MOLE JAZZ IS CLOSING

[sidewinder]

Strange thing is - I don't remember the shop internals looking like the photo on the top LHS. That must have been after they 'switched' the entrance of the original place to the Pentonville Road end. Much more familiar with the original 70s arrangement - plus the relocated shop across the road.

Edited October 13, 2012 by sidewinder

[Head Man]

2005?...only seven years ago?...it seems like a lifetime since I last visited the old shop in Pentonville Road. I really do miss the hours I spent rifling through the LP and CD racks there, looking for....what? I'm afraid the Internet is a very poor substitute.

Edited October 13, 2012 by Head Man

[David Ayers]

2005?...only seven years ago?...it seems like a lifetime since I last visited the old shop in Pentonville Road. I really do miss the hours I spent rifling through the LP and CD racks there, looking for....what? I'm afraid the Internet is a very poor substitute.

Yes it does seem more than seven years.

[sidewinder]

Wasn't 2005 when the 'Harold Moore's Records' upstairs version of it on Marlborough St closed down? Still - even that seems an eternity now.

I'm starting to get my head around the perspective of that photo. Trouble is, I used to spend most time at the far end of that photo, where the Deletions rack was I think (being a pauper student and it being the Winter Of Discontent and all that..)

Edited October 13, 2012 by sidewinder

[JohnS]

I'll have too seek out the article. Nice to see a quote from Graham Griffiths. Last time I heard he was not too well. My very best wishes to him.

[Big Beat Steve]

During my stays in Britain in 1992 to 2000 I tried (most of the time successfully) to arrange my itinerary so enough time for a shopping spree in London remained before getting back to the ferry or Eurotunnel. My first port of call would invariably be the vinyl section at Mole Jazz.

Whatever they say in the article (would love to see a pdf somewhere), that "urinal" comparison isn't far off the mark. Particularly since I'd often call in the late mornings/very early afternoons there (straight after arriving in London, most often on the way back from Norfolk) when the usual clientele there would consist of "elderly" (well, far older than me in my mid-30s then) gents in overcoats who'd go through the racks in taciturn, introvert, businesslike, noncommunicative silence. No young(er)'uns - except the occasional "eternal freelancer/art student" type if you know what I mean - around anywhere, they'd probably all be at work.

I remember a couple of occasions when I went there with a friend (younger than me) whom I'd try to guide to this or that purchase for her interest in swing music, and when we exchanged comments about this or that find and "hey, did you see this", etc., we almost felt as if our (certainly not loud) comments were met with silent universal disapproval by the "regulars" there.

The elderly lady handling the counter and turntable upstairs in their Grays Inn Road shop was sweet, though. Always obliging and helpful.

Ah, those were days ...

Edited October 15, 2012 by Big Beat Steve

[robertoart]

Any art students I ever knew of were not listening to Jazz. Not since the early Sixties anyway. Very divergent universes.

Their listening would more likely have been, Eno, PIL, Nick Cave or other White Neo-Tribalists...probably Neubauten or even early Talking Heads etc...etc...

Jazz would have been far to distant and bourgeois, and Radical Jazz... a bit to difficult.

Maybe Peter Brotzmann would have snuck in there a bit with the German art students....they always were a bit more Sturm und Drang

Although by 92 the digital age was about to start kicking in. So maybe something like Sigur Rós...or for something more earthy but still essentially minimalist...The Dirty Three. Maybe even The Necks, but that would have been a bit to 'Jazz'.

Edited October 15, 2012 by freelancer

[sidewinder]

taciturn, introvert, businesslike, noncommunicative silence.

Apart from their Annual Xmas/New Year Sale.. I remember quite a bit of jostling to get through the front door on the first day of that and a few stiff upper lips quivering (amazing how there were always so many bearded portly guys of a certain age amongst the clientele).

A bit like the "Harrods Sale" of jazz !

