Diary of a Shopkeeper, 3rd March 2024

We always like to have a pleasant musical soundtrack playing in Kirkness & Gorie. We feel it creates a relaxed atmosphere for shoppers. I don’t like an entirely silent wine shop where, every time you turn a bottle around to look at the label, embarrassing clinking fills the room. Even worse is where silence makes customers feel they have to talk in whispers so the shopkeepers can’t hear what they’re saying.

Usually people whisper because they worry they’re going to say something daft about the wine. For the record, let me say that there’s nothing daft you can say about wine that we haven’t said a hundred times before. Relax, whisperers: it doesn’t matter, and we’re not listening anyway. We’re certainly not judging your tastes or your indecision: we’re just happy to see you in the shop, and waiting to leap forward with assistance if and when you need it.

Meanwhile, let the lovely melodies of Ella Fitzgerald or Martin Taylor soothe your anxious soul…

Shop music must be chosen carefully. Too quiet doesn’t work, and neither does too loud. We find that too fast is yet another no-no. If the music is frantic, it makes us jumpy and nervous and disrupts our concentration. A critic notoriously complained of, ‘Too many notes, Mr Mozart!’ Whole genres have to be avoided in the shop for that very reason: bluegrass, New Orleans jazz, stompy folk music. All have too many notes, played too quickly. We’d be nervous wrecks by noon.

What we seek is something alive but not too lively, pleasant but not too saccharine, accessible but not too hackneyed. Instrumental is often better than vocal music though there are exceptions: jazz singers with voices like softly sounding saxophones – Ella, Billie, Chet. Cool jazz is a good fallback. A conversation about an obscure Miles Davis track I was playing resulted in a firm friendship with a new customer (shout out to Count Peter von Eday!) Not everything Miles recorded works, however. One day, when I’d put on his long, experimental track ‘He Loved Him Madly’, a customer asked why I was playing ‘torture chamber music.’

For Peter Maxwell Davies all music played in a shop was torture. Max was a regular customer, and always a pleasure to talk to. But we learned early on that he hated background music. ‘Music is something you should listen to,’ he said to me sternly, ‘Not something you half-hear in the background. Show it some respect.’ So whenever we saw him coming down the lane, we’d quickly switch off Spotify. The customer is always right. Of course, as soon as he’d made his purchase and left we turned it on again. Sorry, Max!

All these musical musings are prompted by the fact that we have lost three giants of the Orkney music scene in recent weeks, two who made it and one who played it: John P Drever, accomplished accordionist and leader of the Westray Band. Billy Jolly, singer, storyteller and moothie-player extraordinaire. And Dave Gray, with his 30-year career playing and promoting all kinds of music, and much else, on Radio Orkney.

I was lucky enough to know all three a little, and to share various stages and studios with them. My saying that is far from unusual, as they all played such a big part in their communities for so many years that almost everyone must have met John P, Billy and Dave in one way or another. If you hadn’t met them in person you would definitely have heard them at The Reel or the Folk Festival, or on the radio, or at a Westray Regatta dance. Or on the boat to Westray when the safety instruction tape was played. None of them studied their craft at a Conservatoire. Their music came from their community, their culture, and from their character. It was all the more valuable for that. They will be greatly missed.

But the music must go on… Take it away, Ella!

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 7th March 2024. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.

Duncan McLean