“My first record shop experience was on my 8th birthday. My godmother used to give me double my age in cash each year—that year I was cash rich with £16 in my pocket and I knew exactly how I was going to spend it.”
“Earlier in the week I had heard an American band on Capital FM (then London’s biggest station)—that band was called the Goo Goo Dolls and the song in question was of course their seminal hit “Iris.” I remember being struck by the acoustic guitars and the vocal. I needed to have this song in my life.
So off I went with my mum to my local HMV (a chain of record shops here in the UK with an iconic logo of a dog sitting next to a gramophone—His Master’s Voice—sadly HMVs cease to exist now). Without really knowing what I was doing I just said to the nearest shop assistant that I was looking for the Goo Goo Dolls. “Singles or albums?” “I have £16?—albums.”
He then dropped me off next to a series of bands beginning with G. I remember seeing Genesis not far away and it made me think of my Dad so I felt I was in good company. What I wasn’t expecting was to be confronted with more than one Goo Goo Dolls album to choose from. I read through the track listings on Superstar Carwash and A Boy Named Goo and didn’t recognise a single track.
It had to be on that last CD—Dizzy up the Girl—and there “Iris” was. And only £13.99. I picked it up all shiny and new and marched over to the cashier, proudly handing over the majority of my birthday money/life savings.
I remember thinking how excited I was to save up and come back for those other two albums. Not like today where we can just fire up the internet and listen to any piece of recorded music at the click of a button. I was hooked. I wanted to go back to the record shop and do it all over again as soon as I could.”
—Chris “Barney” Barnard
Passport to Stockholm’s “All at Once” EP arrives in stores tomorrow, August 28.
