Last Shop Standing image

See ‘Last Shop Standing’ at Phoenix Picturehouse for free

Posted on by Simon Minter

Independent record shops like Oxford’s Truck Store and Rapture Records in Witney and Evesham are part of the lifeblood of any decent local music scene, as well as an essential resource for music fans that want more than an identikit high street outlet when finding and buying new things to listen to.

They’re celebrated by the film Last Shop Standing, inspired by the book of the same name (by Graham Jones), which looks into the reasons why 2,000 such record shops have already disappeared across the UK. Charting the rapid rise of record shops in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the influence of the chart, the underhand deals, the demise of vinyl and rise of the CD as well as new technologies, it asks: where did it all go wrong? It includes contributions from over 20 record shops (including Truck and Rapture) as well as music industry folk and musicians including Paul Weller, Johnny Marr, Norman Cook, Billy Bragg, Nerina Pallot, Richard Hawley and Clint Boon.

Phoenix Picturehouse have given us a pair of tickets to their screening of the film – which takes place at 6.30 pm on Monday 17 December. To be in with a chance of grabbing the tickets, simply retweet this:

http://twitter.com/musicinoxford/status/279597576410513408

The Phoenix screening will be followed by a Q&A session with the Graham Jones, the author of Last Shop Standing. Find out more about the screening here, and the film itself here. Here’s a trailer:

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=731106010 Adrian Phillips

    If you miss it tonight in Oxford it’s also screening in Witney @ Fat Lil’s THIS Weds + live music from The Dreaming Spires…just £3

  • Colin M

    “Last Man standing” is the las, hopeless rationale for HMV. As one one of the Telegraph writers said, this was pretty much the rationale used by the last dodo. It’s the effing internet that did for music shops, right? And anyone under the age of 25 now has the Spartan mindset that music has no monetary value any more, so only suckers pay for it. Sadly, they are right. Especialyl Stones fans.