https://www.thekilmornacollection.com/

The Kilmorna Collection, Church Street, Listowel (2026)

02/09/2026

The Music Is There Until It Isn’t

One of my favourite LP Vinyl records is Lana Del Rey’s Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass.

It is Lana reading her poetry over music by Jack Antonoff.

I bought a copy years ago, and the book recently.

Thankfully.

It's is no longer on Spotify in it's entirity.

There isn’t a copy in TKC either.

Someone bought ours and I haven’t ordered another one.

But I have mine at home.

So Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass is currently unavailable to me in two places and completely available in another.

This is one of the odd things about music now.

Streaming has made us accustomed to the idea that music is simply there.

Usually it is.

Until it isn’t.

With Spotify, Apple Music or any other streaming service, we have access to an extraordinary amount of music, but it remains access.

Rights change.

Licences change.

Things disappear.

Sometimes they come back.

A record disappears for a completely different reason.

Someone has to actually make one.

Vinyl is pressed in batches.

When an album is first released, the first production run is what people generally mean by a first pressing.

If they sell out and the label makes more copies of essentially the same release, you get another pressing, usually called a repress.

Second pressing.

Third pressing.

And so on.

There are people who can tell these apart by staring at tiny numbers scratched into the vinyl beside the label.

They seem happy.

Then there are reissues.

An old album is released again as a new physical edition.

McCoy Tyner’s The Real McCoy came out in 1967.

The edition we have listed in TKC is from 2020.

Nobody kept a box of them under a desk for fifty-three years waiting for me.

They made the record again.

Some records are made again constantly.

Rumours has been selling since 1977 and apparently has no intention of stopping.

We sell one.

I order another.

Somebody somewhere makes more.

There is very little jeopardy involved in owning Rumours.

Then walk a few feet further along the shelves in TKC and things become more interesting.

At the moment we have one copy of Jimi Hendrix’s Songs For Groovy Children.

Not merely one copy in TKC.

It is from a pressing of 4,500 copies worldwide.

It was made for Record Store Day Black Friday in 2024 on blue and violet swirl vinyl.

That particular edition was made as an RSD exclusive.

There aren’t another 4,500 being manufactured every few months.

There are the copies that were made.

Some are in collections.

Some are still sitting in record shops.

One of them, for the moment, is sitting in Listowel.

When somebody buys it, I will never be able to replace that exact copy.

I might eventually be able to buy the Hendrix music again.

There could be another reissue.

Another colour.

Another compilation.

Another edition.

But not necessarily that record.

And this is where record buying becomes different from simply listening to music.

You can listen to Hendrix without owning this particular record.

You can listen to Fleetwood Mac without owning Rumours.

You can even listen to much of Lana Del Rey without owning anything at all.

But physical records have individual lives.

They are manufactured.

They move through distributors.

They arrive in shops.

They get bought.

And eventually some of them stop being available.

This is why I occasionally become more interested in the records I cannot replace than the ones I can.

If somebody buys our Rumours tomorrow, fine.

I’ll order another Rumours.

If somebody buys that Hendrix record, I may look for another one and discover that the answer is simply no.

Not because Hendrix has disappeared.

Not because the music is unavailable.

Because those 4,500 records have gone somewhere.

And one less is sitting in a record shop.

Which brings me back to Lana.

Most of Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass isn’t on Spotify at the moment. Spotify still surfaces a few individual pieces, but not the complete work in the way I used to listen to it.

If it comes back tomorrow, excellent.

If it doesn’t, mine remains exactly where it was.

I bought it.

It is mine.

Which is a remarkably old-fashioned arrangement.

And one I have become increasingly fond of.

01/09/2026

A letter arrived at TKC yesterday addressed specifically to Mr Eamon Lane.

I get nervous when I get letters like this.

I assumed it concerned the porridge water latte.

I had been asked to put Choco on top. I added cinnamon. The defence case isnt great.

Both powders were brown and I had been left unsupervised.

When I saw the envelope, I assumed the matter had progressed to correspondence.

