Fopp

The closure of the Fopp chain has been covered with varying degrees of accuracy by the press – and while the loss of what has consistently been one of the best and most forward looking music retailers is disappointing, it is hard to feel much sympathy for the management in the light of the over-zealous expansion, the outright lies (MD, Gordon Montgomery maintained a week ago that they were not going into administration) and the shoddy manner in which staff were made to (conveniently) work a full calendar month without pay before being told at 4.45p.m. the day before closure that the game was up.

It will be interesting to see if Ernst and Young manage to find any takers for the multitude of stores given the current climate for high street music retail (link – with Tower gone, Borders maybe going from the UK and HMV and Virgin struggling, it may require some very special selling indeed.

And while it may be borderline good taste to find humour in a situation that sees so many jobless, then this comment posted on the Herald website warrants a mention:

Not me mate I spent 12 years building and operating Arch Studios in Glasgow, recorded many thousands of various artistes for washers. Oasis, Primal Scream, The Wets, Travis, Texas, Public Enemy, Pat Kane, Edith and the Ladies, Capone and the Bullets, The Styng Rytes, The Bored Housewives, Abandon your Head, The Scottish Sex Pistols, Blind Alley, Tom Morton, Danny Thompson, The Soviet Tractors, Fractile Four, Shelley Blue, Drew Mulholland, The Hemingways, The Pastels, Fergus Manson, Cath, Ramsey McVicar, Stairheid Dynamite, The Electric Fits, John McCourt, Scheme, Vilidian, Torino Move, Stewart Simpson, The Bopsters, Mind Garden, High on Water, The Beulay Bros, Sudden Groove Machine, Robert Jones, Nighshift, Ten Tall Men, Colourframe, Four Past Midnight, Paradise Music, Cutting Edge, Eddie Baskeville, Basic Notes, Catos Cat, Ken, White Noise, Roche, Martin Keilte, Moroccan Coco, Anaconda, Slow to Anger, Fool Circle, Tarot, The Mixers, The Fear, Distorted Truth, Lunatic Fringe, Baby Lemonade, to name a few ( I no longer have my diaries from 1980-1990) so I’ve only mentioned a small percentage here. Sorry to all I’ve missed. I hope this doesn’t offend you expat but perhaps it was you in the pub for years and you missed it all. Where was your studios then? You could say we along with Berkeley St Studios, Centre City Sound, Park Lane, Cava, Paladium, Back Shop, Tower, Sing Sing, Castle Sound et al STARTED THE REVOLUTION and you MISSED IT cos YOU were perhaps in the pub wi’ your fellow bevi heads.

Apart from bringing back memories of bands and studios that most involved with had probably wished to forget (although I wonder what the Soviet Tractors sounded like. . ). . stand up Archie of Arch Studios, the man who single handedly started the revolution while the rest of us were in the pub.