As well as music news and reviews, we here at musomuso often chat to bands and artists about their influences, how they got started and other interesting things that you might like to know about them. For a while now, I wanted to step away and turn the spotlight 180 degrees and focus on the unsung heroes of the music industry, this could be a live music photographer, a stage manager or maybe a festival promoter in an attempt to find out more about their story and how their journey panned out over the years.

For the first in the series of this feature, I chatted at length to Sim Rich, the owner of Rich Mix Records in the heart of Brixham, which specialises in pre-loved LP’s, 12” & 7” vinyl, CD’s, cassettes, musical instruments, books, memorabilia and retro HI-FI.

Formerly called The Cavern, the shop was run by Roger Stafford, someone whose musical journey started way back in the late 1950’s in South Devon, come the 60’s Roger was a regular on the live music circuit and often played in the popular venues around the Torbay area to anyone looking to experience the sound of the time. A carpenter by trade, Roger remained a music lover and had various record shops over the years. The first time I met Roger was when he had a small music stall at the back of an indoor market near Castle Circus in Torquay, I used to work in a bank and often used to spend my lunch hours selling Roger bootleg cassette tapes from concerts that we had attended in the late 80’s, bands such as The Mission, The Sisters of Mercy and live recordings taken from Reading Festival were all top sellers and he often called me for more tapes to be dropped into the shop. From here, Roger moved to Paignton and opened a small record shop near Palace Avenue, I had moved to a bank in Paignton by this time and again, spent my lunch hours in his shop, chatting about music. I think it was after this that he relocated to Brixham and opened The Cavern which was situated on Bolton Street, not far from the Town Hall.

Sim has had a very colourful career to date, he started out as a barrister, then setup his own building company and is now the new owner of a record shop in Brixham, quite a journey I’m sure you’ll agree. I asked him how the record shop purchase came about in the first place.

“It was the last record shop that I knew about in my area, I went in to have a look around and met Roger the owner and after a chat, he said that he was looking to sell the shop. I was coming to the end of my days with the building company and was thinking about going into business selling antiques and it was at this point that I thought that being a record shop owner would be a good move. I spent the next few Saturday’s with Roger, getting more information about the sale, I had built up a mental assessment of what I thought the value of the stock was worth and at this stage, there was no discussion around me taking over the premises, it was purely the stock that I was after. Roger said that he was looking to sell the stock with the premises and gave me a price. I went away and crunched some figures, returning to Roger later that week with a counter offer which he duly accepted, making me the new owner! I considered renting a storage unit to house the stock but the rent of the premises was so cheap, it actually worked out to be the better option and would save me having to make countless trips in the van to rehome all of the stock whilst I renovated the shop. I took time to completely gut the shop, fitted new storage units, replaced all of the shelving and decorated it from top to bottom. The plan was to open the shop at the start of April 2020, plans were put on ice as the country went into the first lockdown, I finally did the deal on June 30th and the shop re-opened on July 1st 2020. Looking back, it was a very good arrangement as I didn’t have to borrow money, re-mortgage the house and the worst case scenario was, if it all went tits up, I would be left with £15k worth of stock that I could sell online!”

I asked Sim how it felt to finally be the owner of a proper record shop and whether it was a dream of his to be in this position in the first place…..

“Never! I have people that come in and say that I must be living my dream but this was never the case, literally, I bought records throughout my teenage years, probably into my early 20’s and then in 1991, I stopped buying records altogether (in favour of CD’s). I kept my records, I sold a few in order to fund my traveling and it wasn’t until about 4 years ago that I purchased a record, I can’t even remember which record it was or even WHY I bought it…..but here I am, 4 years later with over 2500 records crammed into my study at home, how the hell did that even happen? I could talk about record buying for hours and I love nearly all aspects of it, it’s a fantastic hobby/addiction!”

I read about people’s attitudes changing when they went from being someone who consumes music to running a record shop and I asked Sim if his attitude to music had changed (for better or worse) since he has taken over the shop.

