In its initial incarnation, no storefront - just a doorway that led down a narrow corridor to a single room downstairs. There was an 'upstairs' but that felt very out of bounds to this 13 year old schoolboy.

Skeleton was mainly a 'second hand' emporium, selling cheap but buying extremely cheap as well. Covers only in the racks, you took the sleeve up to the 'head' behind the counter who located the vinyl from the racks and allowed you to 'inspect' the grooves for condition before parting with your cash. Loads of samplers for 50p, countless copies of Medicine Head's 'Dark Side of the Moon' and loads of cheap Hendrix collections on obscure Spanish labels.

Also, for a time, a few racks of 'imports', all on the TMQ label (the one with the pig) that were tantalisingly priced out of my reach but occasionally I was able to treat myself - 'David Bowie In Person' on blue vinyl...later officially released as the Santa Monica concert...Stormy Monday by Derek and the Dominos which sounded like it had actually been recorded outside the concert hall...

Eventually they dropped the boots and moved to larger premises with windows that let in actual daylight and it was never really the same - although I did hear Anarchy in the UK there for the first time ever as the shop, along with the rest of us, gradually shed its hippy past and embraced the new music. But the magic, the 'edge', had gone.

But still, I occasionally pluck one of my old albums from the rack and - even 35 years on, the faintest Proustian whiff of patchouli lingers on the inner sleeve....

A Non-Mega Store that closed their actual shop a couple of years ago. I was buying Northern 7"s when I was at school in Loughborough in the mid-80s. I haven't used Selectadisc for a good few years. They were always much more competative on price with a wider selection than Leicester's equivalent Rock-a-boom - which is still going. There's a Pendulum in sunny Melton Mowbray that's still going. I was spending about £40 a week in there in the mid to late 90s. I might spend that twice a year these days..

.. i'm now remembering record shops from a month spent in Japan where not only were solo artists filed by first name (which in those pre i-tunes days seemed very odd) but also according to the Japanese syllabary - so, for instance, all the "L"s and "R"s were together

After all the recent comments on this site, I was thinking exactly the same thing. Where did I buy my first single? HF Sheffield in Abbots Langley (in 1972?). Where did I get my first download? Not a clue! In Watford we never had a cornucopia of shops but there was a great record stall in the market, Harum records was never too keen to take back a poor pressing (their method was to put it on their turntable in the shop on a busy Saturday afternoon and say "I can't hear any surface noise"!). We had an Our Price that was one half of a clothes shop that mysteriously closed after a couple of months. There was a great shop in St Albans Road as well (I can't think what it was called) that I seem to have bought all my punk singles from in 1977 because the owners, although hating the genre, had their fingers on the pulse and ordered the right stuff.
When I was at college I spent loads of cash in The Music Shop in Newcastle Under Lyme (they had a loyalty scheme back in 1977).

In Eastbourne. Fabulous racks of arcane west coast rock and british underground stuff, manna to my hungry ears between the ages of 14 and 16, with a liberal approach to possibly daily reqiests to listen to whole sides on headphones. A rack of 3 or 4 phones was sited so you could continue to browse while you nodded along to Jefferson Airplane, the JSD band or Aynsley Dunbars Retaliation. Me and my chums even enobled the sales assistant, a generously built woman in her late 20s, as Suzy Creemcheese, hot off those Zappa covers. And you could be seen in the shop from outside! How cool was that, to be seen to be a dude in headphones. Um, and school uniform.

1) Spinadisc on Gold St. Good for limited edition new releases. I bought the 12" picture disc of Marillion's Market Square Heroes here, which I sold for a vast profit. The shop later moved up the road to Abington St, but finally closed it's doors fairly recently. The original site is now the home of Spun Out, who sell bangin' house tunes and hoodies.

2) Our Price on Abington St. Site of my first single purchase, Abba's I have a Dream. Now closed.

3) Beatties in the Grosvenor Centre. Department Store site of my first album purchase, Iggy & The Stooges Raw Power. Now closed.

4) The Fish Market. Literally a stall set up in the corner of Northampton's fish market. Good prices if you didn't mind your previously-owned Scorpions and UFO albums smelling of halibut. Now closed.

