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This should be up your street," says young Henry, slipping a disc into the car stereo. Too right. Given my fascination with the Sixties, I'm delighted to be motoring along to Eight Miles High, followed by Let's Work Together and Keep On Running. But for professional purposes, of even greater interest is the criterion for selecting such tracks. "It's what they used to play in some famous hippie shop," says Henry, tossing me CD case. "And look - it's called Granny Takes a Trip!"
Older readers may know that Granny's was Chelsea's first-ever aristo-hippy boutique. So this album - sub-titled Conversation's Dead, Man - is what be might termed its muzak. If some retro-chic shop in Notting Hill were to use it as a mood enhancer, I suppose it would be meta-muzak. Talk about post-modern.
And talking about post-modern, one could make a case for Biba - the
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tim willis on the years when shop music was cool,
not corporate
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Seventies style emporium - being in the vanguard of that particular movement. Checking the Granny's album on the net, I see the same label (Only Lovers Left Alive) also offers Biba: Champagne and Novocaine, featuring Roxy Music, David Bowie and Cockney Rebel. Also Sex: Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die, which includes the best of the jukebox from the old McLaren/Westwood shop, among them two personal favourites in Shake Some Action and Roadrunner.
I wonder what muzak albums they will make in 30 or 40 years? Maybe Voyage in the Fulham Road will inspire one? Ten years ago, the shop was frostbite-cool - but God knows what they played. Since you had to look right before they'd unlock the door, I never risked the humiliation. And now, of course, we're in the corporate era; so I guess we must prepare for Tesco: Every Little Bit Helps... 
FIRST POSTED APRIL 6, 2007
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