Wings Of
Dawn" are sung in Japanese. "Summer" is hopelessly sad, "Goodbye" is a
Carnival of sounds, "Unknown Happiness" is the main theme of the album and
"Heart And Soul And Mind" sounds as if you already heard it somewhere in
your life, but you'll never manage to grasp where and when, it is as if it
was there before the entire world was even created.
"Katrina and I were
staying at one of our friends in London. He writes for The Wire magazine
and he said, 'This record is the record for you, I know you're going to
love this' and he played this record to us and we simply loved it," Stephen
remembers when he first heard a record from the Japanese band. "We loved
the sleeve as well! Katrina and I could never remember the name of the band
because it's a very complicated one. When I came back home I phoned my
friend and asked him if he could get me a copy of the record he had played,
but he said Maher Shalal Hash Baz's record was rare and getting a copy of
it might cost about 100 pounds. He eventually found the record for us and,
yes, we were really happy, but we wanted to introduce their music to other
people, so we decided to release From A Summer To Another Summer (An Egypt
To Another Egypt and we also brought them to Glasgow and to the Stirling
Festival. People simply loved them, they were really excited by these new
band."
One of my earliest memories of living in Glasgow involves a National Park
gig at the School of Art: Stephen was DJing there and among the other
records he played Ennio Morricone's track "Una Stanza Vuota". At the
beginning, I thought this was a weird coincidence, me being Italian and
away from my home country. But then I discovered that, well, it wasn't
really a coincidence nor a tribute to my nationality, but a tribute to the
man himself, to Ennio Morricone. "I particularly like Morricone, he's maybe
my favourite musician, he's the composer I listen to most," Stephen
explains, "whenever I see a cheap Morricone record I always buy it and I
still play 'Una Stanza Vuota' when I DJ…" he smiles. I nod, meaning that I
know it since Stephen recently played the track again during an
International Airport gig.
He continues, "A while back we did a
Morricone tribute night in Glasgow organised by Duglas T. Stewart. Ennio
Morricone played a concert in London a year and a half ago, we know it's
quite expensive to put him on, but we would love to have him in Glasgow. I
would love to see Morricone…" he confesses ruffling his crown of hair, "You
see, Morricone is actually one of the favourite musicians of the Glasgow
music scene." In Italy there are quite a few record labels competing to
re-release Morricone's back catalogue. One of them is Dago Red, fancied as
one of the best exotica label around. "Dago Red is very expensive but I
think their records aren't really good quality records," Stephen claims.
"The way they re-master the music isn't always good. I must be honest, I
would only buy something on Dago Red if it were something I absolutely had
to own. I don't think Dago Red records sound very good if you compare them
to the original versions. Other record labels such as General Music and RCA
Italia records are much much better sounding."
Since we just mentioned the quality of sound it's inevitable to talk about
the local recording studios and the local venues. "Recording has changed so
much over the last ten years that there isn't always the necessity to be in
an expensive studio," Stephen states. "We now use computers so much and
it's a lot easier for us to record anywhere. There's a little studio in
East Kilbride that I really like. It's run by David Scott from The
Pearlfishers and we recorded Maher Shalal Hash Baz's album there. We also
recorded some stuff recently with John McEntire from Tortoise at Cava
Studio in Charing Cross, Glasgow. For what regards the venues, we recently
put International Airport on at the CCA in Glasgow, but we're trying to
find somewhere which is ideal. The CCA is OK at present, but we're really
looking for something else. I'm not sure it would be good to have bands
playing here at the Mono Café' because people eating don't want loud music,
so we might need to find another place."
Developing the Monorail shop,
finding a new place to do gigs, Stephen seems to be rather busy during
these days and the future is saving for him some new and exciting projects:
"We're working on Directorsound's record which is coming out on Geographic
in April 2003. Directorsound is a one man band from Dorset, he released one
track on our compilation You Don't Need Darkness To Do What Is Right that
also featured International Airport, the Bill Wells Octet, Future Pilot
AKA, Appendix Out, Telstar Ponies and Nagisa Ni Te. We think Directorsound
has made an incredible record, he more or less plays everything himself,
he's really great. I'm really looking forward for that to come out. We're
working on Maher Shalal Hash Baz and Future Pilot AKA's new albums as
well."
Future Pilot AKA's latest album released on Geographic, Tiny Waves,
Mighty Sea, was a pure gem: Future Pilot AKA's Sushil K. Dade dared to
invite to play on his record Bill Wells, Teenage Fanclub's Raymond
MacDonald and Norman Blake, The Pastels' Katrina Mitchell and Stephen
Pastel, Belle & Sebastian's Isobel Campbell and Stuart Murdoch, The
Delgados' Emma Pollock, Alun Woodward and Stewart Henderson, Eugenius'
Eugene Kelly, BMX Bandits' Duglas T. Stewart and Francis MacDonald and
Superstar's Joe McAlinden and Jim McCulloch, but to mention a few of them.
