I spent my formative years working in record shops. The pay was terrible, the work tedious, but it felt like a vocation

theguardian.com:

A ustralia’s last Sanity store has closed its doors for the final time. This is terrible news, not least for its staff. The demise of Sanity in the physical realm (it survives online, for now) marks the official end of a bygone age – the era of the high street music franchise. An era when awkward teens with ambitious haircuts could find a first job that so perfectly captured their interests – loud music, standing around doing nothing and being rude to strangers.

As someone who spent a formative decade working in record shops, I grieve that my children will be denied this important rite of passage. Will they care? Probably not. No doubt they’ll find their own virtual spaces to share and celebrate music, but permit me this brief tribute to the halcyon days of music retail.

Back in the late 90s, there was no better first job than working in a record shop. It wasn’t just the street cred, but the sense of finding a tribe. Growing up in Perth, that tribe had proven elusive to someone who didn’t play or follow sport. The people I met through working with music became some of the best friends I ever made. I married one of them and went to the weddings of countless others.

Being into music was a serious pursuit when I was 18. It was sport for people who didn’t like sport. We each had our teams and loyalties – Blur v Oasis, indie v dance, metal v everyone – who would fight for supremacy in the charts and music press. Being serious about music meant reading (and occasionally buying) a vast range of music papers and mags with the kind of high-level research skills I rarely applied to my university studies.

It took me two attempts to pass the employment exam at my local record shop, a qualification that still means more to me than my