Edited October 15, 2012 by sidewinder

[Big Beat Steve]

@freelancer:

Just trying to convey an image but not to be taken literally

Though I remember one particular instance that had me taken aback first and then smiling (and the staff member too) when I asked the one at the counter who was in charge of the jazz books if they happened to have a copy of John Chilton's Louis Jordan biography "Let The Good Times Roll", which caused some skinny, dour, long-haired (literally) and not so youngish fellow customer clad in an almost ankle-long coat of indefinite vintage (who overheard this and apparently took offense at this very down-to-earth book title) to start lecturing about how the "sublime" (of the arts, I suppose) had come to be dragged down and buried by the mundane, etc. etc. Seemed like a failed art student (of sorts) who was still trying to come to grips with what went on in real life outside his own terms of reference ... Apparently not a first-time incident because the staff member silently first smiled to himself and then to me. Unfortunately they did not have a copy at that time ...

@sidewinder:

I wouldn't know about Christmans there, I always was there either in April/May or in October/November. And I really don't know of any other way to describe those coat-tie-vest-and-overcoat characters (aproaching or having passed retirement age, and sometimes bearded and portly indeed, yes ...) who seemed to be so engulfed in "fiddling with something at waist level in front of them" without ever showing any signs of emotion of what they did pick out. Well, maybe my own attire of jeans and leather jacket wasn't befitting for a Mole Jazz customer ... ... not in the eyes of some fellow customers anyway.

Anyway, Mole Jazz and the entire atmosphere there is still sorely missed.

[BeBop]

I've positive recollections of my may visits to 333 Grays Inn Road (if memory serves) from - could it have been - the late 1970s? Early, early 1980s? And I did mail order when I couldn't make it in person.

[sidewinder]

some skinny, dour, long-haired (literally) and not so youngish fellow customer clad in an almost ankle-long coat of indefinite vintage (who overheard this and apparently took offense at this very down-to-earth book title) to start lecturing about how the "sublime" (of the arts, I suppose) had come to be dragged down and buried by the mundane, etc. etc. Seemed like a failed art student (of sorts) who was still trying to come to grips with what went on in real life outside his own terms of reference ...

Hilarious ! I had an incident with some similarities to this but it was at the much later 'Harold Moore's' version of Mole on a Saturday afternoon not too long before it shut up shop (I was 'fiddling at waist height' in the Collector Vinyl racks ). A bunch of loud and 'liquid refreshed' vintage Soho-type characters came in to the store, pretty well took over the place and provided a commentary on life, the Universe and everything. Very entertaining it was - and knowledgable. A year or so later what looked like the guy who was the main font of knowledge popped up on a BBC4 documentary about old jazz clubs and the debauchery that went on in them. From the BBC film, I think this guy turned out to be the head bouncer for one of those places ('The Flamingo'?)

Incidentally, as an aside - that photo I refer to shows an 'Art Ensemble' poster attached to one of the racks. I wonder if it is one of Chuck's?

Edited October 16, 2012 by sidewinder

[robertoart]

@freelancer:

Just trying to convey an image but not to be taken literally

Though I remember one particular instance that had me taken aback first and then smiling (and the staff member too) when I asked the one at the counter who was in charge of the jazz books if they happened to have a copy of John Chilton's Louis Jordan biography "Let The Good Times Roll", which caused some skinny, dour, long-haired (literally) and not so youngish fellow customer clad in an almost ankle-long coat of indefinite vintage (who overheard this and apparently took offense at this very down-to-earth book title) to start lecturing about how the "sublime" (of the arts, I suppose) had come to be dragged down and buried by the mundane, etc. etc. Seemed like a failed art student (of sorts) who was still trying to come to grips with what went on in real life outside his own terms of reference ... Apparently not a first-time incident because the staff member silently first smiled to himself and then to me. Unfortunately they did not have a copy at that time ...

@sidewinder:

I wouldn't know about Christmans there, I always was there either in April/May or in October/November. And I really don't know of any other way to describe those coat-tie-vest-and-overcoat characters (aproaching or having passed retirement age, and sometimes bearded and portly indeed, yes ...) who seemed to be so engulfed in "fiddling with something at waist level in front of them" without ever showing any signs of emotion of what they did pick out. Well, maybe my own attire of jeans and leather jacket wasn't befitting for a Mole Jazz customer ... ... not in the eyes of some fellow customers anyway.

