WHERE did you buy your first classical record/s?

[Don Petter]

Cloake's was definitely in the centre of Croydon quite near the Library (from which i remember borrowing Solti's Götterdämmering on LP). You may be thinking of the venerable Potter's Music Shop in South Croydon.

Well, I did say 'ish'. I was remembering Cloakes, with the classical department upstairs. It seemed 'Southish' to me as we lived up by West Croydon station, but it was indeed rather more central than I implied!

[Pabmusic]

Whitwam's in Winchester High Street, after school

[Keraulophone]

Cloake's was definitely in the centre of Croydon quite near the Library

The 'pop' section downstairs must have subsidised the classical dept. upstairs. It had a particularly large selection of organ records, notably by long-gone organists. In those days, the RSCM was down the road in Addington Palace.

[arancie33]

Back to Oxford record shops. These two 78s are part of my childhood memories especially 'Le Fiacre". Russell's must have joined with Acott sometime in the '40s. I have no memories of King's despite living nearby. Must have been baby! (beautiful?)

[Flay]

"He was a strange child"...

He is a strange adult too...

Any successful psychiatrists among your mates, Flay-me-old-mukkah?

No, the only psychiatrists I know are all nutters. One I worked for as a houseman was some years later arrested for molesting some of his patients.

Actually - what a shrewd purchase by the infant Flay. What drew you to it?

Partly a love of the work, and partly mischief. It amused me to be taking "coals to Newcastle" - an English band and conductor on a German label. I still have it: it's not at all bad.

[VodkaDilc]

Back to Oxford record shops. These two 78s are part of my childhood memories especially 'Le Fiacre". Russell's must have joined with Acott sometime in the '40s.

The details are in this newpaper item:

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/8800815.Iconic_Oxford_music_shop_packs_up_after_200_years/

[reinerfan]

The first 2 or 3 (Ace of Clubs) from a long forgotten small electrical shop in Liverpool, where I bought my first record player, which was a rather better Dansette with a 6 W. RMS amp. (!!!) in 1958. After that, as a student, haunting the Liverpool Record Exchange for the next 3 years.

[arancie33]

The details are in this newpaper item:
http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/880...ter_200_years/

Thank you for that snippet, Vodka. I suppose I severed my ties to Oxford in the mid '70s before the rate of change accelerated to warp seven - or so it seems to me. At least the old buildings have stayed put and kept their identities. Moan over.

[Ferretfancy]

I'm not suggesting that stereo wasn't a great advance, and much better than mono, even with the latter on two speakers. It's just that the step from one speaker mono to two speaker mono, sparked when we doubled up our hifi to reproduce the new stereo and at first had our existing mono collection outnumbering a few new stereo acquisitions, seemed a greater one. It let a whole lot of good mono recordings 'out of the box'.

Don

I well remember comments in the early days of stereo, to the effect that mono heard through two speakers could be just as good as stereo, or at least as musically convincing. There was also a lot of discussion in The Gramophone and elsewhere about positioning speakers for the best effect. I seem to remember something called the Hugh Brittain method, whatever that was! Of course, many people didn't have matching speakers, and some of the ones on sale were too bulky to fit into the average living room.

One other factor was that the first stereo pickup cartridges were not very good, most of them were piezo-electric ceramics like the Acos, simply two crystals at right angles with a simple coupling to the stylus. The stereo separation was poor compared with later moving magnet designs.

Still, it was fun battling with the speaker leads, checking phase etc. etc.!

[groovydavidii]

Prague: During first anniversary of August 1968 Alexander Dubcek's Velvet Revolution, caught up in violent demonstrations, following day visited a treasure-trove Supraphon shop with fellow student, an American whose father supervised a classical music radio station in Wisconsin, he bought loads of very cheap sheet music, I settled for two LPs, Mendelssohn's Octet, and selection of Schoenberg's chamber music, it was years later, ensconced in the south coast that I was able to buy my first turntable and play them.

[Ferretfancy]

The first 2 or 3 (Ace of Clubs) from a long forgotten small electrical shop in Liverpool, where I bought my first record player, which was a rather better Dansette with a 6 W. RMS amp. (!!!) in 1958. After that, as a student, haunting the Liverpool Record Exchange for the next 3 years.

Ah! Ace of Clubs and Ace of Diamonds !

Back in the late 1970s I was in the Oxford St HMV, the premises that are now no more.

A rather nasty and very irate customer was returning an Ace of Clubs disc, complaining loudly that it was unplayable, and being particularly rude to the hapless young assistant behind the counter. I said mildly that I had no doubt the replacement would be fine, whereupon he turned on me.

"I'll have you know that my hi-fi cost £250 !"

"Really?" I said, "I paid that for my pickup cartridge! " The shop assistant tried to suppress a giggle, and I must admit that I quite enjoyed the exchange as his customer stamped off. Naughty, I know, but fun!

[OldTechie]

I first went to Gibbs exactly 30 years ago today! I was paying a visit to a friend who was a student at UMIST and he left me there while he went off to sit an exam... I came out with a few scores and a secondhand LP of Heldenleben - Concertgebouw/Haitink (1971 Philips). Then I nipped up the road to the old Music Exchange Shop (there's a Wetherspoons on the site now, and Gibbs has been closed for more than ten years too).

My first LP came from Gibbs in Manchester too - a 10 inch Mendelsohn Italian Symphony - first two movements on one side then turn it over for the rest. I guess about 1958. Then I moved to London for University (1963) and found EMG Handmade Gramophones in Soho Square, also sadly long since departed.

[Don Petter]

My first LP came from Gibbs in Manchester too - a 10 inch Mendelsohn Italian Symphony - first two movements on one side then turn it over for the rest. I guess about 1958. Then I moved to London for University (1963) and found EMG Handmade Gramophones in Soho Square, also sadly long since departed.

If that was Josef Krips and the LSO on a Decca Medium Play, it was one of my earliest LPs as well.

[Barbirollians]

Mozart symphonies 32.35 &36 Karl Bohm DG Accolade in my local WH Smith .

[Dave2002]

My first classical LP's came from the long-departed Rushworth & Draper, Whitechapel, Liverpool. Rushworth was a famous organ builder in the 19th Century - I think the Chester Cathedral organ is his best-known. The shop also sold musical instruments and sheet music as well as both classical and popular music on record. When I lived in Liverpool there were 3 record shops in neighbouring blocks of Whitechapel - Rushworth's, Beaver Radio (which also sold radios, TVs and record playing equipment) and NEMS of Beatles fame. All these have long gone. There have been other shops selling classical records/ CD's in Liverpool over the years, but on my last visit there was just HMV, now relocated (if it is still there given the company's problems) to the trendy Liverpool One shopping mall. Compared with HMV branches in other cities, the classical selection was meagre - and that in a city with a long-established professional symphony orchestra! Shops I have known in Manchester and Edinburgh listed in this thread have also closed and many of these closures predate the Amazon era!

You beat me to it! Actually my first LPs came from an electrical shop in Allerton Road, and one of them was the New World symphony on a label called Gala. It was so bad it went back to the shop, and was replaced by Grieg's Peer Gynt coupled with Bizet's L'Arlesienne Suite - Ormandy, Philadelphia orchestra. I think I had a few others from that shop, and after that it was mostly Rushworth and Dreaper which got my money. Also I believe that I heard one of my first concerts at a rather young age in a small studio at the top of Rushworth and Dreaper - where various pianists (probably students/talented kids) played - I remember being very impressed by the piano. There was at least one other fairly decent piano shop which I became aware of later, not too far from Central station - can't remember what that one was called - probably in Hanover Street - might have been Cranes.