The magic of vinyl that took me round Edinburgh's long lost record stores

Stepping into the new Fopp store in Shandwick Place in Edinburgh last Saturday felt like squaring the circle.

A trip to Edinburgh still isn’t complete without a mooch through its racks of CDs and quick browse of its book shelves.

In my vinyl buying glory days, albums were £2.99, double albums £4;99. You can stick a zero in after the first digit these days. That said, there’s still something special about handling an album, flipping it over to see the track listings, and soaking in the artwork.

I got into music in my mid teens. Punk was loitering on the street corners of Wester Hailes with a wee bit of menace - I can still picture the shock of my mate Stevie leaving school on the Friday as a normal kid and returning like a wannabe Sid Vicious with spiked hair, tartan breeks and a ripped t-shirt.

Suddenly the world echoed to Sham69, the Pistols, The Damned and Edinburgh’s own The Rezillos who once played our school’s gala day shortly after appearing on Top Of The Pops.

The music had real energy and, overnight, it separated the generations - exactly how it should be. Your parents are supposed to be appalled at your musical choices.

I was never a full-blown punk - not a chance I’d have been allowed out dressed like Sid Snott - but some of its early pioneers found their way into my record collection which was dominated by heavy rock; the sort of music where the bassline makes the ornaments on the shelf on the other side of the wall wobble until you finally hear the instruction to “turn that racket down!”

Elvis Costello sat close to Cream in my alphabetically arranged albums - it’s a bloke thing, okay - and I recall a playground swap which saw me trade ELO’s Out Of The Blue double album on blue vinyl for a 12-inch version of Sid Vicious and old lag Ronnie Biggs’ A Punk Prayer.

I spent Saturdays zig-zagging the city centre to find the best bargains in the endless racks of vinyl. I’d go from The Other Record Shop down the Royal Mile to the Record Shak up in Clerk Street, on to The Last Record Shop, GI Records, and Vinyl Villains on Elm Row. Add in Coda, Menzies and even Boots - and that was long before HMV and Virgin swaggered on to Princes Street.

But my spiritual home was the Ezy Rider Record Exchange - known to many as the Hippy Market - a semi-lit world of vinyl, populated almost entirely by blokes, many sporting denim jackets with band names and logos embroidered with great care on the back. The patches and art work defined them. No receipts were ever given. You had to inspect the vinyl for scratches or imperfections, nod it was okay and were on your way.

They also bought vinyl, but that too was a ritual. I still recall the walk of shame outside after they took one look at my bag of albums and gave a shrug of disinterest.

But I was a buyer rather then a seller. Reviews in Sounds and NME would spark some purchases, others came via a night at mates' houses rifling through their own albums. Some were just pot shots in the dark - that's my only explanation for buying Iron Butterfly's In-Da-Gadda-Da-Vida album. I think I still have it …