Complete with access to exclusive two-hour Beatcroft Social ’25 for 24′ show

It is my birthday. Only in the extremities of the Southern Hemisphere, as I write, but my old friend Douglas has just messaged congratulations from Auckland, so I’m counting myself as having entered my 70th year on the planet. Never thought I’d get anywhere near this stage of ambulatory decrepitude. Thank you, Dr Fryer, Dr Ryan and all who sail in the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary Cath Lab.

A Hogmanay birthday was always problematic. “This present is for your Christmas AND your birthday” I would be told, having been presented with a particularly lovely tangerine. Of course, I exaggerate. Sometimes I would get a bag of chocolate money too

And that was just last year…

No, no and thrice no. I married into a family that takes birthdays very seriously indeed, and wondrous gifts have already been arriving. Tomorrow though, the last postie of the year will deliver my presents to myself – vinyl pressings of the first albums by an obscure 1970s group called Home. One is called Pause for a Hoarse Horse. One is called Home. 

And today (or yesterday, in Kiwi time) Iain Shaw sent me a photograph of a deceased Glasgow record shop, Gloria’s Record Bar in Battlefield. That prompted two things: more self indulgence in the form of a two-hour shuffle through the albums I bought this year, recorded and available to listen to now, and a musing on the power of the retail record shop, from Speed Records in Troon to Clive’s in Lerwick.

‘25 for 24’ – 25 tracks ranging from Peter Perrett to the MacCalmans. I’m hoping you enjoy listening. I’m going to try and publish a music show at least every month in 2025, exclusively available to Substack subscribers. This link is to a private Mixcloud stream. Full playlist at the end of this post.

Biggles to Bond, Gallagher to Pratt, and forty-three shillings and ninepence for Another Side of Bob Dylan

Records and books were sacramental objects, full of power. Knowledge secret and openly begging you to access it. And books were dangerous, too. Why else would dad have a cache of paperbacks in a suitcase on top of a wardrobe in the spare room, hidden away (unsuccessfully) from roaming children searching for access to Narnia? Desmond Bagley, Ian Fleming, Hammond Innes, Alistair Maclean…tomes deemed too violent or racy for the likes of me, though eventually, having read every Biggles and Gimlet thriller available, I was granted access to Ice Station Zebra and as a teenager began raiding that elevated suitcase for the disturbingly lurid Victor Canning hardbacks that came every month from the Companion Book Club. After that it was Bond and beyond.

Bookshops enveloped me in their heady aromas: ink, binding glue, paper…each new book had a unique smell  and the combination of perfumes in the likes of Heffers, Thins or Smiths could be overwhelming. But that was nothing to the musty foostiness (or foosty mustiness) of a truly great second-hand bookshop like the original, journey-to-the-centre-of-the-earth Voltaire and Rousseau in Glasgow. 

Books were objects of pleasure and delight, entertainment and consolation, soothing medicine for the mind, tools for elevation and education. They consume me and they still do. 

Records, though. Records weren’t so much holy as magic, sometimes literally so. The voodoo and occult-infused albums by Dr John, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin were objects of fascinated fear to a Gospel Hall boy, but all singles and LPs held mystery and the promise of transformative noise. And unlike books, which could be literally holy, like Bibles, commentaries, tales of  faith and forgiveness, records – rock’n’roll records –  promised a very different kind of redemption. Glistening black circles of grooved plastic, enigmatic, sometimes completely, balefully silent until you got them home and onto the deck (or Bush Radiogram, until the Garrard SP25 days arrive courtesy of Comet).

And so to record shops, very different from bookshops in that they were coded, and you had to break a particular place’s guarded cypher before you could access the treasures within. Some were simply commercial enterprises, reacting to local needs and desires. Everything from Scottish country dance music to progressive rock and weird classical, jumbled and uncurated, the staff suspicious of scruffy youngsters who querulously asked to listen in one of the pegboard booths or on insanitary headphones. Whatever sold. Often these were electrical goods shops, family run, with an enthusiastic  junior child of the owner curating sometimes awesome, sometimes terrible selections of music.

At Gloria’s in Battlefield, on Glasgow’s south side, owner’s son Howard Blint became a source of rare imported singles and inspiration for the likes of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band and the Average White Band, as well as many other nascent musos. And it was where, in 1970, for 43 shillings and nine (old) pence, I bought my first full-price album, Another Side of Bob Dylan. A day’s wages, back then, and the result of birthdays, Christmas and savings on my part. Equivalent to about £35 these days. Which, oddly enough, is roughly what you’d pay for a new album on vinyl (never, NEVER ‘a vinyl’). And what I did pay this year for a copy of Erlend Cooper’s Carve the Runes And Then Be Content With Silence, which admittedly came with a packet of seeds and a bit of the actual master tape (buried in Orkney peat to, well, add to its collectibility).