5) Bruce Bunker on Abington Avenue. Small shop with a beardy-bloke selling second-hand vinyl out front and fixing TVs in the rear. Where I spent 90% of my money, and bought my first triple live album, Yessongs by Yes. Now closed.

6) A second-hand store on Bridge St I can't remember the name of. Wasn't as cheap as the Fish Market or Bruce Bunker, but had a better selection, especially for 7" vinyl. Now closed.

7) There was another store on Abington Square, a thin, dark, narrow place who would actually import albums to order. Probably the best store for new records in the town, but, once again, I can't remember what it was called. Now closed.

8) A couple of years later, Pied Piper opened up on Wellingborough Road. It seemed overpriced at the time, but the infamously grumpy owner is still plying his trade, as far as I know. Home of the Penguin Price Guide for CD and Record Collectors.

as the old bastard that ran the Diskery in Birmingham. It's first incarnation that i remember was on Hurst Street down from the Hippodrome. It had great listening booths and i clearly recall listening to the whole of the latest Hawkwind album with the sweet smell of incense increasing my listening pleasure.
Also the first Virgin in Birmingham pre Tubular Bells at the bottom of Corporation Street replete with aircraft seats and headphones.
I really believe that someday this will come back - call me naive but I think there will be a nostalgia for this kind of shopping pleasure as people tire of the online experience.

I'll do Lincoln then...

1) Sanctuary, just off the upper part of the High St, opposite Ruddocks. Tiny boutique-style place. Bought Queen I & II there at the same time (!) when I was 11. My parents were not amused.

2) Tracks, right next door to the market. Bigger than Sanctuary, but can't remember much else about it, except that I used to spend an awfully long time looking at the Roxy Music sleeves despite not being interested in their music (if you know what I mean).

3) Pride, in the Stonebow Centre (which, hilariously, must have seemed a cutting edge shopping experience circa 1982). Once cycled there and back, from Washingborough, on 15 consecutive school nights in anticipation of the release of Twisted Sister's You Can't Stop Rock N Roll album (too dim to actually ask for the release date).

4) Broadgate Record Exchange, on Broadgate. Fabulously dank and seedy place, stuffed with second-hand bargains, old hippies, offcuts of carpet and those overpowering gas heaters. Later moved round the corner, further down Monks Rd.

5) Signals, in the Cornhill. Metal/Rock specialist, named after the Rush album. Good bloke owned it, would let me exchange pretty much anything I wasn't happy with, but then I must have spent hundreds in there in the late 1980s.

6) Can't remember the name but there was a place at the top of Tentecroft St that, I think, was an electrical shop, with the records at the back. Remember more parental outrage at the very concept of having bought an AC/DC album & a Black Sabbath picture disc together, from there (you'd have thought the 2 Queen albums would have softened the blow?!?!)

There were other places too, but I better get back to doing some work.

Oh yes, me and my friend often complain about the guy who runs jacks records in Sheffield, many a transaction can be made without him uttering a single word!
Many of my favourite record shops stem from the early 80's such as;
Piccadilly Records in Manchester, when it used to be actually in Piccadilly Gardens.
Probe in Liverpool, and yes it was rather intimidating as Paul has said.
Sydney Scarborough in Hull, many of my first post punk singles bought there.
Mike Lloyd and another in an arcade who's name escape's me, in Stoke. Metal bias here but you could easily pick up the new tuxedomoon release.
And possibly my fave, Selectadisc in Nottingham both in its old position and even its new location, although on my last visit it had seem to shrunk somewhat.
It seems perverse now thinking of some the downright strange and obsure records you could pick up in these stores...Bedtime for Bonzo mini lp anyone

Not forgetting Tapes Too, of course, on the other side of Pottergate, with its display of new release singles above the counter, with coloured vinyl taken out of the sleeves, natch...

RR had a must-be-seen-with black-and-white carrier bag for albums, and - I'm sure this might have been the case elsewhere - a system whereby you could reserve any promo posters and other material by having a sticker with your name put on it and then take them home when next month's releases replaced them. eBay must be chock-full of such stuff from the late 1970s now...

