I’m sure this has been flagged up before but is a very useful resource, particularly if you spent significant amounts of your youth (or even middle age) in record shops, most of which are now sadly defunct. I even found the shop I used to work at in the late 60s (Mascall Records, South Kensington) and added some comments. I’m really only familiar with London shops which seem well represented so I don’t know how complete the archive is for other regions of the UK.
British Record Shop Archive
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Cambridgeshire listing has Andy’s and Jays but no Parrot, although the Parrot listing for Suffolk includes a lot of info about the Cambridge store.
How odd.
Just spent a very enjoyable hour or so perusing the site, including two shops what I worked in. Cheers
You mean there were record stores named Crankies.
Bruce Crankie and Andy Crankie
Shame there’s no way to suggest ommissions – the Exeter list doesn’t have Catapilla – on North Street – listed, which is where I bought quite a few cherished titles in the late 70s.
Turns out Catapilla is in their list – just listed under Devon rather than specifically Exeter. Not only that, but there’s a comment on its page that I wrote some time ago, and which I’d totally forgotten!
No Record Centre in Ebbw Vale listed (or Woolworths!). My favourite record store now is also called Record Centre, but now in Ottawa!
I just had a look to see if the Record Store I used to frequent at lunch time while at college in the 60’s, Rotherys, St Helens featured. Not only was it featured but there was a write up about the shop by yours truly. I was reading the write up and I thought bloody hell whoever wrote this attended the same college and bought his same first records as I did. I get to the end and the author’s byline was mine! Can’t remember writing it, maybe there is something to Max Planck’s multi-dimensional string theory.
I’m gonna be spending a bit of time on the archive. My current favourite local (I live 26 miles away) record store is Quicksiver Music in Southport which I unreservedly recommend.
Another fave is Wah Wah in Wakefield, myself, Stabbers & @SteveT visit there when meeting up with friends from Yorkshire and Lancashire exiles. I was going to check if Wah Wah featured but the web site has frozen. Maybe later, Anyhow if you’re in the vicinity Wah Wah is worth a visit,
Thanks for this @jazzjet
I particularly liked the write-ups of the numerous jazz shops (not a euphemism) I used to visit in London, such as Colletts, Dobells, James Asman, Chris Wellard etc. There’s some good stories about Ray Smith of Colletts (later of Ray’s Jazz in Shaftesbury Avenue) shooting Russian Melodiya 78s with a rifle in the store room of the original Colletts shop.
It’s a great way to spend some time browsing around. I found Discovery Records in Solihull and also Easy Listening in Acocks Green that I used to spend a fair bit of time in (and Pete Paphides mentions in his book.
There’s a place in Brum I was looking for but can’t remember the name unfortunately. It was in the bottom of the large NCP car park on Digbeth just as you entered the city centre.
The shop mainly stocked indie stuff and could be a bit pricey at times.
Readers World* was a couple of shops down as well where you could get old paperbacks and comics for pennies.
If there are any Midlander Afterworders out there who can remember what it was called I’d appreciate a shout. Got a feeling it was probably shut down by the early 90s at which point I’d left the midlands anyway
*that name being very close to Readers Wives unfortunately (used to make us snigger as teenagers though)
It seems remarkably remiss. I guess it excludes hi-fi shops, even if they included a hefty record sales department. Like the temple of my teens, Complete Audio Systems, of Eastbourne, or CAS(S) Music as it was universally known . I would go and listen on headphones about 3x every week from 13 -17, during term time, and I blame it for my habit. It isn’t listed.
…Radio Rentals, when it was still a real business, before it became rhyming slang…where I bought my glam 45s.
The Rumbelows in Uxbridge had a tiny record department where I bought The Police Can’t Stand Losing You on blue vinyl and Squeeze Up The Junction on lilac vinyl. I don’t think anyone ever went there.
Those green Music Market carrier bags with the text ‘The world’s most elegantly wasted music store’ on them gives a proustian rush. They had two shops in Oxford in the seventies. I remember only black decor. The staff playing The Skids ‘Working for the Yankee Dollar’. They had the indie stuff. I got the first Fall album and first Joy Division album plus various singles. Certainly more but those I remember. Our Price took over soon after and they were gone. Woolies at school lunchtime in Abingdon for ex-chart singles at 50p.