I was saddened to receive this message this morning...
IT IS WITH SAD REGRET THAT "ABBEY DISCS" RECORD SHOP WILL BE CLOSING IT'S DOORS ON THE "25th NOVEMBER" FOR THE LAST TIME AFTER 25 YEARS IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS. FROM THE EARLY DAYS IN THE "ABBEY MALL" (IF YOU'RE OLD ENOUGH YOU WILL REMEMBER) TO WHERE WE HAD HAVE BEEN FOR THE LAST 12 YEARS IN LIFFEY STREET, ALL THE STAFF FROM ABBEY DISCS PAST AND PRESENT *ESPECIALLY BILLY* WOULD LIKE TO TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO THANK EVERYBODY FOR THE CUSTOM AND SUPPORT OVER THE LAST 25 YEARS.WE ARE AT PRESENT HAVING A MASSIVE CLEARANCE SALE (IDEAL FOR CHRISTMAS PRESENTS AND NOSTALGIA) SO COME ON IN WHILE STOCKS LAST!AGAIN WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK EVERYBODY FOR THEIR SUPPORT AND WE HOPE TO BE BACK IN THE NEW YEAR DOING WHAT WE DO BEST - SELLING RECORDS, BREAKING RECORDS!
SO WATCH THIS SPACE!
BILLY, DEREK, TARA, ANTHONY, TRACEY, ELAINE, NIAMH.
Seriously, I had a lump in my throat when I read this. When I started out in this business over 20 years ago, Abbey Discs was like a toy shop to me. Well, I was only 14 when I ventured in for the first time back in the summer of 1988. I'd heard a great song on the radio called "Rush Hour" by Jane Wiedlin and I was told that Abbey Discs would definitely have it. Of course I had heard about the shop from colleagues long before I visited for the first time as it was renowned for it's reputation for looking after DJ's with discounts and having the biggest selection of 12" singles of any record shop in Dublin.
I'm smiling to myself as I remember being told by the proprietor Billy Murray upon asking for the Jane Weidlin single that "I don't have it in but it will be in next week" - a typical response to a record request that many a customer will be familiar with. So, in I went the following week only to be told again that it wasn't in. And I went in the week after and the week after until eventually it was in stock. I remember being chuffed when Billy gave me the option to purchase the 12" for two pounds fifty, which I duly did. I thought that that day I had landed myself a place in amongst the Abbey Discs DJ elite.
In those days I didn't often get to buy records as my only gig was a weekend night in the Dublin Ice Rink in Dolphin's Barn for the princely sum of ten pounds, most of which ended up in the Abbey Discs till. A few months later the resident DJ in the Ice Rink Got fired and I got the gig full time. Great I thought, now I can buy all the latest releases every week! And that's exactly what I did with the eighty pounds I earned every week, after I paid my mother the twenty pounds for my keep. Good 'aul Marie was a shrewd 'un!:) Good money all the same for a 15 year old!
Dance music was beginning to make it's presence felt in those heady days of 88 and 89, and the flavour back then was acid house mixed with american rock and UK pop - the typical mix you would hear on my show on Radio Dublin and at a night out in The Ice Rink. All material supplied by the good people in Abbey Discs!
As the 90's dawned it was clear that this was going to be the decade of dance, and where was the growing crop of DJ's going to get their tunes? You guessed it:)
Music changed hugely in the early part of the 90's as 'rave' took grip of popular culture and venues like the Olympic Ballroom, Sides and Shaft played the soundtrack of the decade to eager clubbers while pirate radio found it's niche as station after station embraced the new music phenomenon. Once again Abbey Discs was the shop of choice for DJ's and fans of the music alike. It wasn't unusual for innocent punters to stumble upon the shop in the hunt for the tunes they heard on the radio and in the club and embark on a DJ career themselves!
Whilst much of the business' success can be put down to word of mouth from the DJ's that frequented the little unit in The Abbey Mall on liffey Street, I'm convinced that it never would have lasted so long without the leadership of the shops founder - Billy Murray. It was Billy's 'Everybody's Mate' personality that kept many coming back for more and the fact that he made you feel like you were the only customer in the shop while he was speaking to you. I have a feeling that that was his way of hustling you into buying something you didn't really want to and my fathers shed is full of records and CD's bought in haste because they were "going to be huge". I didn't mind though, I just wanted to have the biggest music collection of any DJ in Ireland!
Billy first ventured into the business of selling records for a living when he opened 'Billy's Record Shop' in Finglas. The astute Murray posessed an encyclopedic knowledge of all things to do with popular music - a trait you would be hard pressed to find in any member of staff of today's music outlets - and this led to the founding of Abbey Discs in The Abbey Mall On Liffey Street and another shop in Dublin's Northside Shopping Centre. By 1992 the original shop in 'The Mall' had become so busy that another shop was opened on Liffey Street, thus giving it a more accesible base for regular record buyers. Eventually the original shop in The Abbey Mall was closed along with The Northside Shopping centre branch, and Liffey Street continued alone.
I'll always be grateful to Billy for helping me to establish FM104's Euphoria dance show on friday nights way back in 1998. I went to Billy to tell him of my plans for a friday night dance show in the hope that he would furnish me with as many of the pre release tracks and white labels that he kept under the counter. I think he was a bit sceptical of the idea at first but after the first show he was swamped with punters he had never seen before all looking for the tracks I had played the previous night! He soon changed his tune and after that I got the pick of what was hot:)
I can remember Billy asking me about Napster, the first of the free file sharing sites that I first became familiar with around 1999. He had noticed a slight downturn in business and somebody had tipped him off that a growing number of the old schoolers that had been customers since the early days of the shop were using the site. Many of these guys had indeed discovered Napster and instead of shopping in Abbey Discs, they were now downloading all their new music from Napster site - for free. While this was a worrying threat to a smalltime independent record dealer, Billy thought he would ride the storm since the majority of his customers were vinyl buyers. He didn't bank on the so called 'dance music recession'.
It's true to say that dance music became less popular in the early part of the noughties. I figured that when the management at FM104 offered my the 10 - 3 show in March 2001 that it was a good time to jump from The Euphoria Show as I could tell that the clubs that were busy were either empty or just closing and there appeared to be less and less dance music appearing in the charts or in fact working with the commercial crowds in the venues that I was working on. This meant that less and less of the DJ's that had been buying vinyl were doing so and those that in the late 90's were buying decks instead of guitars were, in fact, buying guitars again. The writing was on the wall for Abbey Discs but I always thought that Billy would pull one final trick out of the bag. Sadly, it wasn't to be.
The closure of Abbey Discs signals the end of the traditional record shop as we know it, and while I feel no sympathy for the record companies who ripped off the record buying public for years, I feel sad because I absolutely loved the idea of shopping for records. While that's something that you can still do, it just doesn't feel the same anymore. A lot of it had to do with the personal service provided by Bill, Derek, Tara and his staff. They all realised very early on that service was key to their survival amongst a small but loyal customer base and for that they reaped the rewards. Times change though and this is one service that is about to be lost in time.
I do sincerely hope that, as the message above suggests, the shop will ba back in the new year - be that from the old familiar shop in Liffey Street or a new place of business. I'll be in for one final splurge before close of business guys!
Kind regards to Billy and the Murray family. You have earned your place in the history of Irish music!
andyp@fm104.ie