As I recall it was also the purchase point for tickets for bands at the local university, such as that one time in 1981 when The Jam, Madness and the Au Pairs all played in the same week. Those really were the days...

...a shop in Bolton called Tracks. Was this a chain, or is that a connected series of flexible links?

Sorry.

Boltonians are now ably served by X Records, while those in neighbouring Bury have been supplied by Vibes for 31 years and counting. I once dropped a pristine copy of Meat Is Murder, procured therefrom for three English pounds, through the cracks between the floorboards of Gigg Lane's South Stand and into the netherworld beneath. I had to go back on the Monday to fetch it with the help of a half-confused, half-amused groundsperson.

...Battlefield Road, Langside, Glasgow, 1968. I am buying a single of Jimi's All Along The Watchtower and the helpful assistant points out that it is a stereo recording - wondering whether my old Dansette would be able to play it. In those days, at least the Decca records came in both Stereo and Mono, differentiated by blue and red inner sleeves.

Sullivans Records in Gorseinon, seven miles from Swansea. I was led to believe by the owner that it was one of the 300 "Gallup" shops*, whose sales directly counted towards the (in those days) hallowed top 40. He backed this up by the vast collection of limited edition singles, signed copies, and picture disks etc that his shop offered. During my 12" buying heyday one could watch Saturday mornings chart show and nip across the road and purchase said single, even if it was languishing in the bottom of the top 75. On visiting my Mother this Christmas I was extrememly sad to see the shop has closed down recently. A little bit of me died when I saw that.

*BTW if anyone can cornfirm that his "we are one of the 300 Gallup chart shops" was bollocks, I'd be happy to be told.

Wonderful emporium where all my pocket money went in the mid 70's on Camel lps!

Egham had a Record Library. I used to go and borrow LPs from them in the mid 70s and put them on cassette! The selection was amazing, items you only could read about in ZigZag. They would never sell them either and I was too naive then to say that i had "lost" them. Oh well.

Studio One, situated in the car park of Scarborough Railway Station. Looked like a shack, but treasures a many could be found every Saturday afternoon. Good old "Quiet Nigel" behind the counter, really miss that place and his bargains a plenty.

. . . in Reigate. Tag line on the bags and in the local cinema ads "There is no form of music without rhythm".
Used to go in there from school and ask to listen (obviously because I wanted to buy) to whatever. The assistant would take you into a proper listening booth and reverently place the LP on a turntable and then leave you in there to listen to whatever it was. Of course I never used to buy - I mean 32/6d for an album was WAAAAY outa my reach. After a while they used to give me the record and I would put it on myself.- I was in there so much that I used to help the customers when they came in !!! I remember when they had a closing down sale and had dozens of original mint copies of "From Genesis to revelation" there - could have made my fortune !!. They had a shop in Redhill too which turned into a pizza place when the record shop shut down.
Then came L & H Cloake in Redhill - a chain of shops (well if two is a chain) originating in Croydon. That's where I got my green vinyl "Happy Xmas war is over" and the limited edition Led Zeppelin "D'yer maker" single. Then that closed down and we had an Our Price which turned into "No it's not Virgin honestly" "V-Shop". Then sod all after that which is how it remains to this day. Reigate had an "Our Price" which was the size of a small shoe box and now they've got jack too.
I used to go to Beanos in Croydon too - they'd pay you 75p for something and then flog it for £200 the next day !!!!

Deserves a mention, second hand record shop and gig ticket agency where I exchanged my prog albums (and some money) for punk/ new wave stuff in the late 70s. I believe its still open for business 30+ years later. Not sure if John the original owner is still there.
Other shops worthy of note
Track in York now sadly no more
Windows Newcastle- musical instruments, HiFi and records - still the same
Fopp Leamington - a revelation when it first spread down from Scotland - back catalogue CDs for a fiver
Glad I wasn't the only one who found Probe intimidating.

