Original Rockers by Richard King

Original Rockers Reviews

• 
  Tosh

  A beautiful memoir about....loss. What else is a memoir about, except loss. The subject matter are actually two in this wonderful book by Richard King. One is about the loss of a record store called "Revolver" in Bristol, England, and the other is a loss of a friend to perhaps suicide or overdose, or perhaps both. Nevertheless a very important book for one's who have worked at a record store in the past, and perhaps, in the present. Since vinyl stores are back with a force of a tropical storm.
  
  Revolver Records sounds like so many, yet special type of places where one can find unusual music - run by people who are not exactly sociable, but do know their music. The shop specialized in Raggaee and experimental music/modern jazz. Mostly at the height of the 1990's - which means the landscape of Tricky and Massive Attack, but oddly enough, very little coverage on these two artists - instead the author focuses on more obscure artists and the odd 'dub' recordings of that era and the 70s. Roger, the owner, is someone who is basically one step forward and two steps backwards type of guy - crisis brewing one after the other, and yet, his love of his business keeps the discs juggling all above. Towards the end of the book, King writes very well on a friend who shared an early passion for the solo Rod Stewart albums - and eventually he became an art dealer in London - that was at first successful, but soon became a nightmare of money owed, and like Roger, one step forward, and in his case, many steps backwards.
  
  I know there are quite a few books out now about the love of the music store and its products, but this one i think is a tad special, due to King's prose talents, and insight of his town Bristol, and of course, the beauty of a record store that functions in a very specific way - which to spread an aesthetic stamp on those who visit it the store - if they can get pass Roger the owner.
  
  
• 
  Ian Mapp

  Beautifully written eulogy to the Author's time working in Revolver Records in Bristol towards the end of the 20th Century.
  
  You know the type of store -"drop out" staff that spend more time correcting their customers taste than trying to make a profit. Little sense of commercialism. Little sense of business. A passion for music.
  
  The chapters do go off at tangents - a lot about Jazz, German experimental music before we get into the more expected Trip Hop scene in Bristol, via Crazy Horse. An assortment of odd balls are introduced, included a whole chapter on a london based Art Gallery owner that died from Laudanum and only has tenuous links to the record shop. Also a Winchombe born communist composer that may have been bumped off by M15.
  
  Bit of a rabbit hole book - that can lead you on to investigate more art and places in Bristol. The Bell in Jamaica street is on my list of places visit, not least because I found out it is a Butcombe tied house. The first two Massive Attack albums made for a pleasant evening in the Spring sunshine.
  
  A touch rambling but a very enjoyable read.
• 
  Ralph

  Eloquent requiem for a record shop. A lovely piece of writing.
• 
  Ivan Monckton

  Lovely writing, but the concentration on Reggae and Jazz to the exclusion of nearly everything else was a disappointment.
• 
  Theremin Poisoning

  This book was a bit intimidating and rough in a few patches simply because a majority of the focus was on reggae and British experimental jazz, two genres that I am unfamiliar with. The author's "time capsule" capture of a time when small record stores were meeting places, discussion salons, and hipness Meccas, however, transcends genre and comes from a place of authenticity. A time which once seemed endless is recorded here as a brief and transitory moment that anyone "of a certain age" should be able to appreciate. The emotion in the final chapters is intoxicating and worth the read regardless of one's musical tastes. Indeed, had these been songs and bands from my own vinyl collection, I would have rated it at five stars.
• 
  Dan Sumption

  Reading this book was a very personal experience. Revolver records was my second home during the three years that I studied in Bristol, and its owner Roger lived next door to me. The book brought back so many wonderful memories of Roger, as well as containing stories of him that were new to me - the drugs bust, Roger's kidnapping by gangsters, and the sad decline of the shop years after I had known it.
  
  The book tells the history of Revolver from the author's own very personal perspective as a former employee. Interspersed with this are deep dives inspired by records the author associates with the shop. Most of these make for great reading - especially the ones on reggae, free jazz, and, unexpectedly, Rod Stewart. All of this is bound up in reminiscences from Richard King's life.
• 
  Rich

  Wonderful book that's made me emotional for Swales Music in Haverfordwest. And led me down the dub rabbit hole...
• 
  Pat

  Richard King's Original Rockers is a thoughtful & amusing account of his time spent working at Revolver Records in Bristol during the early part of the 1990s. King tells us about his fellow staff members, the store's regular (and irregular) customers, musicians & industry figures. Most importantly, King writes knowledgeably & passionately about the records he discovered & listened to in the shop.
  
  Of course, King's nostalgic musical trip back to Revolver Records owes a huge debt to Nick Hornby's fictional Championship Vinyl in High Fidelity. Like Hornby's book, King depicts the shop's owner & fellow staff as magical keepers of a musical secret, who seem more interested in "correcting" their customers' perceived poor musical tastes rather than running a profitable business. Like Hornby's novel, the owner's unorthodox way of running the store & his unusual handling of their sometimes eccentric customers' requests leads to some recognisably funny moments. In particular, the time the local police called in the drugs squad to stake out the record shop is hilarious. The police had observed suspicious looking characters entering the shop, but not leaving with any apparent musical purchases. So, the police assumed that the shop was actually selling drugs!
  
