Dan Morris: Nothing like the sound of His Master's Voice

No, I’m not Rose DeWitt Bukater, and no, I’m not recalling the fresh paint on RMS Titanic.

To many, in fact, the place in question will have no significance whatsoever, yet for me it was a conduit to young, carefree days, and I hadn’t realised quite how much I missed it.

As a teenaged lad in the pre web-shopping world, I spent a lot of time in my local high street, and one particular emporium, popular in many a town, was my favourite above all others. I could take or leave Topman, say sayonara to Selfridges and comfortably bid Boots adieu. But to me, HMV was heaven on Earth.

Purveyors of CDs, DVDs and gaming paraphernalia, the wondrous elves of His Master’s Voice kept the masses entertained with their one-stop shop for years. Until, of course, streaming providers rose, appetites changed, and physical film and music media became largely obsolete.

In 2018, the firm went into administration, closing its iconic flagship store in London’s Oxford Street. The business was however rescued by Canadian firm Sunrise Records, who bought up the HMV brand, refitted branches, and concentrated on expanding the business’s record range, capitalising on the vinyl renaissance.

The result has been that HMV survived, returning to profit in 2022, with the Oxford Street store reopening a year later.

Though streaming remains the predominant way most people now purchase film and music, appetites may be changing again, with sales of CDs apparently up for the first time in more than a decade.

Regardless, the last couple of years have seen one of my favourite teenhood haunts return to town centres across the UK, and I’ve been delighted to hear of it. Yet, for my sins, I hadn’t actually paid a visit to a reopened HMV store until last weekend.

After getting our geek on at an annual Star Wars collector’s fair (the Antiques Roadshow of the galaxy far, far away – it’s awesome), an old pal and I decided it’d be rather rude not to nip into the HMV at the same venue.

Stepping through the doors of a branch for the first time in years, I instantly found myself smiling excitedly. 

On the surface, very little seemed to have changed. HMV was still a veritable Aladdin’s cave of entertainment wares; shelves succulently stocked with cinematic treats and racks of records that would give any music fan a joyous perusal experience.

HMV had always, even during my youth, been great at offering up the extra goodies – t-shirts, posters, literature and the like – yet this now seemed to have been amplified tenfold. My daughter – also in tow – instantly made a beeline for a basket of stuffed Pokemon, leaving me free to get deep into the delicious graphic novel selection also available.

It feels a little silly to claim to have had a spiritual experience simply by entering a shop, yet, in truth, this was almost what it felt like.

As I breathed in everything around me I was hit with 20 years of memories: bowling in for the latest My Chemical Romance record after having profusely straightened my 17-year-old hair; knocking on the door at 9am four years later to get my eager paws on The Dark Knight the day of its DVD release; poring through the racks of classic flicks that fuelled my spiel in my days as a film journo on my university paper.

And now, of course, I was adding to these memories by visiting as a father, with my happy progeny forcing me to swap the purchase of a Tarantino extended cut for a Pikachu plush. Kids will be kids, eh? I’ve spoken before about context dependent feelings, but the joy of visiting this high street bastion for the first time in aeons brought nothing less than a tidal wave of happy emotion. It’s laughable, really, yet is proof that you don’t necessarily need church to find your happy place, and a place that you can use to mine happiness. 

Regardless of your religious persuasion, anywhere can be your church, if you subscribe to the definition that a church is simply somewhere you frequent to enhance your good mood and wellbeing. My visit to HMV took me back to happy times and, with sproglet along for the ride, promised happy times for the future.

For years we have campaigned in this paper for people to support their high streets and help keep their local economy alive. But you don’t have to do this for anybody else, do it for yourself. You might just find, as I did, that by reconnecting with a certain retailer, you reconnect with yourself.