I opened it with resignation, it could not bet good news.

It was not a complaint.

It was a thank you letter from John.

He had ordered The Reeling LP from our website. It arrived safely and very well packed, and he had taken the trouble to write by hand to thank us for the service and say he was looking forward to visiting the shop.

Online orders are normally followed by silence. I have always regarded this as satisfactory evidence that nothing has gone wrong.

John improved considerably the situation.

It was an extraordinarily thoughtful thing to do. I was genuinely touched.

Thank you, John. Your letter is being kept and we look forward to meeting you.

When you visit, you will be very welcome.

Paulina will make the coffee.

31/08/2026

Twenty years ago Lily Allen made an album about people that annoyed her.

It sold millions and was nominated for a Grammy.

Making money out of resentment is a wonderful idea.

At 21 I had strong opinions about people.

Nobody offered me a recording contract.

Thankfully Lily had something more useful than opinions.

She knew wwho to put it all together wonderfully.

A failed relationship became Smile.

An unwanted conversation in a pub became Knock ’Em Out.

A cycle through London became LDN.

Her younger brother’s failure to get off the sofa became Alfie.

The music was bright.

Her mood often wasn’t.

This was called cheeky, outspoken and occasionally difficult.

You know what they say about opinions.....

I remember at the time she was described as a MySpace phenomenon.

This gave an unreasonable amount of credit to MySpace.

For several years, the Press considered her records as events that interrupted to the more important business of photographing her leaving a building.

MySpace has aged really badily.

Alright, deserves a good listen.

West End Girl arrived last year. The people involved were older, the relationships more complicated and the houses a little more expensive.

Lily still knew how to tell the story.

This new 20th-anniversary edition is a picture disc in a silver-foil gatefold with the addition of Nan You’re a Window Shopper.

It is released on Friday, 4 September, and we have a copy that can be pre-ordered

Many artists spend years trying to find their voice.

Lily Allen got hers early along with a list of people who had disappointed her.

Start as you mean to continue.

28/08/2026

Since opening TKC, I have made a series of bold musical decisions.

I stocked Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac.

I also took a chance on Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin and the Rolling Stones, all had shown some commercial promise before I became involved.

I called it building a museum of music.

That was honestly part of it.

I wanted the important records across jazz, classical music, rock and folk to be available in Listowel.

The other part was that these were difficult decisions to get wrong.

If a copy of Rumours remained on the shelf for a month, I did not have to question my judgement.

Fleetwood Mac had already established that the record was not the problem.

I only had to wait.

New releases are less considerate.

You must order them before anybody asks for them and while it is still possible for history to prove you foolish.

Today, Alex Warren released WILDCHILD.

There is a copy in TKC.

I ordered it without waiting twenty years to find out whether it becomes important.

This is how TKC will buy from now on. The albums that built the museum are staying, we will continue to order them, but they will be joined by records that have not yet had time to become classics.

Some will sell quickly. Some will sit there for months. If you ask about one of those, I will explain that people have not caught up with it yet.

Living on the edge.

27/08/2026

Customer service at TKC has improved considerably.

We now let customers make their own drinks.

In my defence, I have been professionally trained to make coffee. I have attended courses, including one devoted entirely to the machine we use. Considerable time and money have therefore been spent ensuring that I am technically qualified to produce something our regular customers would still prefer Paulina to make.

They no longer look horrified when they find me behind the counter.

An element of surprise is needed for Horror to take hold.

What remains is disappointment, moderated by experience and an understanding of what to do next.

“Will Paulina be back soon?”

Nobody is embarrassed to ask anymore.

Usually, the answer is yes. She is on the phone to a supplier and will be back in a minute.

We use the minute well. We discuss corrugated iron, therapy sessions, mine, obviously, nails, theirs, obviously, or the weather.

Then Paulina returns, we immediately abandon the conversation, and the customer receives the drink they expect to receive at TKC.

Yesterday, one of our regulars came in for a boba tea while Paulina was occupied with something important.