“What I haven’t done is open a shop purely to service my own collecting which I know a lot of people have, I am there to sell records. As an example, for every 200 records I buy in, I might only keep one for my own collection, I’m not interested in compiling collections of bands that I don’t really like purely for the sake of having them in my collection. If I see a record that I really want for myself, I’ll keep it. I work with music all day long, there’s always music on in the shop whilst I’m working and when I get home, I sometimes just want to lie on the couch and enjoy the silence, I wouldn’t say that music has damaged my consumption of music but I do it during the day rather than in the evening which is what I would have done after being on a site all day long. My focus is to have a shop that people like coming to, they can purchase records at a sensible price and we all win at the end of the day. From a point of view of my own listening habits, I guess that it has helped me to narrow things down, I have a list of maybe 50-100 records that I would REALLY like for my own collection, if they come through the door, then yes, I would keep them for my own collection but the chances of them coming in are VERY rare as they were from a certain time (1969 – 1974) and were only released in the United States. If they do come in, it’s a win for me but otherwise, I just add them to the stock list and get them out onto the shop floor as soon as I can. I recently purchased a collection of ‘Madchester’ records (Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets etc) and if I were a collector of this genre, I’d have happily taken them home but I have absolutely no interest in them whatsoever. This has also changed the way that I buy records, I tend to find nowadays that I may only purchase 1-2 records per month but these will cost me a lot more than I would have traditionally spent on 10-15 records”.

Rich Mix is currently open from Wednesday to Saturday which provides Sim with 3 days, back to back, to recharge his batteries, keep the house clean, do the laundry and ironing and make sure that there is food in the cupboards, I asked him if he has ever considered opening 6 days per week as most shops do these days

“I noticed that Roger (the previous owner) would often get complaints as he didn’t really have a set pattern regarding when the shop would be open, I used to do my record shopping on a Saturday and when you travel to a city and find that shops are closed, you’re disappointed. I only open 4 days a week and this is the same every week so my regular customers know this and will only come and see me when I am there. I have thought about this and I honestly don’t think that I would sell any more records being open another 2 days a week, especially when you factor the time and effort that I have to put in to make that happen. I really look forward to going to work now, this isn’t something I can admit to with other jobs, I guess because I have 3 days off every week, it means that I am returning to the shop on Wednesday, completely refreshed and full of vitality, ready to start the week again. I need to enjoy it as much as a customer does, if it’s clear that I’m exhausted and tired, the customer may not have a positive experience and this may be the deciding factor as to whether they return to the shop in the future. Overall, I find that this model suits me well, my regular customers know when I’m there and it means that I can spend 3 days doing my bit around the house”.

I suggested that it would be an interesting experiment to see if there was a noticeable difference in the takings after doing a month of 6 day weeks as opposed to 4 day weeks….

“I actually went to a record shop in Bristol on a Tuesday and I found out that they’re only open on a Saturday, I chatted to someone who had a shop next door to the record shop and he said that the owners can take as much on a Saturday that they would have done after being open 6 days a week, all of their customers know that they’re only open on a Saturday so they go in for that one day and spend all their money in one go!”

When Sim took over The Cavern, he made some changes during the first lockdown and I was keen to learn more about what he did internally prior to opening….

“I cleaned every square inch of that shop by hand, I re-priced and re-packaged every LP and Single (I’m still to get round to doing the CD’s), painted throughout, installed new lighting, altered the position of racking, installed new wall shelving, basically, the whole of the interior has been revamped since I have taken it over, making it a much brighter, cleaner, tidier and more organised shop”.

I said that the times I went into the shop prior to Sim taking it over, I noticed that the same stock was on the shelves time and time again, it seemed that the previous owner never ‘cycled’ stock in order to offer regular customers something new to discover the next time they came in, I asked Sim if this is something that he considered as important in order to keep things fresh and make sure that his ‘regulars’ returned time and time again.

