Great record shops - Adrians of Wickford
Anyone who bought the NME throughout the 70;s and 80;s will be aware of Adrian’s of Wickford. For twenty years they had an eye-catching advert highlighting the latest releases.
When he left school Adrian wanted a career in the theatre and soon found work as a jobbing actor. To supplement his income he also helped out his Mum who sold wool on a local market stall. Then Adrian noticed that the adjacent stall,which sold ladies tights and suspenders seconds (conjuring up some bizzare images )was not utilising all it’s counter space. Adrian rented the spare space and thus began his career in music running the world’s first SUSPENDER SECONDS AND RECORD STALL.
Soon however, as his Mum’s wool stall was doing exceptionally well and she took the decision to rent a shop. Adrian too felt this was an opportune time to move his business forward so he asked his Mum if he could transfer his little business from the suspender stall to her newwool shop. This was progress indeed; the lucky people of Wickford were soon to have the world’s first WOOL AND RECORD SHOP.
Inevitably, problems arose from the beginning Adrian’s customers were teenagers whilst his Mum’s customers were mainly pensioners. The wool customers complained that the music was too loud and this caused tension between Adrian and his Mum. To solve the problem Adrian installed a partition between the two parts of the shop and also knocked through a wall to give his music store a separate entrance. The good people of Wickford struggled to come to terms with all this change. They no longer had the worlds only WOOL AND RECORD SHOP in it’s place they now had the world’s smallest wool shop and the world’s smallest record shop.
Fortunately his acting career soon took off when he landed a role in Godspell. The cast in this production included David Essex, Jeremy Irons, Marti Webb, Julie Covington and Robert Lindsay and was a huge success. This now required Adrian to employ staff to run his store in Wickford.
Jeremy Irons became one of his first regular customers. Adrian remembers him as a big fan of 8 track cartridges but always wanted a discount.
Unless you have a long memory you may wonder what 8 tracks were.
They were launched in the mid 60’s as a method of listening to recorded music, rather like a large version of the cassette. The Ford Motor Company offered them as an option on all their new cars. The format was successful for ten years before the advent of the compact cassette, which was smaller, cheaper and had a faster rewind capacity. Subsequently there was a concerted effort by the record companies to reduce the number of different formats offered and 8 tracks bit the dust. .
At this point in his life Adrian was earning good money and his agent advised him to invest his money in bricks and mortar. Showing his entrepreneurial tendencies he bought a four-bedroom house in London, redeveloped it into four bed-sits, and let them out to his fellow actors whilst he slept on the lounge floor. Unfortunately, actors do not stay in one place for very long and soon Adrian had a steady stream of changing tenants which was hard work
More dramatically, one of his tenants was psychotic. Her behaviour became so outrageous and aggressive that all the other tenants moved out. She now had the house to herself and spent her time wreaking havoc and covering the house in graffiti. Eventually the unfortunate girl was sectioned under the Mental Health Act, so, accompanied by police, a social worker and a doctor, Adrian had to enter the house to have her removed. As he made his way into the hall the girl lunged at him with a knife, but, luckily for Adrian, the police were able to disarm her and remove her from the property.
After this experience Adrian had no more appetite for the letting business but was now left to ponder what to do with his large house with the large mortgage which accompanied it.
Adrian decided his next move should be to start a mail-order operation. He and his partner Richard Burke took over the upstairs bedrooms of the London house for stock and dispatch, and their first advertisement appeared in NME in 1975. They were astonished by the reaction and within a short time were employing eight people and turning over £18,000 per week – a lot of money for a business originally run from home in the 1970s.
By now Adrian had outgrown the wool shop, and indeed its successor – an upstairs floor of the new Wickford Indoor Market building – and had opened a new vinyl store in the High Street of Wickford with a rear warehouse for the mail-order operation. Recognising the changes in the retail arena, he added a CD shop next door to the vinyl. This needed to be more modern and hi-tech than its vinyl counterpart next door, because, as Adrian remembers clearly, CD customers felt themselves to be far superior to mere vinyl buyers!
Next came a shop a few doors down the street for the selling and renting of videos. The selling of videos became so successful that it was necessary to separate the operation from rental, so a new store was opened for rental, while the original became the UK’s first-ever stand-alone video retail outlet. The new rental store – immediately opposite – not only rented videos, but dispensed confectionery and soft drinks. The tally of Adrian’s stores – all within 50 metres of each other – now stood at four.
This was during the days when chart manipulation was rife. The record charts were compiled by writing sales of catalogue numbers down in a white book in a selection of record retailers. At first Adrian would leave his book on the counter whilst he made coffee for the sales reps, and on his return he would find the book suddenly was full of numbers. The reps would then leave him boxes of free stock. The penny dropped with Adrian that they were leaving him the free stock for leaving his book on the counter.
Also around that time there was a record-buying team in operation. Funded by the record companies this team would traverse the area buying the records its own label had on release. Each week the same gang of housewives would call in and buy several copies of targeted records to manipulate their chart position. They obviously had a set route and you could set your clock by their weekly visit, before they swept on across the rest of the record stores in Essex.
By this time Adrian had reached a crossroads in his life. He had just finished a major tour playing the narrator in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat” alongside Paul Jones, of Manfred Mann fame, who played the lead. Adrian felt that he had to make the choice between music and theatre and, fortunately for the people of Wickford, he abandoned his acting career to manage his shops.
Over the following years there were several examples of Adrian’s shrewdness as a businessman:
His was the first CD store to install a National Lottery machine. It took him years of lobbying to Camelot before they relented and granted him one. Unfortunately his sales of only £2,000 a week were unacceptably low to Camelot, who threatened to remove his machine unless sales improved dramatically. Adrian responded with a terrific ruse. He advertised that everybody who won a £10 prize in his shop would, instead, be paid out £11, with the extra £1 being in the form of a record voucher to spend in his shop. During the first week of the promotion they sold £10,000 worth of lottery tickets and, to this day, lottery tickets do a buoyant trade in store.
For ten years Adrian’s had the contract to supply the British Council with all its CDs and Videos, which brought in sales in excess of £200,000 per year. In its own words The British Council’s remit is ”To build mutually beneficial cultural and educational relationships between the United Kingdom and other countries, and to increase overall appreciation of the UK’s creative ideas and achievements”.
They have offices in 240 countries and receive a yearly grant of around £200 million from the government…and you can sure buy a lot of CDs and videos with that much money!
Unfortunately, the contract ended when his contact at the Council was replaced by a committee of eight people who introduced layer after layer of procurement red tape, to the point at which Adrian decided not to bid for the new contract due to the the undue effort required to service all 240 offices.