Why did we stand for it? I hated some of those tiny suburban record shops because I remember feeling very small, unrespected and mocked. I was pretty much a child back in the late 70s and the disdain from the counter if you asked about something that did not meet their arbitrary criteria was amazing. It was like dealing with a bunch of Comic Book Guys in the Simpsons.
And unlike Strobe in Liverpool, these weren't people on the threshold of greatness themselves. Punk had not happened at all, as far as they were concerned.

to mentioning Vibes in Bury. In the 80's, when I worked nearby, I used to frequent said groovy disc emporium everyday to check the charts, the cheap box and take in the, er, vibes. Also, as a chart return shop, they got all the promos. Like a Talk Talk CD in a wooden box with pencils and rulers.

And Power Cuts, where you went in without a clue what you were looking for but came out with something totally obscure and very cheap. Sure I got my Sesame Street LPs from there...

So I will chuck in the great Jumbo Records in Leeds, especially when located in the Merrion Centre. In the late '70's I was given £30 each month to stock up the Poly jukeboxes, and spent it all in Jumbo on stuff for me. Then I would blag freebies from the record companies (hi Stewart at Phonogram) and put them on instead. Somebody once broke into one of the jukeboxes, not to steal any cash but to obtain a copy of Anarchy In The UK. Smashed the glass with a bare fist, leaving a trail of blood out the door... Twot.

Sêlenby in South Harrow - second hand shop - fantastic!

Was the place to go for 2nd hand stuff. At the time it was located in the delightful Oddfellows Hall in Edinburgh. took me 2 weeks to summon up the courage to drag myself in through the oh so cool doors, and an hour to decide on "If You Want Blood" by AC/DC as my first ever album purchase.

I followed them for many years through various locations before they eventually vanished, although I did have a long chat with one of the guys who ran it last week, when I found him working in Unknown Pleasures in the Canongate, when I was buying a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album there.

Back in the day, Phoneix was the place to buy NWOBHM stuff, and they even had their own label that Holocaust released their classic and not so classic stuff on. One of the band worked there, natch.

Honourable mentions go to Listen, The Other Record Shop (not the chain) and to the still going Backbeat and Record Shak, but not Vinyl Villains which is too indie by far.

in Bedford high street was a great little shop for us poor kids. They used to import albums from europe and undercut hmv & our price by at least a quid. Also they were to blame for my enduring love of the edgar winter band.

Does anyone remember us? Just wondering. From 1971 to 1974 the entire Cruisin' Records staff consisted of me and Max, apart from a year that I took off to retire to the country, during which I was replaced by the Hon. Jenny.

We were on a stretch of Tottenham Court Road that has long since fallen to the bulldozers, and we specialized, like a little brother to Musicland and One Stop, in U.S. imports. In reality, we spent our time getting wasted in the back room, emerging to be haughty with any hapless tourist that came in off the street to ask for, say, "She" by Charles Aznavour. If they wanted the Dead, Gram Parsons or Motown they were OK and worthy of our hazy attention.

In my favourite remembered incident, I was reclined in habitual pose of cowboy boots on counter, stetson tipped over eyes, cheroot in mouth, when I heard a timid request for the Beatles White Album. Now, this was acceptable, if somewhat old-fashioned, so I merely sighed, before opening my eyes to find the stunning Anne Bancroft facing me across the counter. All my fake West Coast cool deserted me and I leapt to my feet to scurry round the shop obsequiously for her. Charming, she was...(and at that point the Mrs. Robinson effect was still quite fresh).

Barney Bubbles came by and painted a wacky nouveau-kitsch masterpiece on our shop window. Meanwhile the inside mural featured my own, more humble, contribution - sort of sub-New Riders Of The Purple Sage desert skulls and lassos.

We also bought in second-hand LPs that we resold, which was a good scam when it came to cooking the books.

Someone out there must be old enough to remember us, in which case...thanks for your custom!

Pablo El Bandido

Fondly I remember...and not in any order either!

Ainleys on Belgrave Gate

Revolver on both Eastgate and Market Street who did the Leicester Mercury's Top 30 every Friday.

Rock-A-Boom in St Martins

BPM on Granby Street

Archers on High Street

Classic Tracks on East Bond Street from a former employee of Brees Music on Churchgate.

