EMI Record Tokens

As it's coming up to Christmas I thought I'd remember the once popular EMI Record Token. Something your Grandma bought you for a Christmas present or perhaps a birthday. So you could use it to buy "one of those pop 45s from the hit parade". At one time universally accepted in most shops their boom sales period came at Christmas time.

Pick yourself a card from the gondolier, tell the assistant in the shop how much you want to spend and hey presto you've done your Christmas shopping for someone you couldn't be bothered to spend any more time on.

From my memory working in a record shop they were very popular. You ordered as many tokens as you wanted from EMI but had to be careful how you sold them. Because you were charged up to and including the first token that was redeemed or the last token you sold. So if you had a pack of 20 and you sold number 20 first, once that token was redeemed you were charged from 1 to 20.

They came in £1, £5 and £10 donations and you could then lick and stick as many on as you liked onto the card.

The problem was, a percentage of the sale went to EMI (obviously). And the beginning of the end came when major stores like Woolworths and WH Smiths stopped accepting them and doing their own. A sensible idea really when you think that someone could also buy the token from you and spend it somewhere else.

But I always thought that was the beauty of these things. A token you can give to someone and let them shop anywhere with . Not quite the same as an iTunes or Google Play token.

Music Master Catalogue

Music Master 1990

Long before the Internet and Google search, if you wanted to look up information about a record/song/artist, you had to find out the old fashioned way by looking in a book.

Retail record stores across the country had to subscribe to a music catalogue that was so big it made the bible look like a pamphlet. Imagine a book that listed all formats, all track listings, all catalogue numbers, record labels & release dates for EVERY record that is currently available to buy.

That book was Music Master.

With monthly supplements to keep the information up to date and a full yearly reprint, thIs book was the music bible for the Retail music industry.

If anyone wanted to order a record this was the place to start. To order a title you needed three important pieces of information.

1. Is it still available?. 2. What label is it on? (Or more importantly who's distributing it?) 3. What's the catalogue number.

This book had it all. It cost an absolute fortune to buy and was a pain in the bum to flick through but I spent many happy hours looking though it trying to find classic stuff to purchase for myself never mind customers. You may have needed a magnifying glass to read the writing and the paper was so thin it could tear very easily, but it was an essential part of any proper record shop. I can find very little information on the net about when they started or stopped printing this book, how many editions there were or if anyone else remembers its existence. But, for me, it's a nice bit of nostalgia Just to see it again.

 

Chart Machine

The indie store i worked in was a Chart Return shop.

This meant that we gave our sales data to whoever compiled the charts at the time. During my time it moved from The British Market Research Bureau, to Gallup to CIN to Millward Brown. Initially it was via Pen and paper, but then they introduced computers. Every record has a catalogue number and all you had to do was type this number into the machine and press enter. If you flick through your record collection you will notice that Catalogue numbers changed in the late 80s to accommodate this. There were less nonsensical numbers and letters like epc345278 and more short straight forward wordy ones like BONG3 or FIC 42. It made it easier for sales staff to remember and type them out. You will also notice that once these machines moved away from typed in data to barcode wands, the catalogue numbers on your records dropped letters all together and stuck to really long numbers instead.

But God forbid anyone should forget to type a sale in back then. Anything to make sure you did, anything to make it easy. One miss type would be classed as a missed sale for a record company and every entry was important. Which made any shop contibuting to the top 40 of interest to a record company.

Each night when you closed the shop you had to remember to turn the machine off. In retrospect i now know that by turning it off i was actually flicking it over to a fax like modem that would answer the phone and send the days data direct to Gallup. If you had forgotten to turn it off it couldn't communicate with their main computer and nothing was sent. Sometime during the night Gallup would call, collect the data and add it to that collected from all the other shops on the panel. The charts were actually compiled on a daily basis and they even released a mid week chart to the record companies so they could see how well (or bad) their singles and albums were doing so far that week.

It cost money to rent these little computers and in the end you also had to pay to have your own data sent back to you in chart form. But it was worth every penny. The deals and free stock you received from record companies, just because you were on the chart return panel, far outweighed anything they charged.

