I think, particularly in this country, we have an enduring respect for people who refuse to pander to the rules of polite society.

The eccentric; the outcast; the black sheep.

Picture my delight then, when I stumbled into my local independent record shop.

I began to suspect I was in for an experience when I introduced myself to the man behind the desk, and my offer of a handshake was either overlooked or silently refused.

There was nobody in there but me and him.

Brown hoodie, zipped to the top. Straggly ginger beard. And, of course, matching brown woollen beanie hat.

We’d exchanged some brief words on the phone earlier when – excited by the apparently naïve idea that a local musician with an independent record might be the sort of thing a local independent record store might welcome – I had called to ask if I could come in and give the sample vinyl presses of Stars a spin, just to make sure everything was OK before the full run was printed.

‘…you can listen to them on headphones on the listening deck, yeah.’

Phone down.

So I drove into town, took the steps down into Stockport’s iconic underpass, and found the store.

‘Hi – I’m Rob – I called earlier.’

He looked at me with the sort of weary scepticism I usually get from doctors’ receptionists and overworked bartenders.

‘Am I alright to give these a go?’

‘Yep. It’s over there.’

‘Over there’ happened to be at the far end of the till, where a pair of battered old headphones hung from an impossibly complicated-looking LP player that I knew I would absolutely fail to figure out at first glance.

I slid the first test record out of its white paper sleeve, laid it down, and nervously fumbled with the stylus, which refused to move.

‘There’s a catch.’

Before I could investigate the mechanics of the catch, he’d come over, liberated the stylus for me, and decided that he had been completely right from the beginning: I was an idiot.

Things didn’t improve from there.

Because if he thought I was an idiot for not understanding the catch, I can only imagine what he thought when I asked him where the needle needed to go to play track one.

I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but I don’t actually own a vinyl player.

I know I should.

The truth is, though, that I’m pretty happy consuming music digitally.

I know that’s tantamount to sacrilege in some circles, but I’m trying to be honest.

You see – what I’m really interested in are songs; not sounds.

When I listen to music, that’s what my brain engages with. I’m obsessed with melody, and lyrics, and chord changes.

I just can’t claim to be that attuned to the timbre of the guitar, or the snare drum frequency, or the clarity of the highs, or the depths of the lows, or the nuances of the production, or the style of the recording.

As Bob Dylan once allegedly told a mixing engineer who had stayed up all night tweaking one of the tracks on his latest album:

‘You guys make everything sound better – the drums, the guitar, the vocal. And at the end of it, when you’ve done all that, everything does sound better. Except the song.’

And I’m not saying I agree: I know that all that stuff does matter – that it elevates the tune I’m enjoying in all sorts of ways I’m only subconsciously aware of.

The listening medium? I can definitely be flexible on that.

I’ve had a similar revelation over the last couple of years with books.

I just don’t buy paper ones anymore.

I’ve realised that I don’t care about the cover, or the tactile experience, or the smell of the pages, or the typeface.

I just want to get the interesting words into my brain.

And that’s just easier as an audiobook, or on a beautifully lightweight, backlit e-reader.

(Which is one of the least sexy things I’ve ever said.)

Because yes – a vinyl record is definitely more romantic, more authentic, and it may well offer me a superior listening experience.

But I'm very lazy.

Clearly, it would have been disastrous to voice this opinion to my friend behind the desk.

I did, however, voice something…

‘Sorry mate – do you think I could borrow your ears for a minute? I think I’m hearing a bit of static on this – I’m not sure if that’s normal?’

He sighed, stopped whatever he was pretending to do, and strode over, before pulling the record off the deck.

‘Where’d you get these pressed?’

He held it up to the light, eyeing it like it was the X-ray of a shadowy lung.

I told him.

‘Never heard of them. That’s the name of the broker company, though. They’re just the middle men. There are only about five or six vinyl pressing factories left in Europe – which one do they use?’

I shrugged. He rolled his eyes and headed towards the other end of the till.

I followed.

‘There’s a label on them that says Czech Republic.’

He sighed again, but I couldn’t help detecting a grim satisfaction in his face.

‘That’ll be GL. They’re notoriously shit.’

‘Oh right?’

He pulled the ambient dance record he’d been spinning since I came in off the shop’s master system and replaced it with my test pressing, as though he were laying a piece of soiled laundry out to dry on a sacred altar.