I was alone behind the counter.

We looked at each other with the quiet understanding of two people who had received the same bad news.

I know, theoretically, how to make boba tea. I also know, theoretically, how corrugated iron is attached to a roof. There are limits to what should be attempted on the strength of knowledge alone.

Faced with the choice between making the drink myself and closing the shop, I found a third option.

“Would you like to make your own?”

They agreed immediately.

I chose not to take this personally.

I laid out the ingredients and moved into management. I explained the process, advised on sweetness levels and offered encouragement from a distance.

The customer carried out every stage requiring practical ability.

It was, by any reasonable measure, an improvement in service.

They got the drink exactly as they wanted it. My workload was substantially reduced. And if it was terrible, any Google review would also have amounted to a written admission of responsibility.

Paulina returned a few minutes later, looked at the counter and then at me.

“Were there any problems?”

“None at all,” I said.

After all these months working together, it is nice that we still make the effort to lie to each other.

The photo shows me enjoying a Dubai style chocolate matcha latte that I did not make myself and a chocolate chip muffin.

26/08/2026

Independent retail operates at the scale of minor biblical incidents.

A record is sitting in a shop. Somewhere, a man is looking for that particular record. The two must be brought together before somebody intervenes.

For several months, Brìghde Chaimbeul’s The Reeling had been sitting quietly among louder records.

The cover made no great effort to attract attention. There was no famous face, no anniversary sticker and no promise of coloured vinyl, numbered vinyl, remastered vinyl or previously unheard breathing from the original sessions.

It was simply an album of Scottish smallpipes, recorded in a church.

Customers passed over it.

This is not unusual. Record shops are full of things everybody ignores until the day one person can think of little else.

In my mind the man had first heard the album by accident. Most music now reaches us that way.

A computer examines everything we have enjoyed and sends us more of the same. It is an efficient system for ensuring that nothing genuinely surprising ever occurs.

On this occasion, something went wrong.

A harmonium began. It sounded old, asthmatic and entirely unembarrassed by either condition.

Then came the pipes.

Not the pipes that arrive ahead of a parade. These were smallpipes, indoor pipes, close pipes, pipes intended for rooms in which the weather had been firmly asked to remain outside.

The man stopped what he was doing.

It does not matter what he was doing. Whatever it was had become less important.

He listened to the album. Then he listened again.

He already paid a monthly subscription for access to almost the entire history of recorded music. But access, he discovered, was not the same as possession.

He wanted this music to occupy space.

He wanted it to have a sleeve, two sides and edges.

He wanted to have to turn it over.

So he began looking for the record.

At first he looked casually. Then he looked properly.

The words 'out of stock' appeared with increasing regularity. Nothing reveals the spiritual importance of an object quite like being told that nobody has one.

The longer the album eluded him, the more necessary it became.

This was unreasonable. The man understood that. He was not young enough to confuse the ownership of an LP with salvation.

Still, he wanted it.

Eventually, his search brought him to a record shop in Listowel.

The website claimed to have a copy.

He contacted us with the caution of a man reporting a rare animal.

Was it really there?

Could we check?

Could we put it aside?

Could it be posted?

We checked.

There it was.

Not theoretically there. Not there according to a database last updated during a more optimistic period.

Physically there.

A hand on the sleeve. A record lifted from the shelf.

Yes, we told him.

We had it.

The album was placed between two cardboard stiffeners and sealed inside a mailer designed with a frank understanding of the postal system.

There is a moment in packing a record when its value changes. On the shelf it is stock. Once sealed inside cardboard, it becomes the thing somebody is waiting for.

The parcel travelled through depots where fluorescent lighting flattered nothing. It was scanned, stacked, shifted and carried.

At every stage it was surrounded by objects people had ordered because they needed them, believed they needed them, or had been awake after midnight with access to a credit card.

For a short time, the man had the excellent life of someone waiting for a record.

The post acquired purpose. Morning contained possibility. Even disappointment had structure: not today, then perhaps tomorrow.