One rep once told me in the 80s that they could always tell who was on the chart panel without even going to the shop. All they had to do was ring them at night. If the machine answered the phone they knew they were worth a visit.

 

Roy Orbison In Death

Diary entry from Dec 6th or 7th ? 1988

Got a call from Telstar today. "did you know that Roy Orbison has died ?" no i didn't. "Well we were ringing round to see if anyone needs to stock up, we've got the Hits album on TV at the moment".

It sounds a bit sick and she was a bit embarrassed to be asking me but 'Yes we do want to stock up' and I'm glad she rang. In the next 24 hours Radio will be banging his hits out none stop and everyone will suddenly be claiming they were a lifelong fan.

By the end of the day we had sold out of every old dusty Tape, Records and ex chart Single we had in the shop. I even fished out an old budget LP from the dump bin. It's been there for months at 99p with no one showing any interest. I put a new plastic sleeve on it and stuck it back out at £2.99. It sold within the hour. I suspect this will be the album for Christmas. He popped off just in time for the Xmas Present Market. Who could have planned that one ?.

Double Pack Power of love

Diary Entry Late Nov early Dec 1985

***** from CBS came today and we had a bit of a row over the Jennifer Rush single.

The Bastards have Deleted the Power of Love, even though it's still selling. The reason for this became apparent when the new single arrived on the counter sporting a 'limited edition' that features a "free" copy of The Power of Love shrink wrapped with it. This means that anyone who wants the Power of love has to buy the new single. The sly buggers, it's a good idea though and it's working, people are obviously buying it 'cos it costs the same.

But we can be sly buggers as well. All we did was wait till he left the shop and opened up the packs to flog them separately.

He wasn't happy. Bang go the Dead or Alive Promos in future.

Life in a 1980s Record Shop

OMG ! The Absolute JOY!!!!!!!!! I found it!!!

Memories of my Record shop days. A snapshot of the life of Independent Record shop in the UK  from the 1970s through to 2000. Complete with DIARIES !. Old Invoices and all sorts of shite to back it all up, Prices and Discounts, Distribution info, all sorts of little gems that i thought ended up in the bin. I was nearly in tears when i found it. Couple this with my Record Collection and hey presto ! a box of memories.

I was an avid record collector as a kid, then i did a bit of DJing after school, got a job in a club for a couple of years before transfering to life behind the counter at my local record shop from then i moved onto being a manager and eventually opened my own couple of shops before it all went tits up in the late 90s and people started downloading stuff off the net. By early 2000 it was all over for me.  I didn't think i had kept a proper diary of this time. But i have (sort of) in parts.

Suddenly i know where this  blog is about to go. I had lost interest at one time. You can't post music any more, and if you write, what do you write about ?. I was thinking of writing about my past but could really remember stuff. Well now i have it. A transcript of a snapshot in time. Word for word from my own pen. (terrible spelling i note)

It's not exactly Samual Pepes, but it may interest someone. Some of it i may need to Edit for legal reasons and some names may have to be changed to protect the innocent, I may even add bits so that it all makes sense.  But other than that i'll keep in the references to Record Companies, Industry info Artists, the lot.

And so that it doesn't get boring i'll flit from any moment in theses diaries rather than stay with one year, or just go cronalogical with each post.

It may not mean anything to you  dear reader but it sure as hell does to me.

Sometimes i wrote a line, sometimes i wrote nothing, sometimes i've done a whole bloody page full of stuff. But like a tit i have't always  dated everything and i can't explain why things arn't on sepearate days per day. But i've managed to work out more or less when they were written. Here is a small insignificant entry from sometime in Mar or April 1986 to give you a taste of what rubbish lies within in these diaries. I wish i had written more like this.

