Top Scottish musicians have come together to lament the closure of Fopp, Britain's biggest independent music retailer. The record shop chain, which started as a market stall in Glasgow in 1981 and grew to accumulate more than 100 stores across the UK, including 11 in Scotland, closed on Friday.
Described by Scottish DJ Mylo - aka Myles McInnes - as being "like a library", Fopp boasted such an extensive selection of music that it arguably provided the soundtrack to the lives of an entire generation and influenced some of Scotland's most popular artists.
The Byres Road store was viewed as the central hub of Fopp's empire, with members of bands such as Belle And Sebastian and Arab Strap frequently dropping in to pick up a bargain.
Skye-born McInnes said: "I'm really gutted about Fopp closing. There's really nowhere else like it. The Byres Road branch was two minutes from my flat, and it's the first place you'd hit with a Saturday-morning hangover to pick something up.
"In some ways it was like a library, a place of education. You could go in there with a tenner and come out with two albums - you could get lost classics by people you didn't know before.
"Places like Fopp are one reason why Glasgow has such a robust community of music fans. People here probably know more about music than people anywhere - and Fopp was a part of that."
Fopp started life as a one-man stall, known as A1 Records, in Glasgow's De Courcy's Arcade, but thanks to the shrewd buying and market foresight of founder and chairman Gordon Montgomery, it quickly expanded.
Earlier this year Fopp bought 67 Music Zone stores out of administration, but it is believed this move played a part in the chain's downfall due to problems maintaining high stock levels.
Chris Geddes, keyboard player for Glasgow favourites Belle And Sebastian, met many friends from his regular jaunts into Fopp as a student at Glasgow University. "I was in and out of Fopp as often as I was in and out of classes," he said. "I think a lot of the records I bought were influenced by what they had in stock at any given time - and you could always get something cheap, or take a bit of a chance. You'd go into Fopp and bump into friends who there, or you became mates with people who worked there."
Those very people were sent home on Friday as the administrators moved in to establish what went wrong. Internet sales are also expected to have taken their toll on the Fopp stores, once famous for being the largest UK retailer of vinyl when other shops were stopping stocking it.
"It was great for vinyl," said Aidan Moffat, formerly of Arab Strap. "I remember I bought the first Belle And Sebastian album in there before I'd even moved to Glasgow.
"If I was bored during the day I'd have a wander in. And every time I would come out £30 poorer."
Famous for no-nonsense rounded prices, Fopp was "a bit of an anomaly", according to Moffat. "They started out as this indie shop where you could get bargains, but as they expanded they became something else, because they had to compete with the HMVs of this world.
"I think there's still a place for wee independent record shops, but in the end, that wasn't what Fopp was."
Colin MacIntyre, of Mull Historical Society, said Fopp provided "character and community" against generic competition, and expressed his surprise at the sudden closure.
"It was one of the first places I went into to check if they stocked my own records," he said. "If you saw your album in there with everyone else's, you kind of knew you'd arrived."
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