This almost defies belief, and I'm still not sure whether it's just an elaborate wind-up, but according to the information I have been given the much-missed Cheapo Cheapo Records of Rupert Street, Soho, will be resurrected, or regenerated, or what you will, for "a month and a day", starting on Black Friday (November 29th).
It's an appealing idea in theory, but from the little which I've been told about the project it sounds like a rather Disneyfied way of bringing the beloved record shop back to life - and not cheap, either: instead of free admission and handing over a few pennies for bargain finds would-be customers will be obliged to hand over a tidy sum simply for the privilege of revisiting its racks once more.
Despite that it'll be a case of "look but don't touch" - or at least "look and touch but don't take to the counter or slip surreptitiously under your roomy coat": none of the stock is available to purchase until the installation is dismantled on or around New Year's Eve.
Which sounds a bit stupid to me, though I suppose the shelves would become rather bare by the third or fourth week. Visitors will be sent a code which allows them to apply online to "bag" any of the items which took their fancy once the pseudo-store is taken down. Too late for Christmas, then, but a hopeful start to the New Year (always assuming someone didn't want the record you wanted).
Will the items finally released for sale be as cheap as those once peddled by Phil? There has been no indication about possible prices - let's hope that at least it won't be a case of dynamic pricing with demand pushing up the cost of certain items. And it's possible, I suppose, that whoever is behind this project will want to offload all the tat quickly once Cheapo expires a second time - here's hoping, anyway. Unless it's going to be a regular occurrence for Record Store Day. Personally, I favour the Brigadoon model: let it reappear once per century.
I've been told - appropriately, at second hand - that this whole project began when a certain someone - I know not who, but apparently a very well-known name, no stranger to working in a record shop himself - realised that a site in Rupert Street (either Cheapo's old premises or a neighbouring space) was available for rent for a few weeks between the closure of one business on the site and the official start date of a new one.
This mystery man is clearly someone savvy enough to know the mystical hold that certain long-gone record shops can have in the hearts of their former customers; learning of this opportunity, he formed a plan to recreate Cheapo's cramped interior and the general ambience of the place. I don't know whether a professional actor will be employed but apparently there
will even be someone present to represent Phil, and with whom visitors can
interact - which already sounds out wildly of character for a cod-Cording, if you ask me, but it
does provide an encouraging indication of the lengths to which whoever has set this up seems to be going in order to convey the atmosphere of that long-lost emporium. Some of those who haunted Cheapo, myself included, have been interviewed about the stock and I understand there has been frantic buying on auction sites and elsewhere since summer in order to replicate, or at least give a sense of, the range of CDs, LPs and even cassettes you could find there once on a time.
But here comes the nasty bit - and please don't bombard me with enquiries because I really don't know any more than I have set down here. I've heard this all from a friend of the person who is behind it, and as I've said I don't know the latter's name. Possibly it's all some ill-considered gag, trampling on the feelings of those who really felt the loss of Cheapo, and with it part of their life. I do hope not. I was approached and asked to publicise this because of my blog post Cheapo Cheapo: The Full Story, which provided a potted version of my many blog posts about the closing of the shop. I wish the enterprise well, though my chum, the intermediary, could not be drawn on the price of this admission to the past, other than strongly hinting you wouldn't be left with much change out of fifty quid (as in "... bloke"). And that's only for the privilege of walking in the door, remember: any items you wish to claim later will cost you more.
It has the potential to be a rip-off, no doubt, but I think it all comes down to how convincingly Cheapo is realised - and I suppose that renting the space during that four-week window can't be, er, cheap either.
Wonder how much effort will be taken in recreating the look of the shop? Will it be akin to the National Trust scrupulously seekingout period wallpaper and other items in an attempt to restore Paul McCartney's childhood home, Forthlin Road, after post-Macca occupants had transformed the place? But Cheapo didn't have a Mike McCartney to document its interiors, as far as I know, and there aren't many photographs of reasonable quality of Cheapo's inside to give more than a vague overall impression. (The image up top, by Jonathan Sloman, dates from 2021, presumably in between earlier post-Cheapo incarnations.)
Maybe, however, a slight sketchiness about finer points is as it should be: the Cheapo Cheapo Records I have in my heart might well differ from yours. There has been no mention (to me, anyway) of any attempt to fill up this revived Cheapo with DVDs, for example, even though they sure took up a lot of space in the shop in its final years. Anyway, here's hoping that what appears before our eyes will be more than a tawdry con-job.
More news as (if?) it happens, music lovers ...
The Complete Story of Cheapo here.