“As a buyer myself, I was very conscious of this and after visiting shops in the past and seeing that the stock hadn’t changed much since the last time I visited, I made a point of changing the records that were on the wall shelving, even if it meant just moving the stock around, someone might spot something that they hadn’t noticed before and of course, it gives the impression that new stock is being injected all the time. I do often bring out new stock from the store and remove records that may have been on the racks for a while, for me, it feels like a new shop and when I look around, it gives me the impression that the stock has changed. A lot of my regular customers are tourists so when they are only visiting once or twice a year, I guess the stock will have changed significantly since their last visit. I also have 3 boxes of ‘New Arrivals’ which is a great place to regularly cycle stock as people always have a look through these boxes and often find something that they’re after. There are some sections that don’t change that much, for example, if you were to look in ‘Prog-Rock’, you’ll find that the stock has been the same since I took the shop over, I can’t replace all of the stock with new stock as I don’t have a great deal of this genre to replace it with in the first place so it just sits there, happily minding its own business until a ‘Prog’ fan comes along and gives it a new home! – I think as long as people get the impression that the stock is changing on a regular basis, they’re happy. I’ve actually got plans to steal half of the stock room to display the vintage HI-FI equipment which in turn, will free up space in the shop for more records and CD’s”.

The Rich Mix shop is only about 7-8 feet wide but has 3 separate areas where different items are located, Sim has done a great job of utilising space on the floor, mid height racks and wall shelving to display records, books are located with the music DVD’s and the CD’s are currently located in the same space as guitars and HI-FI equipment, I honestly don’t think that he could arrange it any differently and maybe the next step would be for him to move premises in order to make more space available….

“The shop is PLENTY big enough, it doesn’t look a lot from the street, my desire is to be a shop that offers a variety of musical items, I could move to bigger premises but then where do you go, that would be full in next to no time and then I’d be looking at another unit to move to and so on and so on! There’s enough space for me to display everything that I want to display, it just forces me to be more selective of what gets displayed where in order to capture the customers eye and keep them coming back for more”.

I mentioned above that Rich Mix deals in pre-loved LP’s, 12” & 7” vinyl, CD’s, cassettes, musical instruments, books, memorabilia and retro HI-FI, I asked Sim if there was anything that I had missed….

“Basically, I stock anything to do with music, be it music that you can play (records, CD’s etc), equipment that you can play it on (CD Players, Turntables, Cassette Decks, Amplifiers etc) and anything else that’s remotely related to music. I have a cabinet with all sorts of things in, old transistor radios, photos of musicians and bands, sheet music, general music memorabilia, concert programmes, if it’s related to music in any way, I am interested in having it in the shop.”

It’s always interested me as to what shops sell the most of, I assume it would be vinyl LP’s and CD’s but I wanted Sim to expand on this….

“Second hand LP’s sell the best, hands down, if you need to know which genre sells better than others, I would say that Metal, Punk, Post Punk, Northern Soul and Reggae sell better but as you go into other genres, I’ll say that I have no idea because there is no set pattern at all. This afternoon, I sold a few cassette tapes to separate customers, one guy wanted some tapes for his T2 VW Camper van which has a cassette player installed, a 14 year old girl bought a couple as she just liked the concept of them and because of her age, she never grew up with them and was fascinated by them. I’ve also sold a few 78’s in the past few days, these have now become regular customers who often buy a lot of what I have in stock so I’m always on the lookout for good clean 78’s! You honestly don’t know what to expect which makes it kind of fun but on the other side, quite annoying at times, especially when I’m updating the racks with new stock, for example, I might be refreshing the 70’s section and I think to myself that I don’t really want to put an album by The Carpenters in there but then, the next customer that walks in asks if you have anything by The Carpenters! It really is very hard to discriminate against anything! I put a post on Facebook the other day after a 19 year old lady came in and literally fell in love with a Julio Iglesias picture disc, you REALLY cannot tell what will sell from one day to the next! If I could open a shop purely for what I wanted to sell, I’d fill it with children’s music, oddities, novelties, library music, Israeli Folk Music, Jewish chanting because I get more of a kick out of selling something like this compared to someone buying a Radiohead LP because it’s not something that happens every day.”

I thought for a moment and surprised myself as I could only think of 3 shops in the local area, Phoenix Sound in Newton Abbot, DRIFT in Totnes and Rich Mix in Brixham, does this mean that his regulars only visit his shop or do they cast their musical nets further afield to see what other gems are out there?

