Record Collection Recollections #2: Full Circle

When I first started buying records in the mid-80s, there weren't many places to buy them. Not in Huddersfield, at least. Our Price hadn't opened yet (although it soon would), which left me with Woolworths and Woods Music Shop. There may have been other places to feed my newfound habit, but these were the only ones I knew about, and to be honest, I only knew about Woods because that was where I went to buy music for my piano lessons or valve cleaning products for my tenor horn. I remember they had a small selection of contemporary albums alongside a much larger choice of Classical. But for most of my early purchases, Woolworths was it. 

I mention this because after many years of being spoilt for choice in terms of where I buy my records, it feels like the actually physical marketplace has shrunk back to where it began. In Huddersfield now, there's Vinyl Tap, a pretty well established independent record shop (of which, more later) and HMV, a shadow of its former self, more concerned with selling T-shirts or those pop culture models with the big heads, than actual music. And the charity shops, of course, if you want some Robbie Williams or Daniel O'Donnell.

I miss Woolies.

Here's a track from one of the first albums I bought, on cassette, from Woods Music Shop. Not as contemporary as it might have been, but I've always spent more money on older records than new.