I’d love to join in the celebrations and, if they restore the wonderful downstairs classical department, where I spent many happy hours, to something like its former glory and hire knowledgeable staff, I’d certainly visit on my now infrequent trips to central London. But comments like “The site is expected to stock pop culture merchandise” give me pause, so I’ll restrain my enthusiasm until I get a chance to see what they’ve done with the reopened store.
Roger
Yes, our local HMV in Hull went from having a couple of racks for the vinyl a few years ago, to having the whole of the back wall full of it and just before the pandemic they built some very large ‘old style’ racks right near the front of the store, great to see!
And of course, at that end of the road you also had an amazing 2nd store in Hanway Street !
The classical department downstairs was amazing. Huge selection and an oasis of civilised calm beneath the mega city hoards above.
HMV had it’s back entrance on Hanway St, and there was 3? second hand record shops at one time, iirc
That was it. And was what I went there for. I got quite good at it. Train the Euston. Tube to Oxford St. Straight to HMV, downstairs. Browse, search, buy. back to Oxford St tube station and away. Easy…!
There were also some well-informed staff working there. I had several enjoyable conversations, particularly over new releases where they often disagreed with Gramophone’s reviews and pointed me towards albums I wouldn’t otherwise have considered.
Roger
I was just pleased to be able to find the versions of various works that I had read about. I was hardly ever buying new releases.
Yes, it was amazing. An oasis behind those tinted windows. Spent far too much in there back in the day, including the Leslie Howard ‘Complete Liszt’ box on Hyperion! We’ll see what happens. I’m really glad it’s back but I hope it won’t be taken over by the ‘non-music’ merchandise.
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