Another successful promotion was his launch of the video “Titanic”.
Adrian announced that his store would open at midnight to enable the people of Wickford to be the first in the UK to own a copy and that all purchasers would receive a signed certificate confirming this fact. It was not even as if these certificates were signed by Leonardo DiCaprio or Kate Winslet - they were printed and signed by Adrian himself. Nevertheless, when the store opened the queue was halfway down the High Street. More than 500 videos were sold that night and Adrian had to spend the whole time photocopying and signing more and more home-made certificates.
For a shrewd businessman like Adrian it is rare for him to have a failure but his idea to open an outlet in a nightclub will not go down as his brightest moment In the winter of 1976, one of their regular DJ customers was host at the infamous Zero 6 club in Southend. (a sort of Essex Studio 54)He persuaded Adrian that it would be a good idea to open a dance-record shop in the foyer of his club. So that’s exactly what I they did.
Every Friday and Saturday night he started working from 10pm until 2am. It was a tough assignment, particularly on the Friday night as he had a market stall to set up at 6am the next morning.
How could he possibly fail at the Zero 6? Easy.
On their arrival, clubbers were so keen to get inside and have a drink that they didn’t notice Adrian. Once inside, they forgot about him (that’s if they remembered him in the first place)
And on their way out, they were too pissed to give a toss about him and who wants to be carrying 12” singles around with them on a night out?
It was a total disaster. The upside was that he soon got his Friday evenings back to sort out stock for Saturday’s Pitsea Market and his Saturday evenings were free to fall asleep.
.
In 1994 Adrian started a yearly talent contest a sort of Essex X Factor. Adrian played the Simon Cowell role whilst the Sharon Osborne of the panel was Teresa Gorman (perish the thought) the local MP.
As this was years before X Factor came to the screen Adrian regrets not taking his idea to TV stations. They called it Stars On The Rise, which was a rather poor piece of wordplay based on Stars In Your Eyes, a TV show of that era. They were rather doubtful that enough local amateur talent would turn up, but the offer of prizes of up to £100 worth of CDs and videos proved irresistible to the good people of Wickford. Contestants included a pair of chaps who modelled themselves on Robson and Jerome, a comedian, and, three lots of majorettes! You can imagine the look on the audiences faces when the third batch of grinning baton twirling girls hit the stage. A Cher impersonator who performed with great flair to a packed audience won the contest. She became quite a local celebrity fondly known as Billericay Cher.
The following year they decided to hold an Elvis impersonator contest and even attracted a contestant from Leeds. Trouble was, he turned out to be a professional and even brought his own 3-piece band. Although he was musically the best Elvis impersonator he was passed over as the event was designed to showcase local amateur talent for a local lad one, who while not the finest singer, looked much more like the King. He became quite a local celebrity fondly known as Wickford Elvis.
The talent contests ran for a few years but due to the cost of staging these events regrettably Adrian stopped the popular shows leaving Simon Cowell to discover the countries talent.
One area that Adrian’s specialises in is Christmas records. Adrian informed me that he had an ambition to have the greatest collection of Christmas CDs in the world. This meant no matter who released it he would purchase every CD released with the word Christmas in. The result is over the years he had accumulated hundreds of Christmas CD singles and albums. By the late 90’s CD singles had stopped selling so he decided the best way to rid himself of the stock was to build a Christmas grotto inside the shop employing a Santa and a Santa’s little helper. Santa gave the children a lucky bag. Each contained a little toy, some sweets and one of Adrian’s specially selected Christmas CDs. The CDs were specially selected, as they hadn’t sold for years (sounds like an unlucky bag to me). It was a good effort by Adrian but sadly a costly one as Santa’s little helper tripped over a toy in the grotto, despite landing on a pile of fluffy toys she damaged her spine and, completely lacking in Christmas spirit, sued Adrian and won. The twist in this tale was that Santa’s little helper was non other than Adrian’s mum. I suppose if an employee is going to sue you it might be as well to keep it in the family, Adrian will probably inherit it one day!
When interviewing the shop owners I always enquire about awkward customers. When I mentioned this to Adrian his eyes lit up as he had the mother of all awkward customers
A woman brought back to Adrian’s a video, which she had purchased as a present for her mother’s birthday. Apparently, on the day of her birthday, the mother had put the video into her player and what came up on screen was not the film listed on the box or on the tape itself. The mother had burst into tears with disappointment, the daughter claimed. The customer was absolutely furious with Adrian for ruining not only the present but the entire birthday. “My mother still hasn’t got over it”, she screamed.
This shouting woman demanded not only a replacement video but also an additional free video of her own choice as an extra present for her mother – plus her not inconsiderable taxi fare to and from the store. She also demanded compensation for the mental trauma this had caused. She had in fact been creating so much disturbance that Adrian had forgotten to test the offending tape. He put it in the video machine, and sure enough, a totally different film came up on screen. It was the first in a series of trailers for other movies. The film itself – the one the mother was so looking forward to – soon started to show. The customer had assumed the trailers were the films on the tape
The customer wasn’t in the slightest bit apologetic for the mistake. Rather, she continued to swear at Adrian and vowed noisily never to come into the shop again.
Which at the time, Adrian thought was a shame…. because had she re-appeared, he planned to seek compensation from her the severe trauma and upset she caused not only Adrian, but seven staff members and some dozen or so customers who had formed quite a crowd to witness his anguish!
Anyone who bought the NME throughout the 70;s and 80;s will be aware of Adrian’s of Wickford. For twenty years they had an eye-catching advert highlighting the latest releases.
When he left school Adrian wanted a career in the theatre and soon found work as a jobbing actor. To supplement his income he also helped out his Mum who sold wool on a local market stall. Then Adrian noticed that the adjacent stall,which sold ladies tights and suspenders seconds (conjuring up some bizzare images )was not utilising all it’s counter space. Adrian rented the spare space and thus began his career in music running the world’s first SUSPENDER SECONDS AND RECORD STALL.
Soon however, as his Mum’s wool stall was doing exceptionally well and she took the decision to rent a shop. Adrian too felt this was an opportune time to move his business forward so he asked his Mum if he could transfer his little business from the suspender stall to her newwool shop. This was progress indeed; the lucky people of Wickford were soon to have the world’s first WOOL AND RECORD SHOP.
Inevitably, problems arose from the beginning Adrian’s customers were teenagers whilst his Mum’s customers were mainly pensioners. The wool customers complained that the music was too loud and this caused tension between Adrian and his Mum. To solve the problem Adrian installed a partition between the two parts of the shop and also knocked through a wall to give his music store a separate entrance. The good people of Wickford struggled to come to terms with all this change. They no longer had the worlds only WOOL AND RECORD SHOP in it’s place they now had the world’s smallest wool shop and the world’s smallest record shop.
