Changed days for music

After all the talk about HMV yesterday, it got me to thinking about my gran. She had two main jobs that I remember from my childhood - she was a pianist - she played in a club on a Saturday night and she worked in a record shop (the record department in Lewis's department store on Argyle street). By the time I was around, she simply worked behind the counter so I wasn't really aware why she worked in a record shop, given she was a 'granny'! One night when I was a teenager, after she'd retired, I asked her how she'd come to work in a shop where most of the staff were teenagers. She explained a world to me that I knew nothing of... Before rock'n'roll, before pop and the likes people went to music shops, as they were then, to buy sheet music, and to help those buying the music, they needed a resident musician who could take the customer into a booth and play it for them to help them decide which piece to buy. In an age where we listen to snippets of music online and then download tracks through cyberspace, you have to say we've come a long way from my granny (born in 1916) sitting playing sheet music to potential music customers in the 40s and 50s!