Anyway, Mole Jazz and the entire atmosphere there is still sorely missed.

Not thinking so much literally, but it did make me think of my own art student undergrad days, and just how distant and off the radar Jazz was from the student Visual Art community.

Apart from some of the older lecturer's - who were also players - I was out on my own. And it got me thinking that possibly, the post beatnik Ornette at the Five Spot era, might have been the last serious social and cultural connection for Jazz and Visual Art. I think by the early 60's Rock n Roll had became the music Art students most identified with. And from then on whatever outlying trend setting or precursive variations of it that emerged. For instance, Punk and Post-Punk, New Wave (of UK and US variety) etc., are all identified with the marketing and influence of the Visual Arts. Call it the Warhol effect. I suspect he didn't like Jazz much.

Actually, over here, one of the really big cultural and stylistic influences on local Contemporary Artists was Americana. Huge Visual Arts sub culture around that. You couldn't swing a cat without knocking off someone's cowboy hat.

I think the Literary community may have kept Aesthetic kindred spirits with Jazz a bit more. With the association between Jazz Imagery and Noir. So I tend to associate your stereotype with Literary Students or other Humanities based drop-outs

Edited October 16, 2012 by freelancer

[Big Beat Steve]

So I tend to associate your stereotype with Literary Students or other Humanities based drop-outs

Yes, I think you may have nailed it there. (Isn't Literary Studies a form of art too, after all?)

[robertoart]

So I tend to associate your stereotype with Literary Students or other Humanities based drop-outs

Yes, I think you may have nailed it there. (Isn't Literary Studies a form of art too, after all?)

Oh yeah! It's all Art in the big sense of the word. Writing, Music, Visual, Dance, etc.

[brownie]

I spent the day in London yesterday, I was in town for a social event.

Went there via Eurostar and since I was a little early before boarding the evening train back to Paris, I went out to check the Mole Jazz location on Grays Inn Road in the station vicinity.

What a sad sight it was! The once busy corner looks almost abandoned. Nothing seems to have been done to that corner for the last few years.

Sad also to really realize that the mole has returned to obscurity!

[sidewinder]

I'll bet that King's Cross Station and the recent changes in and around it would have comes as a shock, Brownie. Sadly, the immediate area has been in a limbo-land for some years, with threats of re-development and stays of execution. That seems to have affected the 'old' Mole building. Traffic on that road is still as crazy as it ever was though..

Hope your day in London was a good one !

Edited October 19, 2012 by sidewinder

[sidewinder]

Some interesting recollections here -

http://www.kingscross.co.uk/KXV-2007-242-01

[BillF]

Some interesting recollections here -

http://www.kingscross.co.uk/KXV-2007-242-01

Fascinating!

[Head Man]

Some interesting recollections here -

http://www.kingscross.co.uk/KXV-2007-242-01

How strange to hear Peter Fincham's voice again after all theses years and to hear his reminiscences on how Mole Jazz went from boom to bust.

Absolutely fascinating ....thanks so much for finding & posting it, sidewinder

Edited August 23, 2014 by Head Man

[sidewinder]

No probs chaps - glad you enjoyed it.

[Big Beat Steve]

Yes, brings back memories ... Thanks!

Though I had no idea that this chap is only 5 years ahead of me - most all the regular staff at Mole Jazz always appeared very much more advanced in years to me ...

[sidewinder]

Yeah, that's what I thought too.

Interesting to read that John Stevens was on the staff at one time. I wonder when that would have been?

[JohnS]

I don't recall ever seeing John Stevens there except as a customer. Drummer Mark Taylor, now resident in New York, worked there on Saturdays for quite a while.

[A Lark Ascending]

King's Cross is unrecognisable now from the days I used to call into Mole when passing through London. You can get any number of lattes and Americanos now....but no jazz records.

While waiting for a train last week I saw a curious sight of people queuing to be photographed at an imaginary platform associated with Harry Potter.

[sidewinder]

I don't recall ever seeing John Stevens there except as a customer.

Same here, John. Maybe Stevens was involved with the packing dept. or the auctions?

Edited August 24, 2014 by sidewinder