Fortunately his acting career soon took off when he landed a role in Godspell. The cast in this production included David Essex, Jeremy Irons, Marti Webb, Julie Covington and Robert Lindsay and was a huge success. This now required Adrian to employ staff to run his store in Wickford.
Jeremy Irons became one of his first regular customers. Adrian remembers him as a big fan of 8 track cartridges but always wanted a discount.
Unless you have a long memory you may wonder what 8 tracks were.
They were launched in the mid 60’s as a method of listening to recorded music, rather like a large version of the cassette. The Ford Motor Company offered them as an option on all their new cars. The format was successful for ten years before the advent of the compact cassette, which was smaller, cheaper and had a faster rewind capacity. Subsequently there was a concerted effort by the record companies to reduce the number of different formats offered and 8 tracks bit the dust. .
At this point in his life Adrian was earning good money and his agent advised him to invest his money in bricks and mortar. Showing his entrepreneurial tendencies he bought a four-bedroom house in London, redeveloped it into four bed-sits, and let them out to his fellow actors whilst he slept on the lounge floor. Unfortunately, actors do not stay in one place for very long and soon Adrian had a steady stream of changing tenants which was hard work
More dramatically, one of his tenants was psychotic. Her behaviour became so outrageous and aggressive that all the other tenants moved out. She now had the house to herself and spent her time wreaking havoc and covering the house in graffiti. Eventually the unfortunate girl was sectioned under the Mental Health Act, so, accompanied by police, a social worker and a doctor, Adrian had to enter the house to have her removed. As he made his way into the hall the girl lunged at him with a knife, but, luckily for Adrian, the police were able to disarm her and remove her from the property.
After this experience Adrian had no more appetite for the letting business but was now left to ponder what to do with his large house with the large mortgage which accompanied it.
Adrian decided his next move should be to start a mail-order operation. He and his partner Richard Burke took over the upstairs bedrooms of the London house for stock and dispatch, and their first advertisement appeared in NME in 1975. They were astonished by the reaction and within a short time were employing eight people and turning over £18,000 per week – a lot of money for a business originally run from home in the 1970s.
By now Adrian had outgrown the wool shop, and indeed its successor – an upstairs floor of the new Wickford Indoor Market building – and had opened a new vinyl store in the High Street of Wickford with a rear warehouse for the mail-order operation. Recognising the changes in the retail arena, he added a CD shop next door to the vinyl. This needed to be more modern and hi-tech than its vinyl counterpart next door, because, as Adrian remembers clearly, CD customers felt themselves to be far superior to mere vinyl buyers!
Next came a shop a few doors down the street for the selling and renting of videos. The selling of videos became so successful that it was necessary to separate the operation from rental, so a new store was opened for rental, while the original became the UK’s first-ever stand-alone video retail outlet. The new rental store – immediately opposite – not only rented videos, but dispensed confectionery and soft drinks. The tally of Adrian’s stores – all within 50 metres of each other – now stood at four.
This was during the days when chart manipulation was rife. The record charts were compiled by writing sales of catalogue numbers down in a white book in a selection of record retailers. At first Adrian would leave his book on the counter whilst he made coffee for the sales reps, and on his return he would find the book suddenly was full of numbers. The reps would then leave him boxes of free stock. The penny dropped with Adrian that they were leaving him the free stock for leaving his book on the counter.
Also around that time there was a record-buying team in operation. Funded by the record companies this team would traverse the area buying the records its own label had on release. Each week the same gang of housewives would call in and buy several copies of targeted records to manipulate their chart position. They obviously had a set route and you could set your clock by their weekly visit, before they swept on across the rest of the record stores in Essex.
By this time Adrian had reached a crossroads in his life. He had just finished a major tour playing the narrator in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat” alongside Paul Jones, of Manfred Mann fame, who played the lead. Adrian felt that he had to make the choice between music and theatre and, fortunately for the people of Wickford, he abandoned his acting career to manage his shops.
Over the following years there were several examples of Adrian’s shrewdness as a businessman:
His was the first CD store to install a National Lottery machine. It took him years of lobbying to Camelot before they relented and granted him one. Unfortunately his sales of only £2,000 a week were unacceptably low to Camelot, who threatened to remove his machine unless sales improved dramatically. Adrian responded with a terrific ruse. He advertised that everybody who won a £10 prize in his shop would, instead, be paid out £11, with the extra £1 being in the form of a record voucher to spend in his shop. During the first week of the promotion they sold £10,000 worth of lottery tickets and, to this day, lottery tickets do a buoyant trade in store.
For ten years Adrian’s had the contract to supply the British Council with all its CDs and Videos, which brought in sales in excess of £200,000 per year. In its own words The British Council’s remit is ”To build mutually beneficial cultural and educational relationships between the United Kingdom and other countries, and to increase overall appreciation of the UK’s creative ideas and achievements”.
They have offices in 240 countries and receive a yearly grant of around £200 million from the government…and you can sure buy a lot of CDs and videos with that much money!
Unfortunately, the contract ended when his contact at the Council was replaced by a committee of eight people who introduced layer after layer of procurement red tape, to the point at which Adrian decided not to bid for the new contract due to the the undue effort required to service all 240 offices.
Another successful promotion was his launch of the video “Titanic”.
Adrian announced that his store would open at midnight to enable the people of Wickford to be the first in the UK to own a copy and that all purchasers would receive a signed certificate confirming this fact. It was not even as if these certificates were signed by Leonardo DiCaprio or Kate Winslet - they were printed and signed by Adrian himself. Nevertheless, when the store opened the queue was halfway down the High Street. More than 500 videos were sold that night and Adrian had to spend the whole time photocopying and signing more and more home-made certificates.
For a shrewd businessman like Adrian it is rare for him to have a failure but his idea to open an outlet in a nightclub will not go down as his brightest moment In the winter of 1976, one of their regular DJ customers was host at the infamous Zero 6 club in Southend. (a sort of Essex Studio 54)He persuaded Adrian that it would be a good idea to open a dance-record shop in the foyer of his club. So that’s exactly what I they did.
Every Friday and Saturday night he started working from 10pm until 2am. It was a tough assignment, particularly on the Friday night as he had a market stall to set up at 6am the next morning.
How could he possibly fail at the Zero 6? Easy.