“There is nothing else in Torbay other than a guy who sells in the indoor market, there are certainly no other independent record shops that I can think of anyway, the three record shops in Paignton have all folded and closed and show no signs or re-opening anytime soon. Now this should be great for me as a business but I don’t feel that I would be doing any better or worse if there were other shops in the local area doing the same as I do, fortunately for me, there aren’t any (at the moment) so until this changes, I guess I’ll never know.”

I fondly recall spending a whole day (yes, a WHOLE day) walking around Torquay, visiting the various record shops that were open at the time, there were 2 Our Price shops, a Virgin Record Shop, Soundz on the Post Office roundabout, Ronnie’s in Torquay indoor market, KRM in Castle Circus, Torre Records right at the top of town and you really could spend a good hour in each one. Compare that to a trip to Torquay nowadays, there are no record shops anymore and it takes me 30 minutes to wander from the top of town to the harbourside and back again. You’d think that with vinyl making such a comeback over the past 5 years, you would see more high street shops popping up but I guess that with the creation of online shopping services such as Amazon, you would have to think twice about your venture….

I wanted to learn more about Sim’s regular customers, who were they, what did they buy and what does he do to keep them engaged and keen to come back for more time and time again….

“I have attracted a variety of regular customers of all ages, some are from Brixham, others come from Dawlish and Teignmouth specifically to visit the shop, the first thing I try and do is remember their names! There are many customers but only one of me and I’m not getting any younger! I chat to them a lot, I do this because I think it’s great for business but it also allows me to learn about their tastes and then I can actually make a note and when I am offered a collection, I’ll contact them so they can have a look at the records before they go on general sale. There is a feeling of pride in being able to satisfy a customers demand and then go that extra mile in holding back a record that you think they might like and this has proven to be a very successful business model as not only do they often purchase what you have put back for them but you also build a rapport with them and they are then looking forward to the next time they visit the shop. I’ll also offer to order things in for people, this is great for anyone who doesn’t trust online shopping and allows me to provide an even better customer service. My aim is to make people feel as if the shop is part of their community, yes, I am there to make money, it’s a business after all but if I can do that at the same time as pleasing people and make them want to come back in next week to have a browse, even better! Believe it or not but I do get a lot of people who only visit Brixham once or twice a year, recently, I had a lady come in and she was looking for the number one album from October 1971 (do you remember the charts?), the album was the soundtrack to the movie SHAFT and I knew that I had it somewhere but could I find it whilst she was in the shop? She left and 30 minutes later, there it was! I called her back as I’d arranged to order in a copy for her anyway, told her that I had found the copy that I had in the shop and offered to send it to her in the post, she was over the moon and was able to give it to her husband for his 50th birthday this week, it’s little things like this that really make a difference!”

I was interested to get Sim’s thoughts on how he would try to assist a youngster who wanted to start their own record collection, where should they start and what would he suggest in order to get them interested in a band or a particular style of music?

“I will, from time to time, lend records to youngsters to listen to and if they like what they hear, they’ll come back and buy it, if not, they simply return it and try something else. We then work together from this point in helping them to build their collection based on what they like. I have a number of teenagers who come in and browse the racks, we chat and I find out what it is they are into and sometimes, they don’t know what they like and it takes a while to find something that they are interested in. It all depends on how communicative the person is, if they are a shy teenager, it takes longer to get information from them, some people come along and have a very clear idea of what they are after, this makes my life a lot easier! I have a ‘Best Of’ section where I keep any ‘Greatest Hits’ albums, if someone comes along asking for a particular artist, I will normally lead them to this section and start to go through that with them as you know that the album will have ALL of their hits on it and from that, the youngster can then decide if they want to travel back to the earlier albums that may have a couple of the classics on it but also to discover tracks that aren’t so well known. Spending £6 on ‘The Greatest Hits of ELO’ as opposed to £12 on an earlier record with only a couple of hits on it is a lot easier to swallow when you get to the till. A couple of times I have had to admit that I am unable to assist them as I have shown them maybe 5-6 albums and they don’t really show any interest in any of them and I think the only thing they can do is go away, check out YouTube and Spotify and get a better understanding of what bands they DO like then they can come back and we can chat further, it’s things like this that allow them to explore in their own time and also helps me to recommend other bands or artists that may sound similar to what they have heard already. I am very aware that this may seem like I am trying to hustle the customer and get them to make a purchase, I would rather that they didn’t buy anything from me at first, go away and check out some of the bands that I have recommended and then come back when they are happy and discuss things further, this approach benefits both of us and I feel builds a stronger relationship between the shop and the customer.”

