London’s Record Shops’ by Garth Cartwright was out on June 4, 2021.
Following ‘Going For A Song’, Garth’s acclaimed social history of UK record shops, Garth has teamed up with Spanish photojournalist Quintina Valero to document the central London record shops that survived the lockdowns of 2020. This striking book covers the historic London neighbourhoods of Soho, Camden Town, Ladbroke Grove, Brixton, Peckham-Camberwell, Stoke Newington, Dalston, Hackney, Bethnal Green and Whitechapel.
Each chapter details the area’s social history - and the record shops, from wax cylinder on that once existed here - alongside the shops that are now trading. Some have existed for decades - Rough Trade and Honest Jon’s have international reputations - while others opened in March 2020 then had to close after 3 weeks as Covid forced a lockdown. That the old and new shops survived - and how they survived - is documented here with exclusive interviews and insight into what makes each emporium unique. Quintina Valero’s stunning photos capture the beauty and intimacy of these remarkable independent traders.
The foreword to London’s Record Shops is written by Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayres of Cornershop, the brilliant British band who share Garth’s devotion to crate digging.
Life & Work
Bio:
New Zealand born, South London based, oft’ wandering, Garth Cartwright wears many caps. When not travelling, Garth is an award winning author, journalist, critic, broadcaster, poet, DJ, raconteur and music promoter.
He's long been established as one of the most incisive writers on music, visual art, literature, film and travel while his engagement with the Balkans, Romany Gypsy culture, the USA and South Pacific has won him an international readership.
Garth's droll wit and informed opinion have seen him regularly appear on BBC radio and he writes for many publications - The Guardian, The Financial Times, The New European, Jazzwise, Songlines, Women, North & South, the NZ Herald, The Attic, The Listener.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).