On their arrival, clubbers were so keen to get inside and have a drink that they didn’t notice Adrian. Once inside, they forgot about him (that’s if they remembered him in the first place)
And on their way out, they were too pissed to give a toss about him and who wants to be carrying 12” singles around with them on a night out?
It was a total disaster. The upside was that he soon got his Friday evenings back to sort out stock for Saturday’s Pitsea Market and his Saturday evenings were free to fall asleep.
.
In 1994 Adrian started a yearly talent contest a sort of Essex X Factor. Adrian played the Simon Cowell role whilst the Sharon Osborne of the panel was Teresa Gorman (perish the thought) the local MP.
As this was years before X Factor came to the screen Adrian regrets not taking his idea to TV stations. They called it Stars On The Rise, which was a rather poor piece of wordplay based on Stars In Your Eyes, a TV show of that era. They were rather doubtful that enough local amateur talent would turn up, but the offer of prizes of up to £100 worth of CDs and videos proved irresistible to the good people of Wickford. Contestants included a pair of chaps who modelled themselves on Robson and Jerome, a comedian, and, three lots of majorettes! You can imagine the look on the audiences faces when the third batch of grinning baton twirling girls hit the stage. A Cher impersonator who performed with great flair to a packed audience won the contest. She became quite a local celebrity fondly known as Billericay Cher.
The following year they decided to hold an Elvis impersonator contest and even attracted a contestant from Leeds. Trouble was, he turned out to be a professional and even brought his own 3-piece band. Although he was musically the best Elvis impersonator he was passed over as the event was designed to showcase local amateur talent for a local lad one, who while not the finest singer, looked much more like the King. He became quite a local celebrity fondly known as Wickford Elvis.
The talent contests ran for a few years but due to the cost of staging these events regrettably Adrian stopped the popular shows leaving Simon Cowell to discover the countries talent.
One area that Adrian’s specialises in is Christmas records. Adrian informed me that he had an ambition to have the greatest collection of Christmas CDs in the world. This meant no matter who released it he would purchase every CD released with the word Christmas in. The result is over the years he had accumulated hundreds of Christmas CD singles and albums. By the late 90’s CD singles had stopped selling so he decided the best way to rid himself of the stock was to build a Christmas grotto inside the shop employing a Santa and a Santa’s little helper. Santa gave the children a lucky bag. Each contained a little toy, some sweets and one of Adrian’s specially selected Christmas CDs. The CDs were specially selected, as they hadn’t sold for years (sounds like an unlucky bag to me). It was a good effort by Adrian but sadly a costly one as Santa’s little helper tripped over a toy in the grotto, despite landing on a pile of fluffy toys she damaged her spine and, completely lacking in Christmas spirit, sued Adrian and won. The twist in this tale was that Santa’s little helper was non other than Adrian’s mum. I suppose if an employee is going to sue you it might be as well to keep it in the family, Adrian will probably inherit it one day!
When interviewing the shop owners I always enquire about awkward customers. When I mentioned this to Adrian his eyes lit up as he had the mother of all awkward customers
A woman brought back to Adrian’s a video, which she had purchased as a present for her mother’s birthday. Apparently, on the day of her birthday, the mother had put the video into her player and what came up on screen was not the film listed on the box or on the tape itself. The mother had burst into tears with disappointment, the daughter claimed. The customer was absolutely furious with Adrian for ruining not only the present but the entire birthday. “My mother still hasn’t got over it”, she screamed.
This shouting woman demanded not only a replacement video but also an additional free video of her own choice as an extra present for her mother – plus her not inconsiderable taxi fare to and from the store. She also demanded compensation for the mental trauma this had caused. She had in fact been creating so much disturbance that Adrian had forgotten to test the offending tape. He put it in the video machine, and sure enough, a totally different film came up on screen. It was the first in a series of trailers for other movies. The film itself – the one the mother was so looking forward to – soon started to show. The customer had assumed the trailers were the films on the tape
The customer wasn’t in the slightest bit apologetic for the mistake. Rather, she continued to swear at Adrian and vowed noisily never to come into the shop again.
Which at the time, Adrian thought was a shame…. because had she re-appeared, he planned to seek compensation from her the severe trauma and upset she caused not only Adrian, but seven staff members and some dozen or so customers who had formed quite a crowd to witness his anguish!
For Adrian one of the most enjoyable spin-offs of running the shop has been his regular appearance on BBC Radio Essex.
Shortly after the station’s launch, he was invited to have a regular 20-minute spot talking about the music scene. This ran for a couple of years until 1995 when he was asked to appear once a month on an hour-long “Sound Advice” programme hosted by Steve Scruton. The purpose of this segment is to talk about interesting records and about music topics of the moment, and also to take calls from listeners who want their rare records valued. This was quite challenging because of the unpredictable nature of the calls. One caller Adrian will never forget insisted that he had bought all his 78s from him during World War Two. Adrian explained that he hadn’t started his business until 1969, and that anyway he wasn’t even around during the war. The caller completely stumped him by replying, ”I can assure you, Adrian, you’ve been around a lot longer than you think you have!”
I asked Adrian where would he be in 5 years. Hopefully alive was his reply. Over the last few years he has battled cancer and his enthusiasm and cheerfulness are undiminished. Adrian was lucky to have made his money when owning a record shop offered the chance to make a good living. These days like many others he has downsized being semi-retired and has now slimmed down to just the one shop he has come up with a new slogan ‘We Nearly got too big for our roots’.
Taken from Last Shop Standing
After 6 editions Last Shop Standing book crammed full of record shop tales has been deleted. Still available on Kindle
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As the person who has visited more record shops than any other human, I often get asked my advice on buying turntables. I always say do not purchase a budget model. What is the point of buying one that costs the price of a few albums? The sound will not do the recordings justice. For a long time, I have recommended Rega Turntables as they are superb quality at great prices. They got more brownie points for sponsoring 'Record Store Day' and manufacturing limited editions just for record shops.
As the person who has visited more record shops than any other human, I often get asked my advice on buying turntables. I always say do not purchase a budget model. What is the point of buying one that costs the price of a few albums? The sound will not do the recordings justice. For a long time, I have recommended Rega Turntables as they are superb quality at great prices. They got more brownie points for sponsoring 'Record Store Day' and manufacturing limited editions just for record shops.
When he left school Adrian wanted a career in the theatre and soon found work as a jobbing actor. To supplement his income he also helped out his Mum who sold wool on a local market stall. Then Adrian noticed that the adjacent stall,which sold ladies tights and suspenders seconds (conjuring up some bizzare images )was not utilising all it’s counter space. Adrian rented the spare space and thus began his career in music running the world’s first SUSPENDER SECONDS AND RECORD STALL.
