Pilgrimage
By: Kaarina Sorensen-Jarrett, Co-Editor
As a culture so steeped in the media that we consume, it is only natural that there are some places which are especially near and dear to our hearts. So much so that we may deem taking a pilgrimage to be necessary. For me, visiting record/music stores has always been worth making the journey. Amongst many other opportunities, studying in London has provided me with the opportunity to visit a few. The two that I happen to have chosen for today are Reckless Records and The Great Frog.
Raised in Chicago, I was taught to consider Reckless Records as an absolute institution. Located in the heart of Wicker Park, it is situated perfectly between Damen and Chicago along the Blue Line (infamous for being the best place to cry in the city). I would spend hours combing through the CDs and vinyls, familiarising myself with the titles, the feel, the energy. With enough time, I would see which albums were most popular amongst my favourite artists as they never ran out of stock of second hand merchandise. The one artist that I never found, however, was the Arctic Monkeys. Before today, I had never in my life seen so much as AM in a record store. When I walked into the Soho location and the first thing I saw was Favourite Worst Nightmare, the name of an Arctic Monkeys album, posted on the walls. Seeing this, I felt just as safe as in my hometown. After scouring London’s significantly smaller brick and mortar store, I approached the register with The Clash’s London Calling, Jake Bugg’s self-titled, and The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. In an effort to make conversation, I asked the man at the till which location came first? The lore –as it were– is that the man who founded the Soho shop in 1983 moved to the States some years later. He later founded my beloved establishment in Chicago and simply stayed there. The two stores have a very different feel: In London, I was hit with wafts of incense and greeted with friendly bops over a spotify playlist. In Chicago, there are gumball machines with local art and records of 80s punk blaring overhead and a wall of cheesy rom coms in the far back (where I got my mom her collection of Downton Abbey DVDs), so it feels as though the brand has come quite a far way. It means the world to me that instead of staring at a sticker with the infamous skeleton hand on my chromebook in AP Stats, I finally got to step foot into that seemingly mystical other locale.
My infatuation with The Great Frog, another London-based music store, is quite honestly also Arctic Monkeys affiliated (yes, I intend to visit the Sheffield store as well). They have an alter ego of sorts for their B-sides called ‘The Death Ramps’ in which The Great Fog generated personal signet rings for the group that they used to don on stage quite regularly. After publishing my first article and receiving that paycheck, I walked right to their Lower East Side location in New York and got the brand’s infamous rose ring. Orchard street is in and of itself an experience, one which coincides well with the eccentricity that comprises an eclectic group of individuals who park their motorcycles outside the shop around one in the afternoon every day. It felt quite different to their much larger -albeit still relatively small- store (also in Soho, just the NYC location), where the employees were all twentysomethings wearing mostly black and chatting to one another about how their night out the day before was detrimental to their mental health and complimented my birkenstocks n’ socks combo. The feeling of community was still deeply ingrained, however the Soho store felt much more up and coming than New York, which holds onto the remnants of the music scene that took over in the eighties.
In any case, despite how the store differentiated from my youthful fantasies, it meant a lot to finally be able to visit places I have long since dreamed about (one of my escapist dreams was to work for The Great Fog London and live above the shop and have that be my life). I highly recommend visiting both shops even if you do not have such strong connections, the employees are incredibly kind and educated about their respective crafts.
