Joe Thompson, of rock band Hey Colossus and record label Wrong Speed Records fame, tries to persuade Groovy Times that The Cure’s new album ought to be available to buy on every high street in the UK

We’ve just had five days in the studio recording the 15th Hey Colossus album in the town of Bruton, a weird little place in Somerset. Posh villages are funny places – a lot of little shops selling nothing useful or practical. Vanity shops with smart, well-put-together folk popping in and out of them. There was a time all villages based around farming would have been layered in manure, some still are – and I speak as a rural postman who’s written off two post vans sliding on slurry.

Many farmhouses are now suave mansions. The people in charge of floodwater management have deemed farmland as flood plains, some farms on the levels in Somerset have boats tied up next to them and not because they won Bully’s special prize in 1983. Towns are growing, they can’t be underwater. Time moves on. The high street moves with the time.

As a band of people of a certain age Hey Colossus is still album-centric. We write an album’s worth of songs. We record an album. We release a physical album. All our focus is on ‘SIDE A’ and ‘SIDE B’ as well as the flow of a CD. We talk about albums we like. We talk about albums we used to like. We discuss albums that are influencing where we’re at or what we want album 15 to sound like.

Ultimately, a band is judged on its recorded output. Anyone discovering Captain Beefheart, The Slits or Bob Marley in 2024 is going to be listening to the recorded output. They may search on YouTube for live footage, they may read about certain incendiary live performances, but the recorded music is what’s actually left and the album is how music makers are judged.

So, in 2024, I was in the city of Wells with my wife Elisa. We were eating an ice cream from Cafe Nostra – which is the best spot for an ice cream in the country. Honestly, check it out. The Cure’s new album was out that week. A year or two back we’d gone to see the band at Wembley Arena. We probably go to one BIG gig every few years, they’re traditionally grim experiences. Once you’ve experienced a ‘DIY / blast in your face / decently priced entrance / decently priced merch’ gig why would you ever put yourself through the misery of a 12,000 capacity hellscape?

ANYHOW. We like The Cure. And we were left thinking’ why can’t we buy The Cure album on every high street in the country’? There is NOWHERE in the city of Wells to buy music. Wells is, admittedly, the smallest city in the country. But there’s plenty of shops all up the high street, even a real old school butchers. Wells is not alone of course. The nearest place for me to buy a new album is a 45-minute drive.

Supermarkets put things by the till and hope you impulse buy them. It’s a technique. They have trained experts setting the shops out to make you buy things. (I will say this though – I still think the veg and fruit should be at the end, putting the soft stuff at the bottom of the trolley is surely madness). The Cure album should be available as an impulse buy on every high street. We’re talking about one of the UK’s biggest bands, a band that creates art in this country for the people of the world. We should be celebrating such work.

The weekend of release they played a live show that everyone could watch on YouTube. The BBC dedicated a few hours to them. Everyone knew there was a new Cure album out. It was one of the best album launches we’ve seen for a while. On the Saturday morning, when folk were killing time on the high streets of their towns, waiting until it was time to start drinking, they should have been able to buy the new Cure album. It should have been available, as easily as a newspaper or a new pair of pants. It should have been an easy impulse buy.

There ARE record shops on some high streets and they provide excellent hubs for music loving people. I spend vast amounts of time in them all over Europe. As a band we make beelines for them en-route to gigs, between soundcheck and playing, the morning after playing. (I love them all so this ‘BUT’ isn’t directed at them in any way). BUT – physical music shouldn’t only be a niche product for nerds to pore over and keep in ‘mint A1 Discogs pleasing condition’. It should be available for everyone easily, near the till, before the fruit and veg.

On the Saturday morning, when folk were killing time on the high streets of their towns, waiting until it was time to start drinking, they should have been able to buy the new Cure album.

It’s the sound of humans creating art and it’s surprisingly cheap when you consider the time and costs gone into creating it. Yes, a record may cost £20-£30 now and that’s a lot of money in itself and the music industry has a lot to answer for – it’s forever a decade behind. But I would argue that a well-made album, even a badly made one, could be listened to for the next 50 years. The rewards you can get back over time are worth ten times the cost. The contact high lasts for decades.

It’s a creation by a band or person from years of toil. It’s not an easy thing to make. Good and classic albums have changed the future. To be able to put your hands on the first album you bought (36 years ago, Iron Maiden – Killers) or the most recent album (Xylitol – Anemones on Planet Mu… check it out… it’s excellent)) and all in between is beautiful. It’s the diary of your life. It’s your story. It’s all on your shelves to pore over and will be forever.

Loving music and not owning albums is now the most common default setting. I see it in my sons. I see it everywhere outside of the music loving bubble I reside. Music is considered free. Playing music is now the soundtrack to the thing you’re doing rather than being the thing you’re actually doing. Playlists and algorithms are making the choices for us. The quality of the music coming out of Spotify has made Neil Young cry. We all heard him. And most music makers were with him.

The mainstream music industry has blown it, hence massive live gigs costing wild amounts – the money needs to be made somehow. I get all this, like the high streets and the farmland and the towns – we’re moving on. A lot of progress is positive. But this, the disappearance of physical music on the high street, is a death we may regret ignoring. Did people stop buying it because it stopped being available or was it the other way round?

As a hideous last thought, and arguably a sign of where my mind’s at, the thought of being in an old age home with my fading memory, trying to log into my Spotify account, trying to remember what I liked as a 20-year-old is like a scene from a dystopian Sci-Fi film. I want a few shelves of records. I want my books. I want to look and see and touch and feel and hear. I want to be 90, listening to Black Flag’s The First Four Years on vinyl, chucking my walking stick in the air.

You can track down the vinyl output of Wrong Speed Records at wrongspeedrecords.bandcamp.com

Groovy Times recommends the reissue of Ghosts (WSR016) by Haress