It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas … so in December The Record Album is open seven days a week to offer vinyl gift ideas as well as wonderful new stock.
From December 1 our opening hours will be Monday to Saturday 10am to 6pm and Sunday 11am to 4pm. We will also be staying open late on Thursday to 7pm. After Christmas we will be closed for the holidays, reopening on Friday January 7 at 10am. Our winter opening hours will then be Thursday to Saturday, 10am to 5.30pm.
For gift ideas for the vinyl lover we have books about record shops (in which we feature of course), stylish Legend Vinyl cleaning kits and our own Record Album gift vouchers, which can be made out to the value you require, and mugs.
The three books about records shops are Vinyl Countdown by Graham Sharpe; Going for a Song: A Chronicle of the UK Record Shop by Garth Cartwright; and Last Shop Standing: Whatever Happened to Record Shops by Graham Jones. Here’s a precis of each of them:
Vinyl Countdown follows Graham Sharpe’s journey to over a hundred record shops across the globe, including the many characters he has encountered and the adventures he accrued along the way. A mesmerising blend of memoir, travel, music and social history, Vinyl Countdown will appeal to anyone who vividly recalls the first LP they bought and any music fan who derives pleasure from the capacity that records have for transporting you back in time.
In Going For A Song Garth Cartwright has travelled the length and breadth of the country, conducting more than 100 interviews with some of the icons of the record shop trade and the wider music industry, including Martin Mills (Beggars Banquet), Geoff Travis (Rough Trade), Andy Gray (Andy’s Records), Ralph McTell, Chris Barber, The Specials and many more. From the UK’s first record shop, Garth traces the history through more than a century of unprecedented social, cultural and political change.
Graham Jones has amassed a fantastic collection of anecdotes on his travels around the record shops of Britain, and Last Shop Standing is a unique slice of social history and record industry folklore. The story of his time spent working in and around the world of independent record retailing, Graham reveals the truth about chart hyping and shines a light on some of the extraordinary shenanigans that have regularly gone on behind the scenes as record companies go about promoting some of their biggest hits (and misses).
We are also stockists for the high quality vinyl cleaning kit from Legend Vinyl, which is designed for the professionals and serious collectors with all the essential components you need to guarantee the best quality sound and enjoyment from your records.
The kit includes 200ml of no-residue antistatic vinyl cleaner fluid – effective for removing deeply embedded dust and dirt – and a super soft, large, lint-free microfibre cloth which does not produce fluff whilst being used, or create a static charge that attracts dust to the surface of your records. The cloth is washable and designed for extensive use.
And as if you needed to be told … come in and browse our renowned selection of soundtracks and high-quality new jazz as well as our stock of rock n’pop, showbiz, reggae, folk, country, international music, classical and spoken word.