Virgin Megastore in the Haymarket (in the 70s) before HMV and then MVC moving in the same place.

Our Price on Gallowtree Gate and The Shires opposite Mothercare.

St Martins on High Street and Horsefair Street

Not forgetting my Saturday job (twelve unforgettable years of compiling mix tapes) at World Records on London Road. I was the only woman working there but built up my musical knowledge from the men who worked there...JC, Simon, John, Steve and Iain.

With the event of Zavvi closing there is only HMV left in the city centre. Sad isn't it?

PS Almost Forgot these too!

MG Records on Granby Street

Boogaloo Records on Granby Street

Oh Lordy! where do I start?

city south c.70:
the Co-Op - Main St., Rutherglen (hidden on the right, over at the back in amongst the 'repaired electronic goods waiting for collection' area) outstanding Moody Blues and CCR selection (3 by each), no other artists featured
Hamilton Road Records - Hamilton Rd. (see what they did there?) Rutherglen - Pay Dirt, at last! All the Young Dudes (lp) and Doremi.

city central c. 1972 - 79:
Listen - Cambridge St.
Cuthbertson's Pianos - Cambridge St.
Hades* - West Regent St. (did I imagine this place?)
23rd Precinct - West Regent St.
HMV - Renfield St.
Virgin - Argyll St. (aircraft seats, patchoulli sticks, head shit etc.)

city south c. 1972 - 79:
Gloria's Record Bar - Battlefield Rd., get on their mailing list, they'd invite you to a special 'open day sale' on a Sunday - it was early 70s and everything being closed, this was a very attractive option for a 16 year old pop picker - actually, nothing was on sale, but Hey! it was 3pm on a wet Sunday in Glasgow and I bought an album by Albert Tatlock (Jack somebody) called "Ow Do" a series of Northern stories of "Ow 'ard t'were back in't day" but with an humorous twist, natch.

city central c. 1979 - 80/90something:
Big Listen - Renfield St.
Wee Listen (this branch changed to Bloggs as the Listen empire expanded) - Renfield St.
Wee Bloggs - Saint Vincent St. bought JD's Closer in there, took it back the next day because it was depressing the hell outta me
23rd Precinct - by now putting dividers requesting that if you really needed to see the sleeve of any release by Carcass, you request it at the counter and provide proof of age
HMV - Renfield St.
Virgin - Renfield St. (high street store shit etc.)
Cassa Cassettes - unfashionable end of Renfield St., cassettes only

Bit of an anodyne record emporia blur after that, until 1990:
TOWER RECORDS - corner of Renfield and Argyll Sts., sorry, I've gotten all giddy remembering my hours in there.

I have my 4 years in Dundee at art school and 3 years in Falkirk as a designer in the museum still to add, but that's enough for now

*I descended a steep narrow stair bathed in red light but, more importantly "that Weekend World theme was playing" - s'ok, I own it now

What memories, indeed ... There was a record shop at Belfast city centre called The Gramaphone Shop ... it had class and a comfortable room at the rear where you could sit and LISTEN to your records before you had paid for them. Smyth's in Queen's Arcade was smaller and the man behind the counter, presumably Mr Smyth snr, wasn't keen on rock music ... I went in there with my mother and father to buy Elvis' My Baby Left Me ... he put the 78 on the turnable to let me hear it ... I heard the crash, bang, wallop of the drum and bass intro and quickly handed over the cash to purchase. "You're quite mad," he sternly told me. My mother wanely smiled. Later there was Doughie Knight's on Botanic Avenue. Dougie was a mine of information and generous, too .. it was there that I later took most of my Elvis LPs for swops and cash ... but not my Elvis Presley No 2 with the tinted Daily Sketch photo of Elvis on the cover in his green velous Memphis shirt. Even later there was Hector's House ... again it was a treasure house of hard-to-find bootlegs and rarities ... got the Harry Smith American folk music box set there. Ah, memories ... all gone and the shops, too. Shame ... looking at records now in the likes of Tesco and Asda is not the same and never will be ... what was it Bob Dylan told us to do ... "Take care of your memories ... for you cannot relive them ..."

