Oldest record store threatened
p2pnet.net News:- If you’re a music lover and you live in Cardiff, Wales, you must have shopped at Spillers Records in the city centre.
It’s not merely the oldest online store, it’s the oldest in the world anywhere and is listed as such by Guinness World Records.
That being so:
Drwy lofnodi’r ddeiseb hon, rydym yn cydnabod pwysigrwydd siop recordiau hynaf y byd – Spillers Records, a sefydlwyd yn 1894. Rydym yn credu y dylid ymdrechu i gadw’r siop yn ei lleoliad presennol ar yr Aes yng Nghaerdydd. Rydym yn gal war berchnogion y safle, Helical Bar, i gydnabod bod Spillers Records yn ased i ganol dinas Caerdydd ac yn rhan o’n treftadaeth gerddorol ac i adlewyrchu hynny drwy godi rhent rhesymol er mwyn sicrhau dyfodol y siop.
That’s the Welsh version of a petition to keep the store open.
It was started by Owen John Thomas, a Plaid Cymru member of the Welsh Assembly at the suggestion of his son and press officer, Hywel Thomas, “who passes the shop every day on his way home,” says The Independent.
Now, “We the undersigned recognise the importance of the world’s oldest record shop – Spillers Records, founded in Cardiff in 1894 and believe that every effort should be made to preserve its presence at its current location at the Hayes in Cardiff,” says the petition’s English text.
“We call on the landowners, Helical Bar to acknowledge that Spillers Records is an asset to Cardiff’s city centre and part of our musical heritage and to reflect this view by charging an affordable rent to safeguard its future.”
Spillers, in the Hayes Market, “is standing in the way of a £700 million property development that will bring a new department store complex to the Welsh capital,” says The Times Online, continuing:
“The landlords have warned Spillers that they face a rent rise of 50 per cent. Lucrative high street chains such as Zara and Borders are expected to replace independent retailers.
“The rent rise was a bombshell,” the story has Spillers co-owner Nick Todd saying.
Sony’s Columbia Records, “was alerted to the plight of the shop by the Manic Street Preachers, two of whose members, Nicky Wire and James Dean Bradfield, used to busk outside Spillers in the 1980s,” says The Independent. “A statement, signed by Wire, Bradfield and fellow band member Sean Moore, says: ‘Spillers was a lifeline. It gave us our musical education – the only record shop in Wales where we could find music that made us who we are’.
And, “It has struck a real chord with us,” the story has Jim Fletcher, marketing manager for Columbia, sayig.
“We are the oldest record label in the world and they are the oldest record shop.”
(Thanks, Cade)
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Also See:
The Independent – Sony artists back bid to save world’s oldest record store, December 9, 2006
The Times Online – World’s oldest record shop in the death grip of a developer, December 1, 2006
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