I'm quietly rooting for the Klaxons but this is a post about Fopp's flopped shops and not the bloody Mercury Prize

My fabulously funky friend Julez sent me an invitation to join a Facebook group dedicated to saving the trendy music shops Fopp (upset customer pictured, taken from Admanchester).

I declined.

It doesn't matter that Facebook has as much power to save anything as Richard Dawkins has of becoming Archbishop of Canterbury. It's more a case of feeling utterly pessimistic about the future of the record shop.

The closure of Fopp has been covered extensively elsewhere on the internets, so in short it went something like this:

Step One. It doesn't matter how much you take through your tills; if your cash flow dries up, you're done for. A private company buys MVC from Woolworths. It cost them their cash flow. They went under.

Step Two. It doesn't matter how much you take through your tills; if your cash flow dries up, you're done for. Music Zone buys MVC. It cost them their cash flow. They went under.

Step Three. It doesn't matter how much you take through your tills; if your cash flow dries up, you're done for. Fopp buys Music Zone. It cost them their cash flow. They went under.

There's a business lesson there somewhere. Maybe you can spot it. Write your answer on a postcard and send it to HMV before they fall into the trap.

I liked Fopp. The one in Manchester had a cafe. It didn't feel cheap like Music Zone. And if my grey cells are firing on all one cylinders, the fallen Fopp stands pretty much on the burial ground of the old Piccadilly Records. I'm going back a few years here, to the days when punks used to growl at passers-by between the shop and the old sunken toilets, in which lay interesting brown treasure.

Anyhoo, let's just blame Prince and move on, shall we?

Breaking news... the Mercury Music Prize nominations have just been announced. Last year I was horrifically wrong in my predition, so for now I'm just going to list the nominations and then think about it a bit more:

>The Arctic Monkeys' Favourite Worst Nightmare
>Basquiat Strings featuring Seb Rochford's Basquiat Strings
>Bat for Lashes' Fur & Gold
>Dizzee Rascal's Maths & English
>Jamie T's Panic Prevention
>Klaxons' Myths of the Near Future
>Maps' We Can Create
>New Young Pony Club's Fantastic Playroom
>Fionn Regan's The End of History
>The View's Hats Off to the Buskers
>Amy Winehouse's Back to Black
>The Young Knives' Voices of Animals and Men

August update: Fopp has reopened because HMV bought it. The postcard must have got lost in the mail.