Well it’s been a much longer hiatus than had been intended after our plans in Spring 2016 to open a very unique and innovative vintage vinyl record store in Edinburgh, Scotland were thwarted at every turn by the City of Edinburgh Council Planning Department.
We still very much believe in the concept – a Bauhaus design-inspired vinyl record store incorporating an Italian coffee bar, a musicians-related art gallery and a comfortable lounge area with couches, magazines and books – but clearly we were ahead of our time and just too “radical” for City of Edinburgh Council.
Their loss…
The exciting development in the past two and a half years is that the business has now gone global!
That’s right, we are now located in Scotland’s fourth largest city – and the most culturally dynamic right now with the recent opening of the V&A on the Riverfront – Dundee and El Paso, Texas which is where we worked on this latest blog.
So why Texas?
Well not only is the state bigger in terms of land mass than France it has been the home to many incredible musicians:
- Townes Van Zandt
- Roky Erickson
- Buck Owens
- Meat Loaf
- Sly Stone
- Van Cliburn
- Janis Joplin
- Waylon Jennings
- Scott Joplin
- Stevie Ray Vaughan
- Don Henley
- Beyonce Knowles
- George Jones
- Blind Lemon Jefferson
- Lead Belly
- Bob Wills
- Kris Kristofferson
- Roy Orbison
- Buddy Holly
- Willie Nelson
just to name twenty of them and is also the location for some of the finest vintage vinyl record stores in the USA.
We recently spent three weeks travelling from Atlanta, Georgia to Austin, Texas and can confirm that Texas has by far the best vintage vinyl record stores and by far the jewel in the crown is All That Music in El Paso owned by George A Reynoso.
Look out for reports about the vinyl record stores that we visited in Atlanta, Athens, Nashville, Memphis, Clarksdale, New Orleans and Austin in future blogs.
Call it serendipity but we found ourselves in Texas between March and May of this year as we travelled all over the state crate digging for vinyl gems, from Lubbock in the north to San Antonio in the south, Austin in the east to El Paso in the west.
During our visit to El Paso we inevitably ended up at All That Music and met George in this nirvana for the vinyl record collector.
Over dinner and a few beers one thing led to another to the point that we now have a formal business relationship with All That Music and have just opened our US office within his building! Here are the pictures we took on our arrival today…
The US business is focused on two main activities:
- The sourcing of vintage vinyl in the US – primarily from All That Music – for export to the UK and European market with Asia to follow in 2019.
- The identification of talented unsigned American musicians and bands with the objective of bringing those musicians and bands to Scotland, the UK and Europe on tour.
From September 29th, 2018 our founder and chairman, Alistair Grant, will be sharing his time between our head office in Dundee and our new office in El Paso.
To get the US subsidiary up and running Alistair is currently spending four weeks in El Paso and will be posting regular blogs from there throughout his stay.
Very exciting times! It is great to be back!
And remember people…you can never have enough vinyl…
Radical Independent Music 
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