The sessions were recorded at Teenage Fanclub's studio in Glasgow and they
are a triumph of the most disparate sounds, going from the ethereal "Ananda
Is The Ocean", the Indian sensual drone of "Darshan", the hymn "Witchi Tai
To" and the rockish "Beat Of A Drum". "Shree Ram, Jai Ram" is a choir of
angels, "Om Namah Shivaya" is spellbinding. and the final litany "Prayer
for Ananda" is wonderfully apt to close this album in which dreamy
soundscapes and carpets of sounds, atmospheres of anointed sanctity and
heavenly talent entwine. Including an essay by Raymond MacDonald about how
the album was conceived, this magic and internationalist sounding project
avoids categorisation to gift the artists with the freedom to play what
they want and how they want it and gives the listener spiritual peace and
freedom of thinking.
"Future Pilot's 'Tiny Waves, Mighty Sea' was really
fantastic," Stephen agrees, revealing, "Sushil has almost finished his new
work which will probably be released in May." New surprises are in store
for The Pastels' fans: "We're not going to release a proper Pastels album,
our new album is actually a soundtrack for David Mackenzie's film The Last
Great Wilderness. On the album there are six or seven short pieces of
instrumental music and two songs, one with Jarvis Cocker from Pulp singing
and one song with Katrina singing. After that album we'll do some proper
Pastels music." The Pastels also appear in Mackenzie's movie. "We had a
cameo role in it," Stephen shyly admits. "We did the music mainly," he
underlines.
The collaboration The Pastels did with Jarvis Cocker seems to be only the
latest: in their musical life, the band worked with every single Glaswegian
band, from BMX Bandits to Belle and Sebastian, not to mention all the
international artists they've worked with such as Half Japanese's genius Jad
Fair. "We've collaborated with so many people that now it would be nice to
collaborate with ourselves!" Stephen exclaims laughing, "We recently worked
with a good sound engineer, John McEntire, and that was fantastic. But I'd
like to make Pastels music the next time we work on something, so maybe
less collaborations, just us playing and singing but with a very good sound
engineer, that's what I would like to do now."
Honourable mention to the
band Stephen's been listening lately goes to Glaswegian V-Twin: "I like
them a lot, they are friends, they are probably more rock n' roll than The
Pastels or the typical bands you might find on Geographic. But they are fun
and they have this collaboration spirit." Stephen concludes, casting a look
at the shop where a few clients are rummaging through the record racks and
Katrina is quietly working behind the counter. Guess right now the future
of the record shop is what's on Stephen's mind most, and I ask him to
recommend me a record to listen to: "Our record of the month is Faust's Best
of. They are a German group that existed since the 1970s and this is a
collection of their music. They assembled tapes and tapes, so the record
spans thirty years in their history, but, at the same time, it has a
special compactness. We also have an Optimo record of the month, Barry 7's
Connectors Volume 2 on Lo Recordings. We have a close connection with the
Glaswegian club Optimo. On the compilation there is also a Morricone
track…" Stephen smiles almost to convince me to buy it, then looks around
and sees BMX Bandits' Duglas T. Stewart hanging around the shop, so, while
Stephen goes back to assist the clients, Duglas takes his place and starts
recounting from his point of view what this shop means for him.
"In Glasgow there has always been a lot of creativity and there is also a sort
of music community which is very outward looking, there is a very
international attitude, but there was no record shop to provide a sort of
focus," Duglas says. "What a lot of big companies have been doing, with big record shops
or big cinemas, is move into an area, steal the customers of small indie
shops and art house cinemas, then, once they manage to get rid of the
competition, stop being specialised. But we realised we needed a
specialised record shop. It's really great to be able to buy records over
the Internet, but one of the most important things about buying records and
discovering music is having a place where you can go and hear different
things. Imagine having a record shop where the people who run it might
start getting to know you and suggest you records to listen to, or play you
some records they know you might like. That would be a different
experience."
"The main thing with the shop now is to bring new people in.
There is not going to be the aggressive 'what are you buying?' attitude in
this shop: you can go in and hang around and listen. I think a lot of
people from this kind of musical community definitely have an evangelical
nature about them. The greatest pleasure we can have in life is to turn
someone else onto a record or a band. And I think the actual position of
the 'Monorail' shop, in amongst the café and the fair trade stall, is just
like a real kind of community place. A lot of bands and musicians and
record companies in Glasgow supported it and brought money or goods to the
initial launch of the shop, because they felt it was something that it was
needed so much. There is a number of ideas to develop the shop such as
being able to sell over the Internet, because there are people living in
other areas who might not be able to visit the shop. Then the shop might
sell tickets or have people coming and performing in the shop. I would
think these would be all the things we might improve the shop with in the
future."
