Welcome to Freshers week, where music tastes have changed - Kevin Buckle

Music influencer John Peel

Freshers Week is now considered to carry too many unsavoury connotations, so Welcome Week it has been for some time now. When Avalanche was next to the university in West Nicolson Street this would be a big week for us, though at that time it would fall at the end of September.

What was always interesting was to see what bands the new intake were buying as it may surprise people now to know that the cool indie shop we were trying to be did not on the whole coincide with the tastes of the Dire Straits-buying student population.

Obviously these were very different times with no internet or social media, but there was still an influencer culture with the NME and John Peel leading the way. This, however, did mean that you had to buy the NME or listen to John Peel.

Potterrow is still fondly remembered as the haunt of the university’s indie kids and I’m still in touch with some of those people today, but it should be remembered that the capacity of the place was 300 at a push and that meant that everybody who wanted to could comfortably get in.

This, of course, was only a tiny percentage of the university’s student population but it was enough to support the fledgling Avalanche at the time.

It has to be said that those students were far more knowledgeable than today’s crop, despite the vast amount of information available these days at the click of a mouse.

In 1984 when Avalanche opened most people were still buying vinyl and the main competition was cassettes and though compact discs existed they would not become a major player in sales for several more years.

Things have now come full circle and vinyl is the dominant format again, though the compact disc should certainly not be written off. However, the reasoning behind a purchase these days has changed dramatically.

In the eighties when people bought their music on vinyl the format was very much a secondary consideration, whereas today the focus is very much on the “vinyls” and the music sometimes hardly seems to matter at all.

In the eighties there were certainly record collectors but they would on the whole carefully play their records, not leave them unopened and put in a cupboard. In fact, records then did not come sealed, so the whole culture of an unopened record did not exist.

There were sealed records at this time but they were sealed after the fact by places like Virgin and HMV so they could add a security tag. I did know a few people who bizarrely preferred to buy these sealed records despite the fact they had been put in a hot press.

Also, as vinyl sales declined the only pressing plants left all used 180g vinyl but it was not a thing like it is now. Gradually however big sellers like Radiohead’s OK Computer came sealed with a nice sticker saying 180g and fans were happy.

It is strange to see things 40 years later both the same and very different in equal measure.