The Independent is publishing extracts form Last Shop Standing on their website! Follow this URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/music-magazine/music-magazine-features/extracts-from-graham-jones-last-shop-standing-week-3-1737509.html
Graham sat in on Cerys Matthew's show from 1.40 on BBC Radio 6 Music 8th October! Listen again at their website.
Graham is talking at Housmans Booksellers in Kings Cross at 5pm this November 25th.
The cherry boys, featured in Last Shop Standing, are now online! View their myspace at http://www.myspace.com/cherryboysmusic
LAST SHOP STANDING DISCUSSED ON RADCLIFFE AND MACONIE SHOW ON BBC RADIO 2 -
After I was interviewed for BBC Breakfast TV on Thursday morning, I had the fantastic surprise of listening to Radio 2 whilst replying to emails about Last Shop Standing, hearing Stuart Maconie, Mark Radcliffe and Sid Griffin rave about Last Shop Standing for 50 minutes.
Here are a just a few of the nice things they said:
'Knocked off my backside by this book'
'A terrific read'
‘A fantastic book’
The result was Last Shop Standing was showing at number 13 in the Amazon pre -release charts.
At number 14 was Piers Morgan's forthcoming book, God Bless America.
His book had a TV series and probably a six figure-advertising budget. My book was edited by a combination of my 15-year-old son in between studying for his GCSE's and my neighbour. A design team costing tens of thousands probably designed his sleeve. Mine was done by a mate who said no need to pay me just buy me a pint. Piers probably used a top photographer costing thousands.
All my photos bar one were taken by me, on a £49 camera bought from Argos in Chippenham.
The result is that we are desperately getting more books printed for the release of the book on April 6th to cope with demand as the first 3000 will be sold out by day of release.
You can listen to the interview on the radio 2 website, it was broadcast Thursday 19th March. Alternatively, the following link will take you there:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00j5hl8
Last Shop Standing is now the official book of World Record Store Day: http://www.recordstoreday.com/Home
UPDATE - DETAILS ON PERSONAL APPEARANCES - IN YOUR AREA - CHECK 'NEWS AND EVENTS' TAB FOR MORE DETAILS AND OF HOW TO GET A TICKET TO THE LAUNCH PARTY
Last Shop Standing, the forthcoming book by debut author Graham Jones, documents the decline of the independent record shop. Feel free to look round and send a message if you have any ideas or comments regarding the book. Graham's myspace can be accessed at www.myspace.com/lastshopstanding
Here is the book's foreword, seen publicly for the first time, given by music journalist David Sinclair:
FOREWORD by DAVID SINCLAIR There is a romantic image of the local record shop which Nick Hornby captures with exquisite detail in his novel High Fidelity. "The shop smells of stale smoke, damp and plastic dust-covers, and it's narrow and dingy and dirty and overcrowded....this is what record shops should look like, and only Phil Collins' fans bother with those that look as clean and wholesome as a suburban Habitat."
The shop in Hornby's book is staffed by a bunch of oddballs, united by an obsessive love of recorded music and committed with an almost missionary zeal to the business of supplying it to the public. The owner measures out his life in an endless succession of music-related lists – everything from his Favourite Records (Singles) to his Top Five Dream Jobs.
Graham Jones, one of the founders of Proper Music Distribution has been doing his dream job – or variations on it – for most of his life, and the true story of his time spent working in and around the world of independent record retailing is every bit as colourful, funny, strange, and occasionally sad as any fictional yarn.
Graham has some lists of his own, and in Last Shop Standing he has amassed many extraordinary tales of the best shops he has done business with over the years and hilarious accounts of the worst. He reveals the truth about chart hyping and shines a light on some of the extraordinary shenanigans that have regularly gone on behind the scenes as record companies go about promoting some of their biggest hits (and misses).
But the most shocking list is the one that begins and defines Last Shop Standing: a roll call of some of the 540 record shops that have closed in the last four years alone. For record retailing is an industry in crisis. Beset by the onward march of the supermarkets, the growing popularity of music downloading and a host of other rapidly emerging market trends, the traditional record shop has become an endangered species.
While Graham recognises such problems, and explains them with an insider's knowledge and eye for detail, he remains committed to the future of the industry that he loves. As well as being a eulogy to an era that is fast fading into history, Last Shop Standing is also a celebration of the unique spirit of comradeship and entrepreneurial ingenuity that has enabled so many shops to keep operating successfully in such a harsh trading environment. All of which makes this a most timely and important book.
Graham has amassed a fantastic collection of anecdotes on his travels around the record shops of Britain, and Last Shop Standing is a unique slice of social history and record industry folklore. It is also a damn good laugh.
