An excellent website, thanks for putting this up, it brings back a lot of memories. Unless I missed it, I did not see mention of 'Royce Radio' which was situated near the bottom of Trafalgar Street. It was essentially a second-hand electronics shop that also sold a lot of second-hand records as well, especially 45s. I am now wondering if it was owned by the same old grouch that used to own the original Record Album shop. The Royce Radio owner was a real grumpy old man (like the 'old gits' on the Fast Show series). My friend and I (when we were just 15) would always go in together, as he was too intimidating to be in there alone with! He would assume you were only after information (he seemed to know a lot of about records) rather than to buy anything. 'You boys (meaning teens in general) only come in here to suck my brains' he would say. We did buy quite a lot from him actually and he would perk up then and volunteer titbits of information (like what the first British released 45 was etc). That was precious collecting information in the pre-digital, pre-Record Collector magazine days!

As a collector now for over 45 years I started with John Beals in East Street. The record store was downstairs and had 3 listening booths and a large stereo listening room. It sold all the latest hard to find albums - Velvet Underground, Mothers of Invention. I even stood next to Charlie Watts who bought records there. Bredons at Bartholomews had a downstairs record store selling items like the Doors and Fever Tree. I bought my ticket to the first IOW 1968 festival here. Bredons moved from here to a site in East Street and then took over John Beals.

I bought my first record in 1963; it was the Beatles "I Want To Hold Your Hand", to play on my younger sister's newly-acquired Ferranti autochange record player (one valve, about two watts mono power). With singles at 6/8 and my pocket money at two shillings a week I couldn't afford to buy any more records new, but I discovered a second-hand bookshop near the south end of Gardner Street, about five doors from the end on the left as you faced south, which also sold pre-owned comics and old jukebox records. I knew they were ex-jukebox as they'd had the middles removed. These came at ninepence or a shilling each. I recall buying Eden Kane's "Forget Me Not", Hank Levene's "Image" and Adam Faith's "As You Like It" - all great tunes but a bit dated in the face of Beatlemania, hence their retirement from the jukebox. Later I also bought a battered copy of the "Rolling Stones No 2" LP there, the second album I ever owned. Of course, nowadays jukeboxes all use Internet downloads, so no more ex-jukebox records.

Well Paul, I'm that grumpy man's daughter from Royce Radio. You are quite right he was very difficult, but he did have bad health. The shop was run by him on his own, it did not belong to any group, he worked there till he died in his 80s. If you go to 'Royce Radio History', you can read the whole story

Hi Paul: I'm the grandson of the grumpy old man. My mom as just released an interview about the Royce Radio and you can find it here: http://www.nlcaonline.org.uk/page_id__759.aspx

In the seventies Rayford Electrics in Sydney Street sold brand new but deleted LPs. They had shelves along one wall on which LPs were stored vertically like books, so you could only read spines - and get a crick in your neck. I found a lot of gems though at good prices