The Record Shop whose best seller was Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoc
Andy’s
4 Northgate Street
Aberystwyth
SY23 2JS
Tel – 01970624581
Not to be confused with the defunct
chain of record shops who were a feature of many High Streets in the 80’s and
90’s Andy’s in Aberystwyth is the last Andy’s standing Andy Davis started his
career in music as a Christmas temp in the Scottish record shop Bruce’s.
Records. Andy remembers his bizarre interview where they asked him the
following questions
What was the last record you bought?
- Answer Runt by Todd Rundgren
What label was it on? – Answer
Bearsville
What was the catalogue number? Sadly Andy couldn’t answer this question.
The interview continued in this
style with the manager interjecting the questions by asking him to name 3 bands
from a country e.g. name 3 Welsh bands meanwhile Andy is worried that he won’t
get the job as he didn’t know a catalogue number.
The shops claim to fame was that it was owned
by Bruce Findlay who was managing a band called Johnny And The Abusers. They
changed their name and had massive success as Simple Minds. Christmas came and
went and Scott the manager explained that he no longer had a role for Andy who
was made redundant. Andy soon found work in the record department of an up
market department store called Graham and Morton’s. In an ironic twist of fate
he was given the task of interviewing for an assistant and who should be one of
the interviewees?
Scott, his old boss who had made him redundant at Bruce’s
Records. Of course he wasn’t offered the job. After a short spell at Graham and
Morton’s and a period running the record department at Debenham’s in Stirling
Andy packed it all in to become a professional hippy
.The next 5 years were
spent travelling and living the hippy lifestyle. Eventually Andy found a base
in Aberystwyth. One day the unemployment office called him in and explained
that he had been a regular client of theirs for a long time and it was about
time he found a proper job. What ever they offered him Andy turned it down.
Exasperated they asked him what work would he do? Andy reminded them that he
had worked in record shops and would be quite happy to go back to that. He
heard nothing off the unemployment office for a few months then one day out of
the blue they called him to inform him that they had arranged an interview with
WH Smith for the role of record buyer. Andy felt it was time to join the
working world and went to great lengths to obtain the job. He visited his local
Oxfam and purchased a suit for £2.50 and for another £2.50 picked up a pair of
leather shoes. His girlfriend gave him his first shave of the year removing his
long beard and followed that up with his first haircut in 2 years. So with his
new £5 image Andy set off for his interview. When he arrived he could not
believe his luck. The man doing the interview turned out to be his second
cousin. Although they had not met for many years they got on famously and to
the surprise of everybody at the unemployment office Andy landed the job.
He
was given a free reign to improve the record department and soon stamped his
mark there. Andy remembers it as probably the only WH Smith in the country
whose best seller was the Cocteau Twins. Head Office would send memorandums
around saying which albums they could not stock. The Smiths self-titled first
album was one due to the track Suffer Little Children which was about the Moors
Murders. Also banned was the Van Halen album 1984 which featured an angel
smoking a spliff. Andy ignored these orders and both titles became big sellers.
Those days WH Smiths were not linked to a computer so nobody was aware of what
he was selling, they just knew the sales figures increased dramatically. Due to
Andy doing so well the manager aloud him to stock whatever he wanted and didn’t
comment when he grew his hair long again. A local musical instrument shop
called Cerdd Ystwyth approached Andy to manage there and to start a record
department. Aberystwyth University has a lot of English students who could not
pronounce the shops name and as Andy was always there the shop was referred to
as Andy’s. After a couple of years the shops owners suggested to Andy that he
buy the record business off them and they would carry on selling musical
instruments. So in 1986 he found small premises and Andy’s Records officially
opened.
The shop soon came to the attention of the British public when Andy was
featured on BBC news. Andy decided to make a stand against the Phonographic
Performance Ltd (PPL) an organization that collects licence fees on behalf of
record companies for allowing music to be played on the premises. The law
allows them to collect money from any business that plays music e.g. pubs,
clubs, shops etc. The PPL issued a writ in the High Court in London seeking an
order to stop Andy playing music in his shop unless he paid his £70 fee. Andy
was quoted in the press as describing the PPL as vampires adding that shops
selling music should be exempt. His reasoning was that a record shop playing
music was providing free advertising for record companies by playing the
artists music. Eventually Andy backed down but his David v Goliath battle
brought him respect from his fellow dealers and lots of great publicity for the
shop.
As his shop had the same name as Andy’s the largest independent record
chain of the 80’s and 90’s many people assumed he was one of their shops. This
did have its advantages. Often he would receive a parcel of stock destined for
one of their stores. Andy would look through the paperwork and see what
discounts the record companies were giving them then phone them up and demand
parity. I asked Andy if he ever came across chart hyping. He explained that due
to the shops unique position they did not get many record company reps calling.
The nearest record shop north of him is over 50 miles away as is the nearest
record shop South. The nearest shop East was 30 miles away whilst nearest West
was in Ireland. The bands unusual bestseller came about after the Super Furry
Animals who at the time were an unsigned band played a local gig and gave away
a free EP to fans in attendance titled Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoc
EP
The man who’s job it was to distribute it to the crowd only gave 85 away
and called in to Andy’s the next day with 115 copies of the EP. Andy offered
him £100 for the lot and then sold them in his shop for £15 each, great
business. One celebrity who called in was Van Morrison. Andy immediately
recognised him and bursting with enthusiasm rushed over and chatted to him. Van
made it clear to Andy that he wasn’t as thrilled to meet Andy, as Andy was to meet
him. Van bought a cassette of Negro songs titled ‘Songs From The Fields’ One
track off the cassette ‘Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child’ featured on
the album ‘Poetic Champions Compose’ which Van was recording at the time.
Before he left Andy told him about
his favourite Van Morrison gig, which was when he played with the Chieftans at
Ingliston Park in Edinburgh in1978.
Van nodded and left and the
following year 1998 the album Irish Heartbeat by Van Morrison and The Chieftans
was released. Andy likes to think it was him who inspired Van to get back
together with the Chieftains. I asked him what was the most unusual thing a
customer asked for. He informed me that one man came in and asked did he sell
grass? Andy guessed he wasn’t a gardner but he still didn’t stock grass.
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 is released on 13 April on DVD and is available in record shops.
Distributed by Proper Music.
www.thevinylrevivalfilm.com
@Revival_Vinyl
For
film screenings and talks contact Graham at graham@lastshopstanding.co.uk
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