We chatted about my musical journey which started in the early 80’s, I remember being at a friend’s house after school and I could hear music coming from his older sister’s bedroom, I wandered inside and she was lying on the bed, singing along to WAR by U2, she kindly offered to make me a copy of the tape (oh some on, it was 1984 and although they said that home taping was killing music, I think they had bigger fish to fry!) and away I went, like a pig in shit with my first cassette tape. I must have listened to that album a thousand times and when I went to see my friend again, his sister asked if I wanted to try another album by U2, this time it was ‘October’ and so on until I received a copy of ‘Boy’ and to this day, these three albums remain in my top 50 all time favourites. Looking the other way, I honestly think that the last album I really enjoyed by U2 was The Joshua Tree which was released in 1987, this isn’t to say that I haven’t picked up copies of later albums along the way but I can’t say that I have listened to any U2 album as much as I did the first three back when they were still classed as current. Now I’m not knocking U2 at all here, I tip my hat to them for the way that they have continuously re-invented themselves to fit their music around what is considered ‘fashionable’ at the time, look at their ‘POP’ album, it’s basically a collection of dance floor classics, re-mixed by the likes of Paul Oakenfold, produced SOLELY for clubs to play on a Saturday night to encourage the dance music fans to take a sideways step and broaden their musical knowledge, a very clever move indeed.

Sim added, “I agree, you can take an artist that you like but you won’t necessarily enjoy EVERYTHING that they have ever put out, it may be that during their career, they move away from their roots and expand into other genres and this may not be for everyone. Take Elton John as an example, a great artist whose music has pretty much remained the same throughout their career versus another band that have moved with the time and have had to re-invent themselves in order to remain ‘current’ in the eyes of their followers. I find that I am drawn more to the unusual side of music and I would never class myself as a mainstream listener and as a result, there is a huge body of music out there that I am just not interested in at all. I guess as a record shop owner, I am willing to expand my knowledge of bands but please don’t ask me to ‘like’ them because it just won’t happen! I think that having the ability to describe a band to a customer is enough without having to get all sentimental and slushy, telling them about the first time you heard a track and what it means to you etc…. I think that since I have taken over the record shop, I have learned more about bands that I previously wouldn’t even entertain, as I said earlier, I’m still no fan but to be aware of their music is exactly what I need to do in order to understand what my customers are looking for. You’ll know that my musical taste ranges from 1969 – 1974 and although I will consider music from outside of this 5 year time period, I often find that 90% of what I like does fit, strange but true! Believe it or not, 80% of my home collection (circa 2500 LP’s) is from that time period.”

I recall a conversation with Sim last year about Record Store Day and whether or not he’d be up for taking part. Initially the answer was a resounding ‘YES’ but seeing as he had opened midway through the year, he hadn’t left enough time to get an order placed and decided to leave it for 2020. I was keen to hear his views on RSD now and whether or not Rich Mix would be added to the list of shops taking part in the annual event.