Roger from ***** came today with his “portfolio of dreams”. This is what he calls his folder that contains all the singles he is promoting and selling this week. It's just a plastic folder with a copy of a single in each pocket really. “you might want to listen to that one” he says “people seem to be interested in that one, but don't bother sticking that one on unless you wanna clear the shop, it's absolute bollocks”

Most of what he's selling or giving away is shit but there are the odd items we need and sell a lot of. Sinitta (So Macho) and Gary Numan are today’s must haves. Sinitta is still free so we'll have any that's going. But we only want Gary Numan Picture discs, even though he does look like Hitler without a moustache on the front cover. No one is interested in the ordinary black vinyl version, But Roger reminds me that there is a flexi disc free with it so i order some. Everyone really just want the so-called 'limited edition' picture disc. In years to come I suspect the ordinary black plastic single will be rarer than a picture disc because no one buys that fucking

 thing. There again i can't imagine anyone actually plays them. They sound like shit and never sit flat on the turntable, i've had three brought back this week because they are warped. What the hell do the expect?.

 Some Numan fans are like Toyah fans. They turn up at 9.01am on Monday morning (the day of release) and buy every different format of the same song. Sometimes walking out with 3 or 4 copies of the same bloody thing. God knows what they do with them. They surely can't be listeniing to 'em. But buying more than one copy sends the single rocketing up the charts week one. After that it’s all over. No one else buys it and on week two you may as well put everything left over in the 20p dump bin. No self-respecting Toyah or Numan fan buys a single on week two. And as far as I can see no one other than the fans buy their music at all.

Rodger isn’t a pushy rep. I look forward to him coming around. He’s a good laugh. He just dumps his folder on the counter and asks me to “peruse” through the shite and tell me what I want. At the end of the folder, after the albums and cassettes, there are also carpets and curtain fabrics. They are nothing to do with the promotions company he is working for. He’s just added them himself for a little bit of extra cash. Roger is good for cash ;-)

“At Christmas I do Calendars as well” he said “so remember that".

If his boss only knew.

Independent Record Stores (Last Shop Standing)

I bought a book the other day called Last Shop Standing - Whatever happened to Record Shops ? By Graham Jones.

I'm only half way through reading it so i shouldn't perhaps be reviewing it yet. But it's all very interesting.

However it doesn't seem to be written by someone who Set up and owned a small independent records shop himself. So far as i can see it's taken from the point of view of someone interviewing people who did. And like all people you interview who work in any shop they tell you the salacious stuff and leave out the mundane nitty gritty of trying to stay in business.

For me the hardest part was trying to keep going whilst every record company and his mother tried to sell me every record that has ever been released in every format going. Whilst trying to satisfy the needs of all those potential customers with cash to be had. Graham worked at HMV. But HMV was a multiple as far as i am concerned. A good one i'll grant you that. But a corporate multiple all the same. When you have such buying power you don't have the same financial restraints as a small indie and your whole perspective of selling music is warped. Nothing seems to be said in this book of owners only buying three copies of the most brilliant record you have ever heard because you know that only you will like it and maybe two customers you know you can push it to. Whilst having to purchase a bucket load of absolute shite in the full knowledge that you will sell out within days and it will probably be top 10 next week. That's what working in a record shop was all about. It was like gambling. You have to pay for all that stock so if you buy more than you sell you lose money and if you don't buy enough and you loose as well. Cold hard business wrapped up in your love of music and all the baggage that comes with it.

Perhaps i should add a few of my own stories here at some point. They might not be as glamorous but it would be a bit more realistic. If i ever wrote a book it would be called the 'Life and Death of a record shop'. I started in the 80s and ended my days in 2000 when you buggers started burning your own copies and downloading free from the Internet.

But it's all gone now. Anyone who still owns a record shop nowadays must be mad. Surely they are living on borrowed time ?. But good luck to them i say, if only they could stay there forever.
Anyway this is a recommended read.

The Damned Phantasmagoria

In 1985 The Damned released the Phantasmagoria album. A much more palatable crossover sounding collection of tunes than anything they had ever produced previously in their punk years. It spawned the singles Grimly Fiendish and The Shadow of love and was a sort of gothic/pop offering that suddenly gave them a mass appeal along with a few top 40 hits.

When this album was sold in to our record shop  by MCA records we were given the opportunity to do some promotional advertising paid for by the label. I say ‘paid for’, we never actually received any cash, the payment was just free Albums. The idea being that we got 10 free Vinyl  LPS (no CDs in those days) and the freebies would allow us to reduce the price and advertise it in our local paper.