He didn’t even look down as he placed the needle.

‘Yep. Hear that?’

I sort of did, so I said yes – but truthfully, if he’d asked me to describe exactly what I’d heard, I’d have been in trouble.

‘That’s noisy, that. You see, the problem with the record industry now is that everyone wants vinyl. So what these companies do,’ he flicked the needle from groove to groove, testing every track for a two or three seconds without ever taking his eyes off me, ‘is they offer people like you – who don’t know what they’re doing – these shiny deals for quick vinyl prints that are expensive, look sparkly and sound like shit.’

‘Oh right?’

‘Yeah. You see, the beauty of vinyl is that it’s meant to be a complete listening experience. Did you even have it mastered for vinyl?’

‘Erm. I think so?’

‘Did your engineer do the metalwork and send a negative?’

‘Erm. No – I don’t think so. He just sent me the files and I emailed them to the company.’

‘Yep. You see: you emailing some digital files for them to burn onto a record is absolutely pointless. This is what the industry is now. You get artists selling vinyl just to give people something to collect. You might as well buy the artwork, stick it on the wall like a fucking poster, and stream the record on Spotify.’

‘Oh right?’

This, by now, had become my response – as if to an unholy psalm.

‘Yep. And there’s no money in it either.’

‘Isn’t there?’

‘No. The margins are razor sharp these days. With this fucking vinyl revival going on, factories are charging more and more to print. Over the last five years, production costs have doubled and quality has halved. How many are you having done?’

‘I can’t quite remember – I think it’s a run of 250?’

I was probably thrown by the poetic genius of a vinyl record shop owner hating the vinyl record revival.

‘Yep – you’ll struggle to sell those. People won’t pay anything more than £20 these days, and I’ll bet they’ll charge you thousands for the run. Do you have a distributor?’

‘No…’

And so it went on.

I won’t regurgitate the whole dialogue, but it was an absolute tour de force.

Twenty-five minutes later, I was still there, having had my modest vision of printing my record onto vinyl and selling some to you lot utterly dismantled – piece by piece – in relentless, surgical monotone.

But you know what?

I sort of loved every second of it.

Because you can say what you want about the guy in the record shop, but he clearly loves, lives and breathes what he does.

Bitter? Yes. Difficult? For sure. Would I ever want to talk to him again about anything? Absolutely not.

But people like him are what keep would-be-extinct art forms alive – with their obsessive knowledge, their prickly defensiveness, their unwavering commitment to the way they think things should be done.

You’ll find them up and down the country – lurking in motorcycle garages, independent cinemas and comic book stores, or crouched over model railways – cradling the dying flames of their craft, rolling their eyes, shaking their beards and preserving it all properly for the next generation.

And in a world of faux-polite, nauseating HR drones, there’s something quite refreshing about being told repeatedly that everything you’ve done or thought is wrong and that you probably shouldn’t have bothered in the first place.

Eventually, having unloaded at me for the best part of half an hour, I think the fact that I just stood there smiling and nodding politely, absorbing the punishment, earned me some begrudging respect.

I thanked him for his advice and ordered a coffee from him – the store clearly made as much on americanos as Americana – paid with a tenner and insisted he kept the change.

This seemed to throw him off balance.

‘Oh no – you don’t have to –’

‘No mate. Honestly – keep it. I really appreciate your time and advice – it’s great to talk to someone who actually knows what they’re on about.’

Maybe it’s the naïvety speaking again, but I’m sure I saw his face soften, just for a moment.

‘Alright – cheers. Eh – and listen – when you do get it pressed, bring a few copies down. Maybe I’ll take a few off you to sell. You know… fair play to you for doing it and that. I’ve been releasing vinyl all my life. It takes some balls.’

As I walked out, coffee in hand, a guy came in with a fabric bag full of records.

‘Hi mate – I’ve got some records here I’m looking to sell…’

‘Yep. I’ll stop you there. If you’ve come here with a fixed price in mind, I can tell you that there’s no point us even discussing them. I’m just being honest – it’ll take me half an hour to look through those, and the price I’ll quote you is probably half what you’ll be expecting. The vinyl trade is on its arse and time is money, mate.’

Good luck, I thought.

Stars will be coming – and on great-sounding vinyl – in the autumn.

You might even find a copy in your local record store.

Until then…

Keep dreaming,

Rob