“I’ll be entirely honest, we chatted about this last year and I was up for doing it in the first year of opening but it was too soon from the date I opened and I quickly realised that it’s not simply a case of phoning through an order and they turn up the day before the event and away you go so I knocked it on the head for 2020. I was planning on getting involved this year but after giving it some thought, I realised that I don’t stock that much new material and what I do get is from an intermediary wholesaler so I don’t really have a relationship with the labels who were putting out the RSD exclusives, this would mean that I’d be very lucky to even get a fraction of what I had ordered and I can only think that the customers would be let down as I would have very little to offer them after they may have queued for hours outside the shop. As for 2022, I’ve been thinking about it and my gut feeling is that I probably won’t be taking part, not because I don’t think it’s a good idea, it really is but I just don’t think that it’s for me. Financially, I take as much as I need to keep the wheels turning, I know that RSD is quite an expense as shops buy the stock up front, I have been to so many shops who have stock leftover from previous RSD events and even I have stock in the racks from past events that has never sold, in this respect, I think that I could end up spending a lot of money on stock that I might not be able to sell. I would have done it in order to boost my customer numbers but this is happening organically and that means that I don’t need to go and take part in something to maybe gain a couple more customers who I might then only see on an annual basis. After taking all this into account and knowing that it will take me an awful long time to get organised and prepared and build up the relationships with the distributors and also take details of who is looking for what and maybe then, not being in a position to guarantee that I will even get any of the stock, I decided that I’m not going to do it next year. This isn’t a firm decision and I dare say that my arm may be twisted in the future, never say never.”

I explained that I have been covering RSD at Phoenix Sound in Newton Abbot for the past 4 years and arriving at 6:45am to see 65 people in a queue along Queen Street is a sight to behold. I do feel that RSD has lost a little of its ‘pizazz’ over the last few years, with RSD items ending up on eBay moments after they are purchased and some stores even listing them on eBay ahead of the actual day, this adds to the problems that RSD face every year. If you can sweep that to one side, it is a great event that brings vinyl lovers together every year and you do end up seeing the same faces in the queue, it’s good to catch up with them and chat about which of the exclusives they have their eyes on. I also like when they come to pay for their records and watching their faces as the total amount is read out, I think the most I have ever seen someone spend in a single transaction was just shy of £800, let’s hope he had a sole bank account!

Now that you know that Sim’s musical tastes sit between 1969 and 1974, he is also a fan of retro HI-FI and other quirky memorabilia, I was keen to find out, from all of the various musical formats on offer since the dawn of time (78’s, LP’s, 7” & 12” records, 8 tracks, Minidisc, CD etc, what is his favourite and why….

“I would say LP’s, however, to a degree, it’s whatever I manage to get my hands on. 7” singles were never really of interest to me in the past and it wasn’t until I took over the shop that I learned to love them for what they are, they are their own entity, you get one track and a B-Side track and that’s it….you play the 7” record to hear those two songs, they serve no other purpose. Once I get a bunch of them out on the racks, I start to get interested in them, it happened with the 78’s as well, initially, the thought of cleaning them was a real chore but as I started on them, I started to look at the labels and the year they were produced and it soon became apparent that each record is a unique piece of music, I really like them now! I love my cassette tapes, I get them out and line them up and just enjoy looking at the inner sleeve that often folds out a few time to house the lyrics and all of the liner notes, fascinating things indeed! I’ve actually started to collect the old head cleaning cassettes, there are LOADS from all of the different manufacturers, the covers really bring back memories! So to cut a long story short, LP’s are what I collect personally, I use CD’s in the van because they’re convenient, I don’t use Spotify, I don’t ‘stream’ music, this is due to me not being aware of HOW to use the service but I think it boils down to being able to hold a physical object, be it an LP or a cassette tape, you own something, you can read the liner notes and when you’re done listening, you can slide it back into the rack and pull another one out and go through the process all over again! As a collector of music, I enjoy driving to a new town and spending time thumbing through their racks in the hope that I might unearth something from my ‘wants’ list, if all you do is buy albums from iTunes, I feel that as a fan of music, you’re really missing out, each to their own I guess. I liken the process to surfing, I enjoy the whole process, getting up early whilst its dark outside, driving to the beach, waiting for the sun to rise, paddling out, turning, sitting and waiting for the right wave, paddling into the wave, riding the wave in and then you fall off in the most ungraceful manner and repeat the process all over again, heaven!”