He did not enjoy the delay exactly. But he could feel himself moving towards something, which is close enough to happiness for many adults.

The record arrived on an ordinary afternoon.

Long awaited things generally do.

He opened the parcel carefully. Inside was the album, exactly as it had appeared in photographs and somehow more present.

The sleeve had weight. The vinyl reflected the room back at him in a dark, warped circle.

He put it on.

The harmonium began.

Then the pipes entered, low and steady.

The room did not change. But the terms on which he occupied it changed slightly.

The music seemed older than the building and less impressed by modern improvements. It asked for no reaction. It did not instruct him to relax, focus, heal, optimise or become the best version of himself.

It merely continued.

When the first side ended, it ended completely.

He stood up and turned the record over.

This minor inconvenience was precisely what he had paid for.

He had not purchased transformation. Thats not available with standard shipping.

He had bought forty minutes during which his attention was not being divided, measured or sold back to him.

It was enough.

Back in the shop, there was no clean zero beside The Reeling.

There were still two copies.

This might look like failure to anyone who believes the purpose of retail is to make every object disappear as quickly as possible.

But a record shop has another function.

It keeps things that most people do not want until the person who wants them very badly comes looking.

The Reeling is not for everybody.

The world has suffered enough from music that attempts to be for everybody.

It is for those who desire it.

Desire is not the same as demand. Demand is a number on a spreadsheet.

Desire belongs to one person and is therefore far less convenient.

There are still two copies in Listowel, sitting quietly among the louder records, waiting without any apparent anxiety for the world to arrange itself correctly again.

25/08/2026

WE’RE TURNING THE RECORD SHOP INTO A CINEMA.

On Thursday 3 September, the shelves stay where they are, the lights go down and the first picture goes up.

BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB.

Wim Wenders’ film is funny, moving and bursting with music. It travels from Havana to Carnegie Hall with a group of extraordinary musicians who found a worldwide audience at an age when most careers are supposed to be over.

This is a film to be seen properly.

On a big screen.
With the sound up.
And other people in the room.

Thursday 3 September
7pm
The Kilmorna Collection

Presented by Sluagh Hall and The Kilmorna Collection.

Tickets are still available at:
www.thekilmornacollection.com

Come to the first one.

Years from now, it may be useful to say you were there.

24/08/2026

Niamh says the music I play in the shop is depressing.

She’s not wrong.

But some of it is about murder.

Bruce Springsteen recorded Nebraska in his bedroom back in 1982, using a four track cassette machine.

The songs were only meant to be demos. He then brought them into a proper studio with the E Street Band and a considerable amount of expensive equipment.

Everybody did their job correctly.

It didn’t sound great.

So he released the original cassette.

The recent film Springsteen Deliver Me from Nowhere tells this story.

It shows a man on the verge of becoming one of the biggest musicians in the world refusing to make the record bigger.

The primary act of rebellion is a man deciding not to add drums.

What remains is ten songs about murder, prison, debt, fathers, cars and the faint possibility that life might improve.

Two years later, Born in the U.S.A. made him unavoidable.

Unless you’re Niamh…..

23/08/2026

Metal was once accused of corrupting the young, undermining civilisation and encouraging behaviour that would eventually have to be mentioned in confession.

It now arrives during the morning code rush in cardboard boxes with a packing slip.

A significant number of LPs came in this week: Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Motorhead, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Dio, Danzig, Scorpions, Motley Crue, Saxon, Ghost, Nine Inch Nails, Helloween, Venom and more.

Every one has been scanned, priced and placed neatly in alphabetical order.

The metal section is full again.

The photograph shows me holding British Steel, released in 1980.

Only one of us is still considered dangerous.

22/08/2026

Pop up ar ais ar an Aoine seo chugainn 28ú Lúnasa. Fáilte roimh chách 💬☘️🎶

The Kilmorna Collection

02/09/2026

01/09/2026

31/08/2026

28/08/2026

27/08/2026

26/08/2026

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