Step into Casbah Records and you’re teleported to the 1960s then back to today through neatly arranged racks of vinyl. There is James Taylor, the American songwriter and guitarist from nearly 70 years ago. There is Tame Impala, the Australian psychedelic project from the noughties. And there is Olivia Dean, the British singer who’s been winning international awards these past years.
The store prides itself on keeping up with musical trends rather than serving as a museum dedicated to a particular period. We’re one of a kind in this part of the British capital, claims owner Graham Davis.
As music plays in the background, Davis tells SouthLondonLines that Casbah Records’ collection is unrivalled in southeast London. “The reason you come into a store is because someone is curating the collection,” he says. “It feels good knowing that people actually like coming in, rather than doing it online, which can be unsatisfying”.
Davis compares the evolution of Casbah Records to the “big bang theory”. It started small, being limited to his own record collection. He then accumulated enough vinyl to expand to a store. After trading at Greenwich Market for many years, Davis set up shop permanently in Greenwich in 2009.
But why call it “casbah”, the Arabic word for an older, densely populated part of a city? Davis says the name came from The Clash song Rock the Casbah and the store carries a record titled Come With me to the Casbah. But he also wanted the name to indicate the store is somewhat like the exotic casbahs of north Africa, with their souks full of small shops and street stalls. If Davis is right that Casbah Records has a vast collection, perhaps it could be seen as a vinyl casbah, where you wander in souks of sound.
Davis is clear that the store remains in business because it has loyal customers. There are two kinds of regulars, those who know you very well, he says, and those who don’t engage that much. “They are the lifeblood and every shop needs that or it will struggle”.
But surely there is less demand for a record store in the age of music streaming? Davis admits that people are attracted to the “cheap and easy” version of listening to music, which makes for being “somewhat disconnected from reality”. Sometimes we forget that the artist created an album for a reason and may want the tracks to be listened to in a particular order. But fortunately, many customers want the actual album to cherish, he says, and “records can be collectables”.
That’s more than you can say for a streaming playlist.
