26 January 2012
VVN Music
Iggy Pop has been named ambassador for Record Store Day 2012. The annual event, this year falling on April 21, is used to publicize and drive business to independent record stores who continue the fight against internet sales.
Pop said of his new "position:"
A person should have a personality. You won't get one dicking around on a computer. It helps to go somewhere where there are other persons. Persons who are interested in something you are. That's how a record store or any shop that's got some life to it should work. It's not about selling shit.
I got my name, my musical education and my personality all from working at a record store during my tender years. In the 50s and 60s the teen kids used to gather after school at these places to listen free to the latest singles and see if they liked the beat. You could buy the disc you liked for 79 cents and if you were lucky meet a chick. Clerks in these places became managers, (like Brian Epstein), label heads (Jack Holzman) and Faces on album covers (like me).
Personally I feel best in a store that, while staying small and socially relaxed, still keeps a complete variety of music types and non musical recordings on offer… All of this is cool and has a much bigger future than most people realize today.
As Record Store Day Ambassador for 2012 I feel like a representative from some exotic jungle full of life and death and sex and anger, called upon to wear a leopard skin and translate joy to the world of the dead.