Soon however, as his Mum’s wool stall was doing exceptionally well and she took the decision to rent a shop. Adrian too felt this was an opportune time to move his business forward so he asked his Mum if he could transfer his little business from the suspender stall to her newwool shop. This was progress indeed; the lucky people of Wickford were soon to have the world’s first WOOL AND RECORD SHOP.
Inevitably, problems arose from the beginning Adrian’s customers were teenagers whilst his Mum’s customers were mainly pensioners. The wool customers complained that the music was too loud and this caused tension between Adrian and his Mum. To solve the problem Adrian installed a partition between the two parts of the shop and also knocked through a wall to give his music store a separate entrance. The good people of Wickford struggled to come to terms with all this change. They no longer had the worlds only WOOL AND RECORD SHOP in it’s place they now had the world’s smallest wool shop and the world’s smallest record shop.
Fortunately his acting career soon took off when he landed a role in Godspell. The cast in this production included David Essex, Jeremy Irons, Marti Webb, Julie Covington and Robert Lindsay and was a huge success. This now required Adrian to employ staff to run his store in Wickford.
Jeremy Irons became one of his first regular customers. Adrian remembers him as a big fan of 8 track cartridges but always wanted a discount.
Unless you have a long memory you may wonder what 8 tracks were.
They were launched in the mid 60’s as a method of listening to recorded music, rather like a large version of the cassette. The Ford Motor Company offered them as an option on all their new cars. The format was successful for ten years before the advent of the compact cassette, which was smaller, cheaper and had a faster rewind capacity. Subsequently there was a concerted effort by the record companies to reduce the number of different formats offered and 8 tracks bit the dust. .
At this point in his life Adrian was earning good money and his agent advised him to invest his money in bricks and mortar. Showing his entrepreneurial tendencies he bought a four-bedroom house in London, redeveloped it into four bed-sits, and let them out to his fellow actors whilst he slept on the lounge floor. Unfortunately, actors do not stay in one place for very long and soon Adrian had a steady stream of changing tenants which was hard work
More dramatically, one of his tenants was psychotic. Her behaviour became so outrageous and aggressive that all the other tenants moved out. She now had the house to herself and spent her time wreaking havoc and covering the house in graffiti. Eventually the unfortunate girl was sectioned under the Mental Health Act, so, accompanied by police, a social worker and a doctor, Adrian had to enter the house to have her removed. As he made his way into the hall the girl lunged at him with a knife, but, luckily for Adrian, the police were able to disarm her and remove her from the property.
After this experience Adrian had no more appetite for the letting business but was now left to ponder what to do with his large house with the large mortgage which accompanied it.
Adrian decided his next move should be to start a mail-order operation. He and his partner Richard Burke took over the upstairs bedrooms of the London house for stock and dispatch, and their first advertisement appeared in NME in 1975. They were astonished by the reaction and within a short time were employing eight people and turning over £18,000 per week – a lot of money for a business originally run from home in the 1970s.
By now Adrian had outgrown the wool shop, and indeed its successor – an upstairs floor of the new Wickford Indoor Market building – and had opened a new vinyl store in the High Street of Wickford with a rear warehouse for the mail-order operation. Recognising the changes in the retail arena, he added a CD shop next door to the vinyl. This needed to be more modern and hi-tech than its vinyl counterpart next door, because, as Adrian remembers clearly, CD customers felt themselves to be far superior to mere vinyl buyers!
Next came a shop a few doors down the street for the selling and renting of videos. The selling of videos became so successful that it was necessary to separate the operation from rental, so a new store was opened for rental, while the original became the UK’s first-ever stand-alone video retail outlet. The new rental store – immediately opposite – not only rented videos, but dispensed confectionery and soft drinks. The tally of Adrian’s stores – all within 50 metres of each other – now stood at four.
This was during the days when chart manipulation was rife. The record charts were compiled by writing sales of catalogue numbers down in a white book in a selection of record retailers. At first Adrian would leave his book on the counter whilst he made coffee for the sales reps, and on his return he would find the book suddenly was full of numbers. The reps would then leave him boxes of free stock. The penny dropped with Adrian that they were leaving him the free stock for leaving his book on the counter.
Also around that time there was a record-buying team in operation. Funded by the record companies this team would traverse the area buying the records its own label had on release. Each week the same gang of housewives would call in and buy several copies of targeted records to manipulate their chart position. They obviously had a set route and you could set your clock by their weekly visit, before they swept on across the rest of the record stores in Essex.
By this time Adrian had reached a crossroads in his life. He had just finished a major tour playing the narrator in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat” alongside Paul Jones, of Manfred Mann fame, who played the lead. Adrian felt that he had to make the choice between music and theatre and, fortunately for the people of Wickford, he abandoned his acting career to manage his shops.
Over the following years there were several examples of Adrian’s shrewdness as a businessman:
His was the first CD store to install a National Lottery machine. It took him years of lobbying to Camelot before they relented and granted him one. Unfortunately his sales of only £2,000 a week were unacceptably low to Camelot, who threatened to remove his machine unless sales improved dramatically. Adrian responded with a terrific ruse. He advertised that everybody who won a £10 prize in his shop would, instead, be paid out £11, with the extra £1 being in the form of a record voucher to spend in his shop. During the first week of the promotion they sold £10,000 worth of lottery tickets and, to this day, lottery tickets do a buoyant trade in store.
For ten years Adrian’s had the contract to supply the British Council with all its CDs and Videos, which brought in sales in excess of £200,000 per year. In its own words The British Council’s remit is ”To build mutually beneficial cultural and educational relationships between the United Kingdom and other countries, and to increase overall appreciation of the UK’s creative ideas and achievements”.
They have offices in 240 countries and receive a yearly grant of around £200 million from the government…and you can sure buy a lot of CDs and videos with that much money!
Unfortunately, the contract ended when his contact at the Council was replaced by a committee of eight people who introduced layer after layer of procurement red tape, to the point at which Adrian decided not to bid for the new contract due to the the undue effort required to service all 240 offices.
Another successful promotion was his launch of the video “Titanic”.
Adrian announced that his store would open at midnight to enable the people of Wickford to be the first in the UK to own a copy and that all purchasers would receive a signed certificate confirming this fact. It was not even as if these certificates were signed by Leonardo DiCaprio or Kate Winslet - they were printed and signed by Adrian himself. Nevertheless, when the store opened the queue was halfway down the High Street. More than 500 videos were sold that night and Adrian had to spend the whole time photocopying and signing more and more home-made certificates.
