The 2016 Small Wonder mock-up The original shop
(Continued from the
previous post)
After leaving the British Library, I jumped onto a Victoria Line train at Kings Cross and took myself over to Walthamstow, where, in an empty unit at the top of the High Street (just a couple of hundred yards from its original location), a mock up of the old Small Wonder record shop frontage has been created as part of the
Punk Waltham Forest series of events. Stepping inside revealed a virtual continuation of the Punk 1976-78 exhibit I'd visited an hour earlier, with displays of flyers, posters, photos, sleeves and other memorabilia relating to Pete Stennett's hugely important shop and record label. While browsing the collection I fell into easy conversation with two other visitors of a similar vintage to myself, who had dropped in on their way to the British Library's exhibit. We sat for a while and exchanged our individual memories of the punk and post-punk years in general and Small Wonder in particular. It turned out that in spite of having been loyal mail-order customers in the late 70s and early 80s, neither had ever been to Walthamstow before in their lives. After half an hour or so, we all shook hands and went our separate ways, they on to the British Library and me off down memory lane, because unlike them I know Walthamstow very well, or at least I used to - I spent the first 15 years of my life in the place.
My family moved out of London in 1975, one year before Small Wonder opened, though initially I returned regularly, to visit friends and also to buy records from Pete. The last time I crossed Small Wonder's threshold was probably late 1981, a couple of years before it closed down. Gradually my trips to Walthamstow became less frequent, until they stopped altogether - in fact before last Monday, I hadn't walked around the old home town in over 30 years.
One bitterly cold winter day in early 1978, I dropped into Small Wonder and, after a bit of a rummage through the racks, approached the counter with a couple of singles. Pete smiled at one of my purchases and paused as he was about to drop it into a bag. 'Do want him to sign it?' he asked, gesturing to a shivering figure sitting on the floor next to an old two bar electric fire. The record in question was 'Safety Pin Stuck in My Heart' and the man trying to warm himself was Patrik Fitzgerald.
Patrik Fitzgerald - Safety Pin Stuck in My Heart
(Buy 'Safety Pins, Secret Lives and the Paranoid Ward: The Best Of Patrik Fitzgerald 1977-1986'
here.)
A recent post by C in her terrific 'Random Access Memories' series over at Sun Dried Sparrows (here), began with her thoughts on a humble LP sleeve. This got me thinking. Am I the only one round these parts who was prone to sniffing their LP sleeves? It might sound a bit weird these days (ever tried sniffing an MP3?), but sometimes the combination of ink and cardboard created a certain unique fragrance that, over time, became as evocative as the design on the front and the music housed within - well to me anyway. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still recall the individual smells of my original copies of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band's 'Impossible Dream', Pink Floyd's 'A Nice Pair' and 'Raw Power' by Iggy & the Stooges. In fact at a car-boot sale a couple of weeks ago, I picked up and discreetly took the nose of a copy of 'Caribou' by Elton John, just to see if it had the same distinct and memorable aroma that my own LP sleeve had, back in 1974 - alas it didn't.
