As threatened, throughout April - in celebration of Record Store Day - I offer up a daily post related to all things record shop.
And if any of it sounds like a Manifesto, consider it good practice for my election campaign next year.
Day Twenty One of this steaming pile of japery, kinghell boring bullshit and contentious nonsense...
21/04/22
Friendly User
It's around this time every year, a few days before The Big Day, when indie record shop owners the World over fall into fits of apoplectic rage or morbid torpor - depending on their predisposition to editing Excel spreadsheets - and overheating laptops are reduced to lumps of molten slag and unwieldy frisbees launched across offices, shop floors or, er...back gardens.
Here's why:
There are lots of different record companies and each one has a uniquely formatted Excel spreadsheet which they send out to their accounts each week. Every order placed, be it presales, back catalogue or Record Store Day, has to be submitted on the specific spread sheet. Most of the year this is as routine as brushing your teeth; twice a day, filter out the crap, rinse and repeat.
But on RSD, when the eager beavers are requiring shops to produce lists of every RSD title they have in stock, all of those unique spread sheets need trimming, editing, rearranging and finessing; not like brushing your teeth at all, more like tidying up your bikini line. In the dark. With a spoon.
Eventually (maybe when RSD gets 'remastered and reissued' in 2024) some smarty pants at RSD Towers will have a light bulb moment and the idea of ONE SINGLE ORDER FORM submitted to the RSD organizers who then send out the information to the record companies will become reality instead of a tantalizing vision of The Future.
"See? I can do Excel spreadsheets. I just choose not to" - Stewart Lee.