Playtime
The first record store I ever visited was Playtime. It was in an old wooden building downtown Trondheim that now houses the pub Three Lions. It pains me to see this former temple of vinyl turned into a house of worship for the anglofiles, but there really hasn't been a decent store there since they closed their doors in the late 80s or thereabout. When you entered the store, they had bins upon bins of vinyl - and they had the mandatory tape racks as well. This was where they kept all the new stuff - the things they still could charge full price for. When I started shopping there, I think the price was around NOK 70 per record or tape, but before too long, the price was around NOK 100, which is the price I remember paying most of the time - as long as the music was new.
While the main floor was nice and had all the important new releases - especially from the hair bands of the 80s, the basement was the holy grail. Nice Price albums were the main feature of the basement - they were older releases not selling that well anymore and discounted to NOK 49.50. Some were of more foreign origin. I still remember Mexican pressings of Kiss' Love Gun and Rock and Roll Over - and the Black Sabbath box set Hand of Doom, which I also believe could have been of Mexican origin, featuring the first four Black Sabbath albums on flimsy vinyl and without any of the original artwork.
Playtime was also where I purchased most of the presents I ever gave to people. My good friend Arve received many an old ZZ Top tape purchased in this basement - often even cheaper than the NOK 49.50. I think I got him most of the pre-Eliminator releases - and then I made good use of them myself. Copying records and albums to tapes was a very common occurrence, and I think my parents' basement still holds a huge box of tapes I made throughout my adolescence.
I also discovered new music there. I kinda liked what Phil Lynnott had done with Gary Moore (Out in the Fields was a huge hit for the two of them), so I thought I should pick up a Thin Lizzy album. I ended up with Live Life from 1983, which I thoroughly enjoyed, although it was not being recognized as one of their best. I also picked up a cassette once that set my tastes off towards the more progressive music. I had friends who really liked Deep Purple, and it was in the Playtime basement I realized that Ritchie Blackmore had formed another band after leaving Deep Purple: Rainbow. I ended up buying a tape that had a cool cover - the image of a hand coming from a stormy sea and grasping a rainbow. It was called Rainbow Rising. I did not know that the singer was the Holy Diver himself, Mr. Ronnie James Dio, so I was very surprised when I read the cover to find out who played in the band. While I liked the entire tape, the goosebumps appeared when I heard the final track: Stargazer. It still gives me the chills. And for that - and as a tribute to Playtime, which truly was the treasure chest of my youth - here is the original version as recorded by Rainbow in 1976 - and as a nice bonus, a version by Dream Theater from 2009 - eerily close to the original.
Dream Theater - from Black Clouds and Silver Linings:
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