  King often goes off on tangents when he devotes lengthy sections of the book to discussing obscure records he came across in the shop. However, these musical diversions are well-written & made this reader want to hear some of that music, so it's a pity this book didn't come with its own soundtrack album in either physical or digital form. King also writes passionately about the importance of an early album from the more well-known Rod Stewart in a moving chapter following the death of a friend. I also enjoyed King's communications with the renowned BBC DJ, John Peel, culminating with Peel staying at King's flat after a visit to Bristol for the Beeb.
  
  Original Rockers is a great read for any music fan who yearns for the days of being patronised by the staff of independent record stores. King reminds us that it was the musical prejudices & passions of these shops' owners & staff that gave indie record stores their particular identity & character & continually brought music fans back to buy records, CDs, badges & t-shirts. However, King suggests that it may have been their status as music fans rather than their knowledge of business that led to the success of these stores, which may also have ultimately led to their eventual demise as well.
• 
  Carmilla Voiez

  I went down a rabbit hole recently, while searching for regional voices from my home town of Bristol. Some of my discoveries were delightful - like a documentary about St Pauls from Windrush to the 21st century, others were merely nostalgic, like a book of Banksy's Bristol and this book - "Original Rockers".
  
  It was easy to read with amusing anecdotes interspersed with moments of sadness. While over half of the bands/artists mentioned were unfamiliar, the places took me right back to Clifton, Montpelier, Stokes Croft and St Pauls. Places I'd walked through, visited friends at, drunk in, and shopped at. For anyone with roots in Bristol between the 1970s and 1990s it's likely to appeal. For anyone with a love of obscure music of various genres and shopped at Revolver Records it might be a must read.
• 
  Samuel

  An enjoyable and evocative memoir of working in Revolver Records, one of Bristol’s most eclectic vinyl vendors. It has a bit of a structural problem, though, and wanders off too often into overwritten passages waxing lyrical about naff subjects like reggae, dub and Rod Stewart. He also spells the artist Francis Bacon’s name wrong multiple times, which is pretty unforgivable in my book.
• 
  Brett

  Rambling Revolver Records register-runner reminisces. It's not always apparent where the long write-ups on Dub Reggae and AMM are going, but it's unique at least.
• 
  Mike Finch

  I found it quite interesting but it's written in such a flowery, pretentious style to be laugh out loud funny at times. Record shop as mystical quasi-religious experience. Blimey!
• 
  Maarten Wagemakers

  "Original Rockers" is a strange yet compelling memoir with a writing style that does not always seem to be of one mind. Richard King balances terrific anecdotes from his days working as a record store clerk in Revolver, strange six-degrees-of-separation-like tangents on strange subcultures linked to the Bristol store, and deeply personal memories into a book that feels like a warm tribute and an education at the same time.
  
  It paints a picture of a record store utterly - and eventually tragically - defiant in the face of changing times in the music industry, refusing to play ball with record companies, new trends and artists or even acknowledging the CD as a serious medium altogether in the nineties. Instead, it sticks to catering to adepts of very specific subcultures, be it roots reggae, (local) freejazz, C86-like jangles or backroom krautrock - all the while berating the tastes of anyone coming into the store asking for music the staff deems to be inferior. King discusses some of these subcultures' direct links to the store at length, sometimes moving from funny store anecdotes to fullblown, multi-page wikipedia-like expositions on obscure freejazz and ambient within the same paragraph, seemingly without any concern to the actual flow of the narrative. This tends to be a bit jarring at first, especially as the original narrative seem to be abandoned for pages on end in lieu of descriptions of album covers, credit notes, obscure facts, and band members' side projects of bands you've never heard of to begin with - yet King always returns to his original point in a satisfactory manner, using the information overload as a fitting context to an emotional reminisce regarding the store that deeply affected him.
  
  Sure, the musical references are sometimes a bit out there and even snobbish - it's always a bit of an easier read when the music being discussed in a chapter is at least somewhat familiar - but somehow it seems to be a fitting tribute to Revolver and its self-willed, fiercely independent owner that never wanted to compromise anyway.
• 
  Matt

  A book for anyone who's ever loved, or perhaps even feared a particular record shop.
  
  A delightfully well observed account, giving a
  behind the counter perspective on life at the much lamented Revolver records of Bristol.
  
  The book is peppered throughout with funny, awkward and sometimes poignant observations about events and people involved in the shop, that gives an insider’s insight that a mere customer could never hope to provide.
  
  Read it and you’ll learn such things as the reason Can records could never be played in the shop, the curious ritual behind the auctions of new Reggae releases to soundsystem-operators, why the musical taste of softly spoken, serious buyers of Outlaw Country music should never be questioned and what John Peel did in the back room of the shop.
  
  There’s also a particularly brilliant Bristol reference, which sees the then owner Roger writing ‘Neoohhhvarhhhniahhl’ in chalk on the A-board of favoured artists outside. When questioned what this means he explains: ” ‘Nirvana…Spoken in a thick Bristolian accent”
  
  Theres also a lovely summation of what the shop meant to many of its customers:
  
  "Our clientele knew that by entering Revolver their visit ensured the shop was transformed from a liminal space into a threshold, a portal where the shop counter was not merely a location for purchases but a point of departure for the sharing of an obsessional love of music and a wonder at its ability to transfigure the everyday.”
  
  
  
  
• 
  Dan

  I loved this tale of working in a defiantly uncommercial record shop in Bristol.
• 
  Nate Krenkel

  4 stars for the bit where they go large on the Le Jardin De Heavenly promo...
• 
  Kqxs12345 phat

  Great Book? may i know how to oder this book?