I've ignored London so far but did live there for 10 years a fair amount of it just up the hill from Camden, in the late 90s/early 00s you could do a saturday morning run - Rhythm, goth nostalgia in Resurrection, MVE the three pokey ones on Inverness street and on to Tower. Shame that by then all the good stalls that used to be there in the late 80s/early 90s had gone off the market

...surely shows the depth of despair that selling music has dipped into. I am sure that for many of us the only carrot of a shopping expedition en famille has been the opportunity to slip off into an appropriate emporium. There are none such left in the majority of shopping streets now. I had the misfortune that is Sutton Coldfield last weekend, desperately hoping that the one record shop I remembered may still be there, despite the closure of the other one I used to frequent. Needless to say it wasn't. I even made the wrong step into the WH Smith sale, trumpeting it's 100s of CDs (and DVG+Ds etc etc) in their clearance. My arse, like the Lichfield store, it barely carried the "Top" 9 CDs and none of them were either worth having nor worth the prices marked. I find on-line browsing more or less impossible, missing the prompt of covers and names, even harder this year as HMV no longer have search facilities for folk, country etc etc.
Heeeelp: how do I and my ilk scratch this itch? I want to make mindless musical purchases, full of taste and charm. I am being denied this basic human right!

Nowt in Oxfam, British Heart Foundation or St Giles' Hospice shops that same saturday, but I await some peoples resolutions to clear out their attics etc. Found some nice second hand socks and pants, tho', only slightly worn, bit bobbly in the crotch, if you know what I mean, with that reassuringly homely smell of old dog.

moved about town for many years stocking mostly horrible Irish C&W bands and equally horrible metal but was the only gig in town. In fairness Rodge would "order" anything for you and you'd get it in a couple of days. I suspect he simply used to buy the (Clash/Smiths/Bragg) records "ordered" in chain stores in Dublin and mark up by 50p.

is no longer on my list of places to frequent for shopping trips for that very reason. The MVC there was very good and the Virgin Megastore was not bad plus you had Ottakers bookstore a couple of doors down. Now the town like its inhabitants is bereft of any cultural identity - a malaise that is spreading throughout the land as we increasingly become more sanitised in our lifestyles and allow our shopping habits along with our viewing and listening pleasures be dictated to us.Frankly to put not too fine a point on the matter I think it's a crock of shit but we only have ourselves to blame as we blindly worship at the altar of Asda and their numerous cohorts.
I would love to find some bargains in the myriad charity shops and at the same time provide small amounts of money to those in need but unfortunately I have yet to find the bargain that various other Word folk have been lucky enough to locate. I dearly would like the Bowie give away cd from the summers Sunday Mail as i missed out on it at the time but I cant find it for love nor money.My experience of charity shops involved rummaging through Mantovani, Val Doonican and Styx albums - not an experience to cherish.

...took all my money when I was at Poly in Teesside 1976/79 s/h albums for 97p. The beauty of the place was it was near the cafe/bar/lecture rooms so every time I passed i popped in cos some new collection would appear so often you found yourself walking out with the Doors back catalogue and virtually all of Eno's Obscure label which many years later I sold for £30 a piece plus the rest of the collection to fund a book www.kevincoynebooks.com.
But the strangest place I ever visited was in Manchester/Salford in the days when every University could guarantee a record shop nearby. Walked up some steps past boxes of self recorded cassettes to enter a rather large shop. Straight away - "if you're just browsing it's all over priced - if you're after a rarity its cheap and you'll pay it - if you just like the look I'll tape it for you." Always thought I'd dreamt the place until a Record Collector highlighted it.

Well stocked, staffed by two blokes who, to a 13 year old boy, were not only cool but had the best job in the world. I swear you got a slight nod of appreciation if you bought something outside of the the top 40. It's now a Chinese takeaway.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7750581.stm

Beanos of Croydon, in south London, used to be the biggest second-hand record shop in Europe, with its Singles Bar department boasting copies of virtually every seven-inch to make the charts since their inception in 1952.

