BrowsingWhen Real Groovy closed its doors in May, many music-lov­ing Wel­ling­to­ni­ans were rather sad. But a curi­ous thing has happened – we’ve got a Real Groovy back, sort of.

Real Groovy Christ­ch­urch suffered dam­age to both its build­ing and stock in the Septem­ber 2010 earth­quake, but own­er Paul Hug­gins was determ­ined to con­tin­ue, reopen­ing a month later in a new loc­a­tion. I paid a vis­it there in Janu­ary – it was a cool little record shop.

Unfor­tu­nately the new shop got even more mun­ted in the Feb­ru­ary quake, so Hug­gins called it a day and has moved back to Wel­ling­ton, start­ing anew with Rough Peel Music (a trib­ute to Rough Trade Records and John Peel, per­haps?), at 140 Vivi­an Street (between Cuba and Mari­on Street). It’s a part of town that, like K Road in Auck­land, has sub­stan­tially changed after the Pros­ti­tu­tion Reform Act, los­ing much of its red-light busi­ness and in need of a new iden­tity. Could RPM help rein­vent Vivi­an Street? The shop opened on Sat­urday, so I popped in to check it out.

Dad rockThe shop was bust­ling with activ­ity, with a good range of CDs, DVDs and vinyl. Much of the stock seemed to have come from the old Christ­ch­urch Real Groovy, com­plete with the famil­i­ar price stick­ers, and indeed there were signs advising of “Quake Sale” spe­cial prices.

Look­ing around the shop, I noticed that most of the people were over the age of 30. And that’s when it hit me – teens don’t go to record shops any more. Record shops are for oldies who either still buy CDs, or they’re vinyl pur­ists. So record shops today have a dif­fer­ent feel­ing to the youth explo­sions of the olden days. Record shops are now more spe­cial­ist retail­ers for people who have spe­cif­ic needs, as well as those who can­’t get enough of the thrill of flick­ing through unsor­ted bins, look­ing for hid­den gems.

RPM seems to have per­fectly adap­ted to this new demo­graph­ic. There are plenty of vinyl fiends out there (includ­ing one of the Wel­ling­tonista), so I’m sure Rough Peel Music will find a cus­tom­er base. And indeed it looks like that block of Vivi­an Street is on its ways to become a cool little part of the Cuba neigh­bour­hood.