Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days Of Vinyl

Murph mentioning independent record shops in his Woolies post reminded me of our local ones when I was a teenager.

My favourite was Cloud 9, run by a quietly greying middle aged man who would um and ah when you asked him for that special record. He could always order it as he usually didn't have it in stock. But his ordering system was second to none and you'd always end up with the record which you would carry home in your Cloud 9 bag, flapping against the side of your bicycle frame as you cycled down the long hill to home at 30 m.p.h.

My second favourite was OK Records, run by a young man with dark, straight, longish hair and large bottle-bottom specs. I remember getting a few second hand prog albums from there and the pride of my collection, Talking Heads' 77. "OK Records" was not really the most inspiring name the shop could have had. An OK record to my mind would be an album by, say, Catatonia. They're OK, not bad I suppose. But nothing to write home about.

Lastly there was TW Records, presumably originally owned by a Trevor Watkins or a Tony Wilkinson. I was put off TW Records because it was the only record shop which had an advert on at our local cinema. The advert was from the early 70s and was five years out of date then, let alone in the mid 80s when it was still running. TW Records might have been groovy in the late 60s but was the most depressing shop to walk into. In its last few years the stock was just there for show and its back room was where all the action went on for spotty teenage boys playing video games. That's what I assumed they were going round the back for, anyway.

So I had Cloud 9, named after the Temptations' song, OK Records, named after Bad Company and TW Records, named after Terry Waits. What about you? The best name wins a £1.99 Amazon voucher.