Having already written a blog in the last week where HMV was the main subject line, some might think that I am either obsessing or that I have little else to write about, and they may be right, but on the other hand the Greek Playwrite Euripedess wrote two plays about about Hippolytus in his lifetime, and he is still revered today thousands of years after his death and I am a better writer than he is.
Hippolytus, being trampled to death by horses after they were scared by a giant seamonster.
Having had a week to think about the situation with the highstreet chain a few things come to mind. Why did the HMV directors not take a look at the situation with the Poster chain, Athena?
Arty.
Athena were at one point, giants on the high street. If you wanted a poster of a topless man holding a baby, men eating sandwiches on a steel girder suspended hundreds of feet in the air or a woman scratching her bum while playing tennis, then Athena was the place to go. When the internet came to the fore, poster sales dropped; people began to download their posters or stream their posters from legal poster streaming sites like Spotiposterfy. Supermarkets started selling posters at a loss in order to get poster loving shoppers. Ultimately, the value of a poster became negated and Athena had no choice but to go administration.
Another store that HMV should have taken heed from was the toy chain, Zodiac. At one point Zodiac was the place to go, go. It's face adourned every highstreet, its isles full of children throwing temper tantrums because their parents couldn't afford the latest transformer toy. However, with the dawn of the internet, sales plummeted. People began downloading toys from illegal torrent sites and from Streaming websites like Spo'toy'fy. In a vain attempt to diversify, Zodiac stopped selling toy cars and started selling real ones, stopped selling toy horses and started selling real ones, stopped selling trains and started selling real ones, stopped selling rocking horses and started selling real rocks. Started selling Petrol, Footballers, Chainsaws, Goldfish, Dogs, Cats, Rats, Bats, Matts and DAT tapes.
The biggest problem facing Zodiac was that it had lost its identity as a shop and had started to resemble a zoo or at the very least, a petshop that also sold machine guns. Eventually the administrators were called in and the store closed.
They actually went crazy. The staff would eat their own shit.
Rattners was another highstreet casualty, it's chairman famously penned a speech saying that his shop sold shit jewellery, and while HMV didn't actually say that, they undervalued their stock at such an alarming percentage, that it gave them the customer that impression.
So now I have done a rule of three to question why HMV were not more aware of their changing environment, I need to crack on with the rest of this blog, because I am now worried that I shouldn't have started a second blog, much in the way that Euripedes did with the Hippolytus all those thousands of years ago.
I can see why the Hippolytus myth may have been something that made Euripedes want to visit it again and again. Hippolytus was a beautiful teenage boy who decided to become chaste and dedicate his life to the hunter goddess Artemis. Much in the same way that HMV was a beautiful teenage biy that decided to dedicate its existence to selling formats that were used to play masic.
Hippolytus spurning physical love angered the goddess of love Aphrodite, who cast a spell on Phaedra, who was Hippolytus's stepmother.
Hippolytus spurned his step mothers advances who then went on to accuse him of rape. His Father, Jason, cursed Hippolytus, who after being banished from Jason's kingdom was bucked off the carraiges carried by horses who were scared by a giant Seamonster who was summoned by Poseidon, although I am not sure why. Hippolytus fell off and was crushed and trampled by the horses.
You may have noticed that Initially I started to compare the plight of HMV to the greek myth of Hippolytus, partly in an attempt to draw a comparison between myself and Euripedes and justify me writing about HMV twice in the same way that Euripedes did, but I am now very confused. If CD's are the goddess Artemis, then should I compare the internet to the Goddess Aphrodite? Should I compare the sea monster that scared the horses to the Supermarkets that sold CD's at a loss, or the other way round? Should I compare the reaction of the horses to the reaction of HMV bosses who tried to match the Supermarkets prices even though it couldnt afford it? Maybe we could look at the arrogance of Hippolytus in spurning physical love in a similar way to the HMV bosses who priced the back catalogue CD's at inflated prices. Maybe Hippolytus's arrogance could be compared to the bosses who felt the need to overspend on the look of the stores, rebranding, overdiversifying and essentially bankrupting itself by purchasing music venues and paying over the odds.
Or perhaps I am out of my depth and should cut my losses and just finish up this blog.
Ultimately, Euripedes was obsessed with this tragedy; HMV's plight is also a tragedy, and one that I may be a little obsessed with, having worked there for most of my adult life. Maybe I was overreaching when I tried to compare the myth with the retail chain, but Rumbalows or Blockbuster going under doesn't have the same cultural impact as HMV going under. It was a place where people talked music, talked about bands and films, spread the love. It was a place for music obsessives to go and burn their money. None of this fits in with the Hippolytus myth at all, but that doesn't make it any less sad.
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