But the shop has been struggling to survive for the past two years, and is set to close by March 2009. Beanos has already disposed of its last remaining singles, with only CDs and vinyl LPs still in the racks.

Interesting facts: The first 45 rpm disc, Texarkana Baby by country-and-western singer Eddy Arnold, was issued by RCA in the US on 31 March 1949.

Seven-inch sales peaked in the UK in 1979, when a staggering 89 million of them were sold, but once the CD hit the market, vinyl of all kinds went into sharp decline. In 2001, annual singles sales dipped below 180,000.

Well, there was WH Smith, wasn't there? That's where I bought all my records from 1982 to around 1987 when I started to brave the jaunt into Oxford Street. WHS used to have all the Top 40 singles up on the wall; great stuff.

Only encountered the independents when I set off to Bristol University: Revolver (slightly intimidating), Tony's (with Grumpy Will, absolutely incandescent if you tried to pay with plastic), a couple more on Park St I forget the names of, Music Stop in Redland (great secondhand selection) etc. Later, London brought Selectadisc (with its fabulously snooty staff) and Sister Ray - but alas.

At one point (circa 79): The Record Shop, Disc'o'Round, Parrot Records, Virgin and Andy's Records. Plus good stocked Debenhams, Woolworths, WHSmith, Boots etc

Now: HMV (sob)

Despite the broom cupboard size, always a well stocked larder of Loop, Spacemen 3, Butthole Surfers and co. The counter seemed an intimidating fortress protecting an army of musos. Hated taking defective stuff back there because they would always play it loud over their sound system to check it out. Great days. I think it is still alive. Wasn't there a preservation campaign?

Will pick up from James Blast - see above

Many's the Saturday morning spent in Groucho's in the Perth Road, which was a second hand shop. They used to date stamp their records inside the sleeve when they took them in - so I can still see where and approximately when I bought them. Last time I was in Dundee - about 4 years ago) they were still in business although had moved to bigger premises in the Nethergate. Good luck to them

Chalmers and Joy had a shop in the Hilltown (where I bought my first LP - Fairport's Angel Delight). And they also had a shop at the bottom of Albert Street, where because of a pricing glitch I got Physical Graffiti on day of release for £3.14. They later moved to Seagate

Bruce's had a shop in Reform Street when I was at college. Spent large proportions of grant (remember grants?) there.

I & N records in Perth Road (remember buying RT's guitar/vocal there) - they then moved to Crichton Street.

Boots used to have a good sale every now and then which for years featured copious quantities of Andy Fairweather Low LPs for some reason. Some ordering malfunction c1972 I guess.

An anuual highlight was also going to rugby internationals in Embra and spending the morning in Virgin records which was in a little shop in a street behind George street (I think)

Now live in Northampton and I can confirm (see Frasers post above) that there is still a second hand record shop in the Fish Market - although it is now an artists centre rather than a fish market. The owner looks like he may have been there since the 60's. !!!

...Huddersfield Market - park in tescos and there is a guy in the market undercuts them on new CD's - sells mainly Games but he also picks up some Random stuff - David Byne's The Knee Plays was the last one I got. Also a man who sells the Rarer live CD's from everyone but also does the full Cherry Red catalogue. Not to mention the old codger that deals in old style C&W but will suddenly aquire very odd stuff for him - Pixies/ David Sylvian and many Death Metal CD's.

A small shop shut down last year, but was frankly not up to much. Not counting Smiths (see above!)or the supermarkets, or the 4 charity shops and definitely no longer counting Woolies, this leaves a solitary market trader, who specialises in comp games and DVDs more, I would say, but who always has a tray or 2 of £2 CDs, never stated as to whether new or used, but I suspect must be the latter. Tends toward the poppier end of what they now call R'n'b (but ain't nothing to do with the Stones or Pretty Things)but the occasional odity lurks. Managed to spend £8 with relative ease on saturday, but can't remember for my life what I bought, but Talk Talk rings a bell and a Ray Russell (jazz guitarist, later siding with Heaven 17, I think) CD that looked interesting.

...if there's enough photos still in existence, with a bit of expansion on the anecdotes there has to be a book in this thread.

