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.