I chatted to an artist at a music festival a while back and asked them a similar question around preferred music formats and they surprised me by saying ‘Minidiscs’. For one, the guy was only in his mid 20’s and the Minidisc format died out many years ago, I fondly recall buying my first portable Minidisc recorder from the Sony Centre in Torquay in 1994 or 95, the sound was MINDBLOWING, so clean, so perfect….there really was nothing to rival it. This also reminded me of the countless arguments I would have around what sounded better, Vinyl or CD’s, I’ve given up with the battles now as I am far too long in the tooth, I even think that it has been scientifically proven that CD’s DO sound better than records, whatever, I prefer the sound of a vinyl record, I love the slight surface noise as the needle hits the groove, I like that crack and pop as it gets going, I love the fact that all of these nuances on my original pressing of Dark Side of the Moon have been picked up over the years since 1973 and the fact that the vinyl is nearly as old as me intrigues me no end. To me, playing a record is a ceremony, selecting the record, pulling it from its protective sleeve, teasing the record from the dust jacket, dropping it onto the platter, using my brush to gently clean any surface dust from it, dropping the needle onto the disc and then, the opening bars of track 1 of Side A just makes the hair on my neck stand to attention, I don’t think you get that feeling with any other format (other than other records of course).

Sim commented, “I know exactly what you mean and I share your feelings completely, my collection at home has a section where I store all of the new records that I am listening to or are yet to listen to and once I have had my fill, I’ll store it somewhere else on the rack and that’s the way I do it. The way that people store vinyl at home, you never really see the cover art, you’re just looking at the spine and from time to time, I’ll pull 20 records down and just enjoy spending time, looking at the artwork, reading the liner notes and then putting them back and pulling another bunch down and repeating the process, it’s a very calming thing to do and it gives me a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction.”

I was keen to get Sim’s views on what it is about the humble vinyl LP that has stood the test of time and still attracts people from all walks of life to purchase it today….

“I don’t know…..why has there been a vinyl revival? I really don’t know…..there is definitely a chicken and egg thing there, if bands and artists were not releasing new music on vinyl, we would not be buying it, simple. I think that it’s a combination of a renewed interest in the format, record companies picking up on this and the record label putting more records out there to satisfy the demand and then there’s the good old marketing and advertising, look at any advert on the TV these days, so many adverts have a turntable in the background, I think it’s been fuelled as a ‘trendy/hip thing’ that appeals to so many people. Vinyl is ‘retro’, people love retro things, they’re cool, who doesn’t like to be cool? Do people buy them because they’re meant to sound better? If you asked 100 people to go into a record shop, maybe 50 of them would have no interest and would rather download or stream music on Spotify but there’s the other 50 people who absolutely LOVE the experience, the more that have been encouraged to do this will go out and do it more! It’s clearly not for everyone but I am happy to say that it IS for me!”

A good friend and I conducted an experiment a while back, we had original pressings of some early albums by Dire Straits and he also purchased some re-issues of the same albums, we would play a track from the original pressing and then the same track on the re-issue and compare notes. It was surprising to see that we both agreed that the original press sounded a lot warmer, heavier, richer than the ‘re-mastered’ re-issue which sounded lighter, tinnier and more produced but not in a good way. I was keen to get Sim’s viewpoint on this….

“I actually sold someone a poorer looking original version of an LP today, I had the later re-press in stock as well but he was adamant that he wanted the original press despite its condition and price. There are certain people who like to collect early pressings from bands and artists, I liken it to buying reproduction furniture. Someone might like a Charles I dining table, it may cost them £12k but it has the history and everything that goes with its age, they wouldn’t want to have a repro piece, in the same way, I think certain people have it in their head that an original record will never be bettered and it was the way that the record was meant to be heard. I have a copy of The Verve’s ‘Urban Hymns’, first pressing, lovely condition in the shop for £125, go down a few racks and you will find a re-issue in there for £25 – Now, unless you have a particular reason for wanting the original copy, why would you buy it over the re-issue? I’d rather have my shelves filled with albums costing £6 - £15 which will sell quickly rather than a shelf full of albums priced at £100 - £150 which will turn into museum pieces! I do own a number of original pressings by a band called Caravan which I grew up listening to a lot and I guess I wanted the original versions purely for sentimental reasons and I guess that other collectors may think like that but for ALL of the bands that they collect.”

