Music My Father Would Like #1

There's something terrifically nostalgic in going through the stacks of records at the Notting Hill Record Exchange (its sister shop dedicated to second-hand books is the closest to a home I feel I have in this city). Nostalgic in the way characters in animes say "nostalgic" (these days we're rewatching Toradora!,  masterpiece) - that is, in reference to missing a kind of feeling that was never there in the first place. Feeling nostalgic for something that never happened in the first place. I become a well-intentioned poser in these second-hand record stores. I pretend to know more than I really do. I want to impress the people who work there; those long-bearded middle-aged men who mock the Rough Trade mania and seem impossibly cool to me in their disdain.

I wanted to buy a record for my father's birthday. I had a note with names of bands I thought my father would enjoy (but hopefully didn't already have in his collection). The note read: 

The Fleshtones. 

Cockney Rejects.

The Lambrettas.

*The Chords.

The Crack. ("In search of")

Mose Allison.

Purple Hearts.

Hersham Boys.

*The Dentists.

I forgot the note at home.

In the end I bought a rare cool-looking compilation that features three songs by Purple Hearts. The man behind the till didn't seem impressed by my good taste. I was going to buy a really nice double LP by Hersham Boys but it was too expensive and I love my father but I am poor.

And I don't even know if he likes Hersham Boys.