Me and the man in the Classical Music Exchange

I like that title. If any­one cares to write a song with that name, I think it could prob­ably be a hit in the same vein as the late Kirsty MacColl’s 1981 clas­sic There’s A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis.

I will admit to being a little lack­ing in clas­sical music know­ledge — I’m firmly in the “I may not know much, but I know what I like” school of thought. It’s not entirely unheard of for me to be unaware of the title of a piece of music, and need to hum the melody to someone to describe it. I have also loved par­tic­u­lar pieces of music for years, only finally find­ing out what they’re called when that nice Henry Kelly clearly spells them out after play­ing them on Clas­sic FM. Some­times I think that I should learn more, to act­ively increase my know­ledge of clas­sical com­posers and their works. But then I remem­ber that over-analysis of music has ruined it for me on pre­vi­ous occa­sions. I always prefer my own emo­tional reac­tion, rather than a more edu­cated and con­sidered response.

For a few years, I’ve been an occa­sional cus­tomer of the Clas­sical Music Exchange in London’s “fash­ion­able” Not­ting Hill Gate. While I may not pos­sess the most informed appre­ci­ation of clas­sical music, I am quite a fan of con­tem­por­ary com­posers — Michael Nyman, Gavin Bryars, Arvo Part, Philip Glass, Gra­ham Fitkin, to name but a few. When I visit the Clas­sical Music Exchange, it’s gen­er­ally this sort of stuff that I’m after. The reason for this is that the rest of the shelves are packed so tightly with com­posers from A — Z, I am sure that I’d never find what I’m look­ing for. I head straight for the ‘Con­tem­por­ary’ and (deep breath) ‘Min­im­al­ist’ shelves, browse around to see if there’s any­thing I want, and if there isn’t I rush out again.

But, here’s the thing. Ever since I’ve been fre­quent­ing this par­tic­u­lar store, I’ve been con­vinced that one par­tic­u­lar mem­ber of staff has me sussed; even worse, that he dis­likes me. Yes, it’s total para­noia — but it does seem that when I come into the shop, he glares at me as I head straight for my usual shelves and, as there aren’t gen­er­ally too many items to browse through, either leave shortly after or arrive at the counter within minutes. On the occa­sions when I buy CDs, he takes them from me and flicks through the cases with a dis­ap­prov­ing grim­ace. He barely speaks as he passes me the second-hand discs for check­ing. Once, while he was wait­ing for me to pay, I could have sworn that he delib­er­ately turned up the volume of a piece of rather flowery baroque music play­ing on the store’s hi-fi. It felt like he was try­ing to tell me off — “You, BOY! This is proper music, BOY! Do you not hear? This is far super­ior to any of your new-fangled mod­ern­ist rub­bish, BOY!” (Although I can’t describe his voice, as I write this I’m ima­gin­ing an impa­tient, angry Laurence Olivier play­ing Richard III, if that helps. While it’s a little paro­chial of me to describe his appear­ance — if you do hap­pen to be a reg­u­lar vis­itor to this store, keep a look out for the white-haired fel­low with glasses and a scraggy beard, who often stands out­side to smoke a cigarette.)

All my ima­gin­a­tion, of course. Yet, he does seem rel­at­ively cheery with the rest of the cus­tom­ers who come in to the store look­ing for an obscure addi­tion to their Wag­ner col­lec­tion, or who want to find a par­tic­u­lar 1972 Ber­lin per­form­ance of Beethoven’s Sym­phony No 8 in F Major.

Yes­ter­day after­noon, I went into the Clas­sical Music Exchange before going to the cinema in Not­ting Hill. I felt the usual stern blink­ing eyes watch­ing me from behind small spec­tacles, as I strode pur­pose­fully to the con­tem­por­ary sec­tion at the back of the shop. How­ever, when I arrived back at the counter with my CDs, my nemesis was stand­ing to one side, and a cheer­ful Cana­dian guy was on the till. As he searched for my pur­chases, he chat­ted with me about my taste in music. (In case you’re inter­ested, we dis­cussed the ver­sion of Gavin Bryars’ haunt­ing Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet fea­tur­ing Tom Waits, which he prom­ised to reserve for me if a copy was brought in. What a nice man.) I might have been mis­taken, but I’m cer­tain that Mr Clas­sical Pur­ist was look­ing on with a dis­ap­prov­ing glare through­out our entire conversation.

If none of the above makes any sense, and seems like a lot of fuss about noth­ing — well, yes, it is. But just ima­gine going into the Rock & Pop store next door, and hav­ing one of the shop assist­ants guf­faw loudly as you approach the counter with that obscure album you’ve been want­ing to add to your col­lec­tion for years. Hold that thought. As I get older (and pos­sibly wiser), I’m begin­ning to have much less patience with musical snob­bery, even if it is all within my own weird imaginings.