In Duglas' future there isn't only the shop: "We've actually done a new BMX
Bandits album. For a while I've been involved in lots of other things: I
did a Brian Wilson tribute night, a Morricone tribute night with people
like Eugene Kelly, Norman Blake, Bill Wells and some people from Belle and
Sebastian and The Pearlfishers taking part and performing together. It was
a great opportunity to do that Morricone gig, because we had a very wide
audience, with people who were maybe in their sixties, older people, and
younger kids. I don't know if Morricone heard about it, but it would be
nice if he did. The most exciting thing about it was that a lot of people
have only heard the Mondo Morricone collection or The Good, The Bad and
The Ugly or The Mission soundtracks and they wouldn't be aware of other
Morricone tracks. During that concert we played other songs so that people
might get to know them. Isobel Campbell and Eugene Kelly sang different
songs and people were so surprised to hear them. We also did instrumental
tracks of course. Among the other things we also recorded a Brian Wilson
tribute album. I think that some time in the future we might be able to do
other tribute nights, but I don't know whom we might be celebrating. The
point is I think that I have to go back and celebrate my own music for a
little while. We're going to release a new album early next year, so I'm
sort of excited about making music again 'cos there's also going to be a
BMX Bandits radio session collection coming out earlier next year and we're
going to play concerts again. For what regards my music, I think the
influences in it are probably still very very widespread. The music is
still quite eclectic, the new album sort of sounds a lot older now. I think
we're still influenced by a lot of records from the past, but I quite
wanted the new record to sound like a record that was made now, not like an
impersonation of a record that made in the 1960s. There are probably quite
a few things to learn from old records, but most of the people I admire
wouldn't try to make records that sound as a record that had been done
twenty or so years ago."
A lot of independent artists are at present releasing records in Great
Britain and experiencing various problems of distribution. "I think in some
ways it's a funny situation," Duglas starts, "it's now much easier for
almost anyone to make music, make a track and burn their own CDs in their
house or whatever. So, on some levels it is definitely quite easier to make
music nowadays: you can get music as MP3s that people can hear on the net
for example. So in a way there have been a lot of positive things
happening, but I just think the whole nature, the kind of cynical nature of
the music industry now, is not investing on people who can work on long
term matters. It is now a case in Britain that if someone gets signed to a
record company and they cannot get a top five hit as their first release,
they are maybe dropped straight away, even some mainstream artists. I'm not
a fan of someone like Elton John, but Elton John, or even David Bowie,
would not have been able to develop: they had a long time before they had
any level of success, they were able to develop and grow. I think now it
would be difficult for something like this to happen. Now you get a band
signed by a major company and they think they'd made it, but the first
record might not even be released and if it is released, if it doesn't
sell, the band gets dropped. I think it's very difficult for bands to get
their CDs played in the major stores and get a major distribution, unless
it is something that is very mainstream. But this thing is backfiring on
the majors because right now there is almost no real product of any worth
in the charts. People are becoming more and more disillusioned and they are
not buying things. Music is actually a dangerous, exciting and sexy thing
and not something just boring and bland. This is what the people involved
in the music business should understand."
In a way the music press has also become bland: "I think a lot of the
passion you had in fanzines has been transferred to people building fan
sites on the Internet, even though there is something quite exciting about
someone having some stapled pieces of paper at a concert saying, 'Please,
buy this!' It's a sad thing there aren't as many fanzines as there were
before, but it's also quite exciting to be able to get in touch with
someone from the other side of the world through the Internet and
communicate your musical passion to them. You see, I've never believed in
the NME. I always thought that the name is so appropriate because they are
the 'en-em-ee', the 'enemy'. I remember when Sounds stopped being published
and Elvis Costello said 'One down, two to go!' I totally agree with that
sentence. It's not that I want to see people who are passionate about music
not writing about it or getting a living out of it, I want to see them
writing something else, informing people about something more positive. A lot of the editors would also suppress what journalists passionately wanted
to write about. More than ten years ago, we would have writers from the
NME, but also other magazines, saying, 'I really want to write about you,
but my editor won't let me write about this or that'."
But, since music is, as Duglas said, an "exciting thing" we soon leave behind this painful
discussions about the evil world of the music biz to move onto something
else: Duglas has just visited the shop and he has already made a list of
records we should all buy "What I would actually recommend apart from the
Barry 7's Connectors Volume II is what I have in my bag!" Duglas stops,
rummages in his bag and conjures up a CD single. "It's Asa Chang's single,
it's mainly a tablas track: when I heard it I thought, 'Wait a second, this
is a really important record!' You see, I'm discovering brand new things
myself! But there are so many good records here, including Duglas T.
Stewart's solo album and BMX's first album, 'Sex On Vinyl', still available
here on vinyl!"
I smile, nod, promise I will buy something at some point,
perhaps some of the stuff Duglas has recommended me, or something
different, like some rare record from The Fall to add to my collection.
We'll see. Meanwhile it's good to know that I'm back between friends and
it's good to know that new clients will soon find new friends. The shop
might be a point of geography where people might meet with their fave bands
and find new or old records, or new or old friends, in the same way as it
happened to me.
In The War in the Air, H.G. Wells tells the story of how "There had been
talk of mono-rails for several years," but the real thing arrived only in
1907, when Louis Brennan exhibited during a meeting of the Royal Society in
London an "inaudible, but convincing" invention that would have stirred the
imagination of people for ages. A few months ago, there had been talks of a
new independent record shops opening in Glasgow. Now it's here, it has
arrived and it's called Monorail. Above all, it's not "inaudible, but
convincing", it's amazing and exciting and with the records it has got in
stock it will stir the imagination of music lovers for ages.
Issue 12, January 2003 | next article
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