Have you ever visited the new Absolute Music superstore? It’s a wonderland. You should really get yourself over there. Mugs of tea for a pound.
It’s one of the best business success stories of recent times locally, and probably anywhere – and it’s musical. In a time when bands are struggling to find paying audiences or venues for original music, and when so many entrepreneurial endeavours are foundering on the rocks of an apparently officially endless, Mad Max, speargunning-eachother-for-petrol recession/depression/impending apoocalypse, a shining light of counter-gloom-culture positivity is the expansion of Poole/Bournemouth-based Absolute. Never precisely sure when you’ve crossed the checkpoint into the other half of town along Wallisdown high street. And that’s another thing – it’s in Wallisdown.
The chaps have built a biz around a way to keep prices down on everything they supply, but it’s much more than that; I don’t mind saying they seem to have built it on a very can-do kind of customer service. Evident is that they chose to take over the college’s Knighton Heath rehearsal studios and refurbish them, when Bournemouth Uni gave up on them; meaning the Electro Pops Orchestra and I get a decent mug of tea and a sandwich when we rehearse out there now. And a backline kit in every room. That works. This is remarkable.
And given that the core team out there have all worked for Eddie Moor’s Music and or The M Corporation – each bought out by Absolute in the end – I can probably say they’ve supplied most of my musical gear over twenty years.
So when Joe from Absolute got in touch to say he’d not only seen my damn-fool video for Nudge but been oddly inspired to write a feature on Momo, I was very happy to write back at length with stupid answers to his questions.
If you had any queries left about my paper-thin CV after so many years tiddling about in sheds, you may find them answered here.