I asked if he thought that there was a period when records were being pressed at a lower quality to that we are seeing nowadays…..

“I have pressings from 1971 that sound incredible and I have some pressings from 1971 that sound awful, early Billy Joel records suffered from this. Maybe there were periods when records were pressed when the quality was better than others, I guess you would have to compare them to find out for yourself. I have a few jazz customers that are very particular about the condition of their records and I don’t think that I have any customers who come in and say that they are only interested in early pressings because they sound so much better than the later re-presses.”

I used to ask people what they thought the future of music looked like, would it be physical, would it shift to downloads and streaming only, would we all have an implant in our heads that we could download music to directly? would records go on forever? will there be a new format that has yet to be invented or have we already created all possible ways of consuming music and the only way to move on is to improve on them? I guess if you look at the various offerings around Hi-Res music, FLAC, Lossless file formats, will we be looking at an even higher bandwidth which will give us ‘perfection’?  I was interested to hear Sim’s comments on this topic….

“From a business point of view, I would hope that there would be a continued interest in purchasing pre-owned records from shops. Look at when LP’s were the thing back in the 70’s and 80’s, did we think that there was something out there that sounded better? I don’t think we did. I never foresaw the file streaming and download options which pretty much became popular owing to the fact that everyone was buying a computer for their home and using that to live their life, I mean, where could it go from here? I guess it’s going to go one of two ways, either they improve the sound quality or the general accessibility to the music, maybe there will be a massive cloud storage service that will house EVERY piece of music EVER created by an artist and the database will be so huge, you’ll be tempted to subscribe in order to access it. For accessibility, implanting a chip into your brain could be an option I guess….. There is a constant need to improve on what we currently have so I am sure that there will be teams of scientists somewhere, working on improvements to the music and how better we can access it, neither of these are obvious to me at this time. I think from a collectors point of view, there will always be a requirement to have shops that sell music and if you look at LP’s, they were superseded by CD’s, vinyl is back and it can’t be superseded again as it already has been, the alternatives are already out there and someone has chosen to keep vinyl alive rather than the format being made obsolete because of pressing plants being closed down owing to lack of demand. Maybe, in the future, the materials and manufacturing processes to create a record will become illegal and as a result, the pressing plants are forced to close and we are forced to consume music in a certain way, this is definitely something that I can see happening because the whole world is fucked and we are all doomed! I guess it’s similar with the government trying to remove all petrol and diesel vehicles from the roads by 2040 (or whatever year they decided), it doesn’t mean that there won’t be still vehicles out there with a combustion engine, you just won’t be able to drive them anymore. Having thought about this, I really would like to be a record shop that sells nothing but pre-owned music, I’d like my carbon footprint to be as low as possible and even if they did close down all of the vinyl pressing plants, it wouldn’t affect me as I would have no use for what was being manufactured….It would certainly be a unique selling point. On the other hand, as a shop, you are expected to cater for as many customers as possible and there will always be a customer who is looking for new records.”

Everyone’s lives revolve around social media these days, I wanted to make sure that people knew where to find Rich Mix Records online…..

“Facebook is my go to thing, I don’t mind admitting that I am ‘technologically backwards’ and by the time I learn about all of these new-fangled platforms out there, they will have long since been de-commissioned and replaced by something else so please follow me on Facebook, I do try and update the page on a regular basis but if you are in the South West, head to Brixham, come and find me (Weds to Sat), there’s a wonderful coffee shop next door, grab a drink and pop in for a chat and see if you can find something that tickles your fancy!”

I’d like to thank Sim Rich for sparing an evening to chat to me and put up with my inane questions but I feel that by doing so, I have learned an awful lot about his approach to running Rich Mix Records and I hope that you are excited about popping into the shop for a chat and a browse through the racks, I guarantee that there’ll be something for everyone, assuming you like Julio Iglesias or The Carpenters….

Steve Muscutt

Musomuso.com