For a shrewd businessman like Adrian it is rare for him to have a failure but his idea to open an outlet in a nightclub will not go down as his brightest moment In the winter of 1976, one of their regular DJ customers was host at the infamous Zero 6 club in Southend. (a sort of Essex Studio 54)He persuaded Adrian that it would be a good idea to open a dance-record shop in the foyer of his club. So that’s exactly what I they did.
Every Friday and Saturday night he started working from 10pm until 2am. It was a tough assignment, particularly on the Friday night as he had a market stall to set up at 6am the next morning.
How could he possibly fail at the Zero 6? Easy.
On their arrival, clubbers were so keen to get inside and have a drink that they didn’t notice Adrian. Once inside, they forgot about him (that’s if they remembered him in the first place)
And on their way out, they were too pissed to give a toss about him and who wants to be carrying 12” singles around with them on a night out?
It was a total disaster. The upside was that he soon got his Friday evenings back to sort out stock for Saturday’s Pitsea Market and his Saturday evenings were free to fall asleep.
.
In 1994 Adrian started a yearly talent contest a sort of Essex X Factor. Adrian played the Simon Cowell role whilst the Sharon Osborne of the panel was Teresa Gorman (perish the thought) the local MP.
As this was years before X Factor came to the screen Adrian regrets not taking his idea to TV stations. They called it Stars On The Rise, which was a rather poor piece of wordplay based on Stars In Your Eyes, a TV show of that era. They were rather doubtful that enough local amateur talent would turn up, but the offer of prizes of up to £100 worth of CDs and videos proved irresistible to the good people of Wickford. Contestants included a pair of chaps who modelled themselves on Robson and Jerome, a comedian, and, three lots of majorettes! You can imagine the look on the audiences faces when the third batch of grinning baton twirling girls hit the stage. A Cher impersonator who performed with great flair to a packed audience won the contest. She became quite a local celebrity fondly known as Billericay Cher.
The following year they decided to hold an Elvis impersonator contest and even attracted a contestant from Leeds. Trouble was, he turned out to be a professional and even brought his own 3-piece band. Although he was musically the best Elvis impersonator he was passed over as the event was designed to showcase local amateur talent for a local lad one, who while not the finest singer, looked much more like the King. He became quite a local celebrity fondly known as Wickford Elvis.
The talent contests ran for a few years but due to the cost of staging these events regrettably Adrian stopped the popular shows leaving Simon Cowell to discover the countries talent.
One area that Adrian’s specialises in is Christmas records. Adrian informed me that he had an ambition to have the greatest collection of Christmas CDs in the world. This meant no matter who released it he would purchase every CD released with the word Christmas in. The result is over the years he had accumulated hundreds of Christmas CD singles and albums. By the late 90’s CD singles had stopped selling so he decided the best way to rid himself of the stock was to build a Christmas grotto inside the shop employing a Santa and a Santa’s little helper. Santa gave the children a lucky bag. Each contained a little toy, some sweets and one of Adrian’s specially selected Christmas CDs. The CDs were specially selected, as they hadn’t sold for years (sounds like an unlucky bag to me). It was a good effort by Adrian but sadly a costly one as Santa’s little helper tripped over a toy in the grotto, despite landing on a pile of fluffy toys she damaged her spine and, completely lacking in Christmas spirit, sued Adrian and won. The twist in this tale was that Santa’s little helper was non other than Adrian’s mum. I suppose if an employee is going to sue you it might be as well to keep it in the family, Adrian will probably inherit it one day!
When interviewing the shop owners I always enquire about awkward customers. When I mentioned this to Adrian his eyes lit up as he had the mother of all awkward customers
A woman brought back to Adrian’s a video, which she had purchased as a present for her mother’s birthday. Apparently, on the day of her birthday, the mother had put the video into her player and what came up on screen was not the film listed on the box or on the tape itself. The mother had burst into tears with disappointment, the daughter claimed. The customer was absolutely furious with Adrian for ruining not only the present but the entire birthday. “My mother still hasn’t got over it”, she screamed.
This shouting woman demanded not only a replacement video but also an additional free video of her own choice as an extra present for her mother – plus her not inconsiderable taxi fare to and from the store. She also demanded compensation for the mental trauma this had caused. She had in fact been creating so much disturbance that Adrian had forgotten to test the offending tape. He put it in the video machine, and sure enough, a totally different film came up on screen. It was the first in a series of trailers for other movies. The film itself – the one the mother was so looking forward to – soon started to show. The customer had assumed the trailers were the films on the tape
The customer wasn’t in the slightest bit apologetic for the mistake. Rather, she continued to swear at Adrian and vowed noisily never to come into the shop again.
Which at the time, Adrian thought was a shame…. because had she re-appeared, he planned to seek compensation from her the severe trauma and upset she caused not only Adrian, but seven staff members and some dozen or so customers who had formed quite a crowd to witness his anguish!
When he left school Adrian wanted a career in the theatre and soon found work as a jobbing actor. To supplement his income he also helped out his Mum who sold wool on a local market stall. Then Adrian noticed that the adjacent stall,which sold ladies tights and suspenders seconds (conjuring up some bizzare images )was not utilising all it’s counter space. Adrian rented the spare space and thus began his career in music running the world’s first SUSPENDER SECONDS AND RECORD STALL.
Soon however, as his Mum’s wool stall was doing exceptionally well and she took the decision to rent a shop. Adrian too felt this was an opportune time to move his business forward so he asked his Mum if he could transfer his little business from the suspender stall to her newwool shop. This was progress indeed; the lucky people of Wickford were soon to have the world’s first WOOL AND RECORD SHOP.
Inevitably, problems arose from the beginning Adrian’s customers were teenagers whilst his Mum’s customers were mainly pensioners. The wool customers complained that the music was too loud and this caused tension between Adrian and his Mum. To solve the problem Adrian installed a partition between the two parts of the shop and also knocked through a wall to give his music store a separate entrance. The good people of Wickford struggled to come to terms with all this change. They no longer had the worlds only WOOL AND RECORD SHOP in it’s place they now had the world’s smallest wool shop and the world’s smallest record shop.
Fortunately his acting career soon took off when he landed a role in Godspell. The cast in this production included David Essex, Jeremy Irons, Marti Webb, Julie Covington and Robert Lindsay and was a huge success. This now required Adrian to employ staff to run his store in Wickford.
Jeremy Irons became one of his first regular customers. Adrian remembers him as a big fan of 8 track cartridges but always wanted a discount.
Unless you have a long memory you may wonder what 8 tracks were.