Word writers stitch it together, get Guy Garvey to do a preface, stick it in the site shop and bingo, there'll be a copy in the bog of every Word reader come next Boxing Day

This used to exist in Manchester Arndale in the early 1990s, on the upper floor down the side of BHS, pretty much where "Game Station" is now. It was a fairly decent record shop which only seemed to stock CDs - hence the name - but their main feature was a healthy selection of bootlegs. I remember buying maybe half a dozen Prince bootlegs from there, including my first ever CD of "The Black Album" (a snip at £40) and a few live albums, but I was stung by one called "Uncut Diamonds" which featured rough versions of songs from "Diamonds and Pearls", along with out takes, and sounded as though it had been recorded on a dictaphone through a wall.

This had two branches around Manchester that I knew of - one in Eccles, and one in Swinton - and the Eccles branch was staffed by two blokes who were always both in no matter when it was you went, and they had a habit of quoting prices in that DFS way, so instead of charging "four ninety-nine" for a cassette they always used to ask for "four-nine-nine". They also sold a selection of Mastertronic games on cassette for Spectrums, and had an array of styluses (styli?) on the wall behind the counter. It was great.

In the town centre we had two Our Price stores,one of which became Virgin for what semed like a fortnight before becomming an Early Learning Centre.My first record's were from Timothy Whites, which had a step down alcove selling records and needles for your sterogram. We also had The Record Room on Chequer street. They always had a huge catalogue on the counter, which seemed to contain everything ever released by anyone ever, and it was the only place that sold imports.For a few years, after the Chequers bingo hall closed, there was a record shop at the front of the old building. It used to advertise the album of the week, by putting the sleeve in a frame on the column outside, I know I bought a Police album there (Zenyatta Mondatta, if you're interested) but I'm buggered if I can remember the shops name.
Apart from a small department in Boots, and the sadly departed Woolworths, there was always a few stalls on the market. One stall still remains, down in the Market place opposite Currys. They always seem to have a varied selection, but for how long is anyones guess. Now it's just HMV, which seems to be mainly for Games,DVD and Ipod accessories.

Now Woolworths has closed in my home town (St Neots) we have nowhere to buy CDs anymore. We used to have the most amazing independent music store called Barneys. It was one of the dying breeds where there were CDs and tapes (!) stacked to the ceiling spanning almost every genre imaginable - classical to electronica, folk to prog rock etc. And if they didn't have it, they would be able to order it in for you - they even managed to get me a copy of the Toyes!

Unfortunately last year it became all to obvious that it was, in fact, the CDs which were keeping the shop standing and so Barney's ceased trading whilst the shop was quite literally rebuilt. Unfortunately Barney's never came back. Instead we now have a posh wine shop which is always empty and bound to fail in the current economic climate. And I have to buy all my CDs online :-(

...had one indie for years, Classical Rock, which had a shite name but was the only place to hang out at lunchtime once one had achieved 6th form status and was allowed to leave the compound. Every album I remember with fondness from my teenage years I bought there: Floyd, Mode, PSBs, everything that screams the years 1988-91. Plus! 50p clearout 12" singles, 25p 7" similar. I got "Sit Down" by James there, on Factory, for 25p. Bargain.

There was no competition in the town for years. Then WHSmiths moved in (although, in 2009, it's about to announce it's giving up on music) and then Sainsburys.

I grew up, moved away, and on coming back for Christmas I find only Sainsburys. So that's a choice of 50 CDs against 5000 then.

I'd hate to live back there now.

Although a small point of order; The Prof was a member of staff during Probe's Button Street golden age but, unless he took over much later, the actual owner was always the avuncular and very funny Geoff Davies. As well as Pete Burns and his wife Lynne, other Probe staffers who went on to bigger things were Pete Wylie, FGTH's Paul Rutherford and Gary Dwyer of The Teardrop Explodes. Another former Probe alumnus, Bernie Connor, has written a good piece on Probe on his podcast blog, to which I urge you to subscribe.

http://tsom.mypodcast.com/2009/05/bernie_connor_presents_the_sound_of_mu...