Monorail Music

Stephen McRobbie — Stephen Pastel, of The Pastels — and Dep Downie, both collectors, label-runners and shop veterans, opened Monorail in December 2002 in the railway arch beside Mono, and turned it into one of Britain's most respected independent record shops: a stock chosen with the specific, uncondescending taste of people who have spent their lives in music, strong on the obscure, the reissued and the local. McRobbie worked at John Smith's and Downie at Missing Records before this; the shop is the distillation of both educations. Vinyl's revival did not need Glasgow's permission, but it got the city's blessing here.