They were launched in the mid 60’s as a method of listening to recorded music, rather like a large version of the cassette. The Ford Motor Company offered them as an option on all their new cars. The format was successful for ten years before the advent of the compact cassette, which was smaller, cheaper and had a faster rewind capacity. Subsequently there was a concerted effort by the record companies to reduce the number of different formats offered and 8 tracks bit the dust. .
At this point in his life Adrian was earning good money and his agent advised him to invest his money in bricks and mortar. Showing his entrepreneurial tendencies he bought a four-bedroom house in London, redeveloped it into four bed-sits, and let them out to his fellow actors whilst he slept on the lounge floor. Unfortunately, actors do not stay in one place for very long and soon Adrian had a steady stream of changing tenants which was hard work
More dramatically, one of his tenants was psychotic. Her behaviour became so outrageous and aggressive that all the other tenants moved out. She now had the house to herself and spent her time wreaking havoc and covering the house in graffiti. Eventually the unfortunate girl was sectioned under the Mental Health Act, so, accompanied by police, a social worker and a doctor, Adrian had to enter the house to have her removed. As he made his way into the hall the girl lunged at him with a knife, but, luckily for Adrian, the police were able to disarm her and remove her from the property.
After this experience Adrian had no more appetite for the letting business but was now left to ponder what to do with his large house with the large mortgage which accompanied it.
Adrian decided his next move should be to start a mail-order operation. He and his partner Richard Burke took over the upstairs bedrooms of the London house for stock and dispatch, and their first advertisement appeared in NME in 1975. They were astonished by the reaction and within a short time were employing eight people and turning over £18,000 per week – a lot of money for a business originally run from home in the 1970s.
By now Adrian had outgrown the wool shop, and indeed its successor – an upstairs floor of the new Wickford Indoor Market building – and had opened a new vinyl store in the High Street of Wickford with a rear warehouse for the mail-order operation. Recognising the changes in the retail arena, he added a CD shop next door to the vinyl. This needed to be more modern and hi-tech than its vinyl counterpart next door, because, as Adrian remembers clearly, CD customers felt themselves to be far superior to mere vinyl buyers!
Next came a shop a few doors down the street for the selling and renting of videos. The selling of videos became so successful that it was necessary to separate the operation from rental, so a new store was opened for rental, while the original became the UK’s first-ever stand-alone video retail outlet. The new rental store – immediately opposite – not only rented videos, but dispensed confectionery and soft drinks. The tally of Adrian’s stores – all within 50 metres of each other – now stood at four.
This was during the days when chart manipulation was rife. The record charts were compiled by writing sales of catalogue numbers down in a white book in a selection of record retailers. At first Adrian would leave his book on the counter whilst he made coffee for the sales reps, and on his return he would find the book suddenly was full of numbers. The reps would then leave him boxes of free stock. The penny dropped with Adrian that they were leaving him the free stock for leaving his book on the counter.
Also around that time there was a record-buying team in operation. Funded by the record companies this team would traverse the area buying the records its own label had on release. Each week the same gang of housewives would call in and buy several copies of targeted records to manipulate their chart position. They obviously had a set route and you could set your clock by their weekly visit, before they swept on across the rest of the record stores in Essex.
By this time Adrian had reached a crossroads in his life. He had just finished a major tour playing the narrator in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat” alongside Paul Jones, of Manfred Mann fame, who played the lead. Adrian felt that he had to make the choice between music and theatre and, fortunately for the people of Wickford, he abandoned his acting career to manage his shops.
Over the following years there were several examples of Adrian’s shrewdness as a businessman:
His was the first CD store to install a National Lottery machine. It took him years of lobbying to Camelot before they relented and granted him one. Unfortunately his sales of only £2,000 a week were unacceptably low to Camelot, who threatened to remove his machine unless sales improved dramatically. Adrian responded with a terrific ruse. He advertised that everybody who won a £10 prize in his shop would, instead, be paid out £11, with the extra £1 being in the form of a record voucher to spend in his shop. During the first week of the promotion they sold £10,000 worth of lottery tickets and, to this day, lottery tickets do a buoyant trade in store.
For ten years Adrian’s had the contract to supply the British Council with all its CDs and Videos, which brought in sales in excess of £200,000 per year. In its own words The British Council’s remit is ”To build mutually beneficial cultural and educational relationships between the United Kingdom and other countries, and to increase overall appreciation of the UK’s creative ideas and achievements”.
They have offices in 240 countries and receive a yearly grant of around £200 million from the government…and you can sure buy a lot of CDs and videos with that much money!
Unfortunately, the contract ended when his contact at the Council was replaced by a committee of eight people who introduced layer after layer of procurement red tape, to the point at which Adrian decided not to bid for the new contract due to the the undue effort required to service all 240 offices.
Another successful promotion was his launch of the video “Titanic”.
Adrian announced that his store would open at midnight to enable the people of Wickford to be the first in the UK to own a copy and that all purchasers would receive a signed certificate confirming this fact. It was not even as if these certificates were signed by Leonardo DiCaprio or Kate Winslet - they were printed and signed by Adrian himself. Nevertheless, when the store opened the queue was halfway down the High Street. More than 500 videos were sold that night and Adrian had to spend the whole time photocopying and signing more and more home-made certificates.
For a shrewd businessman like Adrian it is rare for him to have a failure but his idea to open an outlet in a nightclub will not go down as his brightest moment In the winter of 1976, one of their regular DJ customers was host at the infamous Zero 6 club in Southend. (a sort of Essex Studio 54)He persuaded Adrian that it would be a good idea to open a dance-record shop in the foyer of his club. So that’s exactly what I they did.
Every Friday and Saturday night he started working from 10pm until 2am. It was a tough assignment, particularly on the Friday night as he had a market stall to set up at 6am the next morning.
How could he possibly fail at the Zero 6? Easy.
On their arrival, clubbers were so keen to get inside and have a drink that they didn’t notice Adrian. Once inside, they forgot about him (that’s if they remembered him in the first place)
And on their way out, they were too pissed to give a toss about him and who wants to be carrying 12” singles around with them on a night out?
It was a total disaster. The upside was that he soon got his Friday evenings back to sort out stock for Saturday’s Pitsea Market and his Saturday evenings were free to fall asleep.
.
In 1994 Adrian started a yearly talent contest a sort of Essex X Factor. Adrian played the Simon Cowell role whilst the Sharon Osborne of the panel was Teresa Gorman (perish the thought) the local MP.