£4.49 would be our cut price so all we needed to do now was think of a snappy ad to go in our local Rag.

Now I know that in the cold light of day this doesn’t sound like comedy gold but at the time I thought that it would be amusing to have the tag line (in bold black lettering) “I’ll be Damned if I’ll pay more that £4.49 for the new Damned Album, blah blah…out now….etc etc”. LOL, hilarious, Jimmy Tarbuck eat your heart out.

So we got the artwork approved, sorted the price/size of ad/what page it would be on etc. and arranged for it to go in the paper just before the weekend for maximum sales.

But on the day advertisement was due to go to press a lady from the paper rang to say there was a slight problem. The editor wouldn’t let us use our comedy wording “he thinks that the line ‘I’ll be Damned’ sounds a bit too much like swearing” she said. “Wot? that’s the name of the band, The Damned!, how the hell can you take that bit out ?”.

“I know” she said “ but he’s made us reword it I’m afraid, I hope you don’t mind?”

So what magical Gem did they come up with for our fantastic Damned Promotion?

“We won’t condemn you to pay more that £ 4.49 for the new Phantasmagoria album- out now”

Shite!
We never bothered with the Sex Pistols Never mind the bollocks re promotion...

Oldies Unlimited



Oldies Unlimited Catalogue No 77



I was gonna write something here about a record label called Old Gold. But i'll save that for another day because whilst i was looking through my collection to research more i found this monthly catalogue from approx 1987/88 and decided to change it to Oldies Unlimited.

Based in Telford this company bought up old stock of ex chart hits from record labels and shops, then sold them on to anyone willing to buy. They also had franchised dealers up and down the country and flogged via mail order.

This wasn't a second hand service. These were unplayed vinyl oldies on the cheap.

The sort of thing that Woolworth's stuck in a dump bin the minute it dropped to No 41 in the "Hit Parade" these people saved and sold as "Ex Chart oldies" at a later date.

As a collector myself i found them a god send, especially for those really weird forgettable tracks that no one remembered.

This catalogue also shows that you could buy Albums, cassettes and 12" singles. But i had forgotten that they also sold Plastic and card sleeve covers, Adaptors for the missing center of 7inchers and T shirts. (i have to say i never bought one of those and i never knew anyone who did either).

But best of all were the bargain packs. You had no idea what was in these packs but you got them cheap.

"5 different ex-chart 12" singles for £4.00" it says. Followed by "None of the offers give you any choice within the package"

I wonder if anyone would fall for that one on I-tunes nowadays ?.

The shop i worked in had a special Oldies unlimited stand at one time. A guy came and stocked it up with a random selection of singles (of their choice), shrink wrapped and priced. 99p i think ?. It was all free on 'sale or return'.

Then they would come back a week or two later and count up how many were gone (sold), charge you for the missing stock and load up a set of new ones.

The down side to this was that the real collectors (and staff working in the shop) drained the stand of all the best stuff in the first two days, leaving all the crap stuff behind for the rest of the week. And any stock that got stolen over that week we ended up paying for.

But finding this catalogue also jolted a few other memories that had completely escaped me.

They may seem small and irrelevant but that's what nostalgia can be sometimes.

1 Singles whose numbers are preceded by P generally, though NOT ALWAYS, come in a picture cover.

2 Singles whose numbers are preceded by (p) MAY come in picture sleeve

3 The catalogue itself is printed on the equivalent of cheap toilet paper, so thin you could tear a page turning it over

4 Pop Singles 40p each 10 for £ 3.50 or 20 for £ 6.00

5 AJ Lewis (Director)

6 If Paying by Transcash Tick Here

7 Adaptors 1p each

8 Stiff Plastic Record Sleeves 7" 10p each

9 Stiff white Card Sleeves 7" 5p each

10 "In the past five issues we have included an oldies quiz. Unfortunately while this has been of interest to some of our customers, we have not found it the unqualified success we thought it would be. So last months was the last one."(LOL)

Name your local record shop