Thanks to babydiddy and others for the record shop suggestions. I've been to about 15 over the last few days (couldn't make it into Smallfish because they were closed last Friday), but my faves were:
1. Vinyl Junkies, the owner J-P (Jean-Paul, I think) is originally from France and quite a character, The only place that like American stores lets you preview new and used right off the wall and the boxes. (Just about every other shop in london I tried, you either couldn't listen to anything, which is the policy with the used record areas; or you have to request the staff to pull records off the wall or the store play-copy box. A fair bit of Detroit stuff tending toward both the KDJ/Moods and Grooves vein and electro. Lots of jazzy UK house, including very good back catalogues for quite a few labels (I finally got a listen to most of the Shaboom releases I've missed, for example). 2. Music & Video Exchange, which has the best second-hand/throawaway bins. No listening stations but there are plenty of good obvious picks. I think there are four of these now, and everyone agrees that the one in Camden Town is the best. In general, I found record shopping in London to be a chore. , and it gave me increased appreciation for the good American stores like Record Time, Tweekin (SF) and so on. phred