As this was years before X Factor came to the screen Adrian regrets not taking his idea to TV stations. They called it Stars On The Rise, which was a rather poor piece of wordplay based on Stars In Your Eyes, a TV show of that era. They were rather doubtful that enough local amateur talent would turn up, but the offer of prizes of up to £100 worth of CDs and videos proved irresistible to the good people of Wickford. Contestants included a pair of chaps who modelled themselves on Robson and Jerome, a comedian, and, three lots of majorettes! You can imagine the look on the audiences faces when the third batch of grinning baton twirling girls hit the stage. A Cher impersonator who performed with great flair to a packed audience won the contest. She became quite a local celebrity fondly known as Billericay Cher.
The following year they decided to hold an Elvis impersonator contest and even attracted a contestant from Leeds. Trouble was, he turned out to be a professional and even brought his own 3-piece band. Although he was musically the best Elvis impersonator he was passed over as the event was designed to showcase local amateur talent for a local lad one, who while not the finest singer, looked much more like the King. He became quite a local celebrity fondly known as Wickford Elvis.
The talent contests ran for a few years but due to the cost of staging these events regrettably Adrian stopped the popular shows leaving Simon Cowell to discover the countries talent.
One area that Adrian’s specialises in is Christmas records. Adrian informed me that he had an ambition to have the greatest collection of Christmas CDs in the world. This meant no matter who released it he would purchase every CD released with the word Christmas in. The result is over the years he had accumulated hundreds of Christmas CD singles and albums. By the late 90’s CD singles had stopped selling so he decided the best way to rid himself of the stock was to build a Christmas grotto inside the shop employing a Santa and a Santa’s little helper. Santa gave the children a lucky bag. Each contained a little toy, some sweets and one of Adrian’s specially selected Christmas CDs. The CDs were specially selected, as they hadn’t sold for years (sounds like an unlucky bag to me). It was a good effort by Adrian but sadly a costly one as Santa’s little helper tripped over a toy in the grotto, despite landing on a pile of fluffy toys she damaged her spine and, completely lacking in Christmas spirit, sued Adrian and won. The twist in this tale was that Santa’s little helper was non other than Adrian’s mum. I suppose if an employee is going to sue you it might be as well to keep it in the family, Adrian will probably inherit it one day!
When interviewing the shop owners I always enquire about awkward customers. When I mentioned this to Adrian his eyes lit up as he had the mother of all awkward customers
A woman brought back to Adrian’s a video, which she had purchased as a present for her mother’s birthday. Apparently, on the day of her birthday, the mother had put the video into her player and what came up on screen was not the film listed on the box or on the tape itself. The mother had burst into tears with disappointment, the daughter claimed. The customer was absolutely furious with Adrian for ruining not only the present but the entire birthday. “My mother still hasn’t got over it”, she screamed.
This shouting woman demanded not only a replacement video but also an additional free video of her own choice as an extra present for her mother – plus her not inconsiderable taxi fare to and from the store. She also demanded compensation for the mental trauma this had caused. She had in fact been creating so much disturbance that Adrian had forgotten to test the offending tape. He put it in the video machine, and sure enough, a totally different film came up on screen. It was the first in a series of trailers for other movies. The film itself – the one the mother was so looking forward to – soon started to show. The customer had assumed the trailers were the films on the tape
The customer wasn’t in the slightest bit apologetic for the mistake. Rather, she continued to swear at Adrian and vowed noisily never to come into the shop again.
Which at the time, Adrian thought was a shame…. because had she re-appeared, he planned to seek compensation from her the severe trauma and upset she caused not only Adrian, but seven staff members and some dozen or so customers who had formed quite a crowd to witness his anguish!
For Adrian one of the most enjoyable spin-offs of running the shop has been his regular appearance on BBC Radio Essex.
Shortly after the station’s launch, he was invited to have a regular 20-minute spot talking about the music scene. This ran for a couple of years until 1995 when he was asked to appear once a month on an hour-long “Sound Advice” programme hosted by Steve Scruton. The purpose of this segment is to talk about interesting records and about music topics of the moment, and also to take calls from listeners who want their rare records valued. This was quite challenging because of the unpredictable nature of the calls. One caller Adrian will never forget insisted that he had bought all his 78s from him during World War Two. Adrian explained that he hadn’t started his business until 1969, and that anyway he wasn’t even around during the war. The caller completely stumped him by replying, ”I can assure you, Adrian, you’ve been around a lot longer than you think you have!”
I asked Adrian where would he be in 5 years. Hopefully alive was his reply. Over the last few years he has battled cancer and his enthusiasm and cheerfulness are undiminished. Adrian was lucky to have made his money when owning a record shop offered the chance to make a good living. These days like many others he has downsized being semi-retired and has now slimmed down to just the one shop he has come up with a new slogan ‘We Nearly got too big for our roots’.
Taken from Last Shop Standing
After 6 editions Last Shop Standing book crammed full of record shop tales has been deleted. Still available on Kindle
'The Vinyl Revival and the Shops That Made it Happen' is Graham Jones new book
The books of Graham Jones are
available in record shops or online. The
latest book The Vinyl Revival and the Shops that Made it Happen has been turned
in to a film. It has
just been released on DVD and is available in record shops or online.
Distributed by Proper Music.
Each week I record The Vinyl Revival
Record Shop Podcast. It contains lots of funny tales
from the crazy world of record retailing. It is also available on Spotify.
Twitter: @Revival_Vinyl
My blog has over 100 features on
record shops and vinyl.
grahamjonesvinylrevival.blogspot.com
For film screenings and talks
contact Graham.
As the person who has visited more record shops than any other human, I often get asked my advice on buying turntables. I always say do not purchase a budget model. What is the point of buying one that costs the price of a few albums? The sound will not do the recordings justice. For a long time, I have recommended Rega Turntables as they are superb quality at great prices. They got more brownie points for sponsoring 'Record Store Day' and manufacturing limited editions just for record shops.
The books of Graham Jones are
available in record shops or online. The
latest book The Vinyl Revival and the Shops that Made it Happen has been turned
in to a film. It has
just been released on DVD and is available in record shops or online.
Distributed by Proper Music.
Each week I record The Vinyl Revival
Record Shop Podcast. It contains lots of funny tales
from the crazy world of record retailing. It is also available on Spotify.
Twitter: @Revival_Vinyl
My blog has over 100 features on
record shops and vinyl.
grahamjonesvinylrevival.blogspot.com
For film screenings and talks
contact Graham.
As the person who has visited more record shops than any other human, I often get asked my advice on buying turntables. I always say do not purchase a budget model. What is the point of buying one that costs the price of a few albums? The sound will not do the recordings justice. For a long time, I have recommended Rega Turntables as they are superb quality at great prices. They got more brownie points for sponsoring 'Record Store Day' and manufacturing limited editions just for record shops.
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