for the final time. This is terrible news, not least for its staff. The demise of Sanity in the physical realm marks the official end of a bygone age – the era of the high street music franchise. An era when awkward teens with ambitious haircuts could find a first job that so perfectly captured their interests – loud music, standing around doing nothing and being rude to strangers.
Being into music was a serious pursuit when I was 18. It was sport for people who didn’t like sport. We each had our teams and loyalties – Blur v Oasis, indie v dance, metal v everyone – who would fight for supremacy in the charts and music press. Being serious about music meant reading a vast range of music papers and mags with the kind of high-level research skills I rarely applied to my university studies.
The pay was terrible, the actual work tedious, but it felt like a vocation. We loved the proximity to music, to art, to the material of meaning in our lives. We were practising experts, performing a public service. We were good salespeople despite ourselves, because we cared about what we were selling, even as we took pride in being appalling employees. It was the most benevolent form of capitalism.
What we lose with the death of the music chain store is a social hub built around art. Galleries and bookshops are quiet places. Record shops were noisy temples to gather, gossip and flirt. Generations of teens would meet after school at their local Sanity to swap dirty headphones and instant reviews. I knew girls who would pool pocket money on a new CD and toss a coin to see who got to keep it and who walked away with a taped copy.
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