Other record shops were smoky dens of would-be iniquity, where you went to be patronised by staff who used their vast superiority like  bludgeons. “Can I have the new Roy Cooper record” asked one girlfriend. “Bop until you Pop”? A crevasse of stunned silence, gales of laughter and then the silent flick of Ry Cooder’s Bop ‘Til You Drop from the guy at Listen in Byres Road.

Listen Records, first in Cambridge Street, then at Byres Road, was my university redoubt, my escape from study (along with the Salon Cinema, the Hot Spot in Vinicombe Street for ‘business lunch’ or the Grosvenor Café). It was there I learned the backwards browser flick (left hand holding the stack of polythene-wrapped records ( I think Listen had actual records in their racks, not just empty sleeves), right fingers flipping each back towards you as you checked the covers. Always push the pile forward for the next customer when you’d finished. Listen always had American import cut-outs, and that’s where I got the triple-gatefold US version of Van Morrison’s It’s too late to Stop Now I ended up buying this year, once more with feeling, from eBay. Twenty quid. Cheap at the price.

Discovering Lost Chord over in Cessnock, a Subway trip from the West End to a temple of glory amid dereliction, was deeply satisfying. A copy of Andy Pratt’s eponymous album, the one with Avenging Annie on it, for 50p. And then there were other places of pilgrimage in the 70s and early 80s. West End Records in Partick, a chart return shop that supplied DJs and was always full of company reps’ promo merch – t-shirts, badges, signed picture discs. 23rd Precinct always came second to nearby McCormick’s, as I was obsessed with guitars as well as records, and it was too clubby for my tastes. It was always worth checking out Woolies in Shawlands for cut-outs and bargains.

Later, on trips to Edinburgh  there was Ezy Rider for used stuff, the Other Record Shop and Bruce’s. And where it all started for me, in my home town of Troon, where Boyds newsagents sold ex-jukebox singles for 30p, Fairbairns Electrical had a corner devoted to records, run by a mini-skirted blonde goddess who made me and my pals Douglas and Stewart so nervous we couldn’t speak. And then Speed, about which I’ve already written on this platform, and where I took back Rory Gallagher’s Blueprint three times ‘because it was warped.’

There are still proper record shops, places like Monorail and Love Music in Glasgow, where I always feel abashed, lost and uncertain, pretty much as I did back in the days of 23rd Precinct. Places not necessarily for the likes of me. Or not any more.

When I first came to Shetland, in 1985, Clive’s Record Shop was operating from a tiny alcove opposite what is now known as Jimmy Perez’s house in Lerwick. It moved to a much bigger location on Commercial  Street and became one of the best-run, best curated and friendliest record shops on the planet. Countless Shetland musicians have had their tastes nurtured by Clive Munro.

That shop long gone, Clive is now manager of the COPE social e entreprise retail operation, where second hand goods of all kinds are sold. Inevitably, there is a section devoted to CDs and albums, as carefully and knowledgeably categorised and curated as in the days of that old seafront shop. And you can go in for a chat, some reminiscing and recommendations, because Clive is still a fan, a collector, a listener. I was there the other day, and mentioned to him that I had been taking a leisurely trip through the back catalogue of the Incredible String Band.

“Just got some later Williamson solo albums in the other day,” he said, darting to the shelves, and retrieving some Robin rarities. Old habits die hard. I bought them, of course. Though CDs just don’t have the same Proustian potency as LPs. On the other hand, such is the power of record shop nostalgia that at COPE Clive is selling old bags from his shop. In frames.

I already have one, of course. Or two.

Listen to the special ‘25 for 24’ Beatcroft Social on Mixcloud here

https://www.mixcloud.com/tom-morton2/a-beatcroft-social-special-25-for-2024-with-tom-morton/

Playlist

John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers — Steppin’ Out

Incredible String Band — Blues for the Muse

John Renbourn and Robin Williamson — Bunyan’s Hymn/I Saw Three Ships

Incredible String Band — The Hedgehog’s Song

Mike Heron — Warm Heart Pastry 

Erland Cooper — Carve the Runes, Movementt 1, part 3

Home  — Tramp

Runrig — Somewhere

Everything But the Girl, Todd Terry — Missing

Nicky Murray — How Long

Peter Perrett — Fountain of You

Waxahatchee — Tiger’s Blood

The Slickers — Johnny Too Bad

Joseph Spence — Coming In On a Wing and a Prayer

Bob Marley and the Wailers — No Woman No Cry

Van Morrison — Ain’t Nothing You Can Do

Adam Holmes and the Embers — Shining Star

The McCalmans — Sir Morgan O’Doherty’s Farewell to Scotland

Bob Dylan — Motorpsycho Nightmare

Kris Kristofferrson — Sunday Morning Coming Down

Kinky Friedman — Sold American

Simple Minds — Promised You a Miracle

Taylor Swift and Gary Lightbody — The Last Time

Leo Kottke — Louise

World Party — When the Rainbow Comes

Yvonne Lyon and Boo Hewerdine — Things Found in Books