The next uber cool music distribution platform

Move over Radiohead. Here is the next über cool music distribution platform. I took the photo of the window of my local Oxfam charity shop on Saturday (left click to enlarge the sleeves), and the Guardian jumped on the bandwagon yesterday .....

Banish all thoughts of scruffy students rifling through the rails for the perfect vintage shirt and eccentric aunts picking up next year's Christmas presents. Starting tonight some of the coolest names in music will descend on a charity shop in east London for four evenings of intimate live appearances and DJ sets.

Shelves of Mills and Boon romances and 1980s cassettes will make way for The Kooks, Jamelia and Hot Chip, who will play to select audiences of just 100 competition winners at Oxfam's books and music store in Dalston.

Jarvis Cocker, the doyen of charity shop chic, will be playing records he has bought in their bargain racks over the years, and the series, which launches the charity's month-long Oxjam festival of 3,000 events in different venues across Britain, will culminate in a set by Fatboy Slim, aka Norman Cook.

Charity shops are only the latest off-beat venue to be commandeered for "boutique gigs". In recent years chip shops, forests, tube trains and prisons have all played host to leading artists.

But On An Overgrown Path had the story first.
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Joy of Music - a celebration of diversity

Joy of Music is a book by Leonard Bernstein based on the scripts he wrote for an educational TV series in the late 1950s. The book is a celebration of diversity, ranging from American music theatre, through Mahler and the importance of contemporary music, to Bach’s use of counterpoint in his chorale preludes.


My photographs are a visual celebration of the vibrant musical life beyond busking superstars, child prodigies and MySpace. The photos were all taken at Oxfam Books and Music, Norwich on 26th April 2007. Just left click on the images to enlarge, you'll see real diversity - everything from Monteverdi to Stockhausen, and there is even a record deck to audition them on. I’m now away for a few days, so do explore the joy of music through the wonderfully diverse mix of music blogs listed in my side-bar.


The sleeve above is Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations, so why not read about the best damn record he ever made?
All photos copyright On An Overgrown Path, 2007. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk