Warm up the record player! Laura Barton returns to Alan's
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Mesnes Passage in Wigan runs from the heart of town down towards the park. It begins busily, with bakeries and coffee shops and the Tavern Bar, but at the far end slows to a still collection of buildings: a Hospice Shop, a fancy dress collection, and the spot where Alan's Records used to be. Alan's stopped selling records in 2000, and for two years the department store stood shuttered – a victim of bigger stores and the flood in online music sales. The shop's non-music interests – skateboards and BMX bikes – moved to new premises in the railway station; the records were boxed up and stored away.
Then, last month, I was asked to pen about a favourite record store of my youth , as part of a bigger G2 celebration of the UK's fifth annual Narrate Store Day . I wrote a short piece about Alan's, and about the teenage years I forth shyly perusing its selection of Tortoise and Bis and Slint albums. In the days that followed, the boutique's owner, Alan Woods, found himself inundated with inquiries and reminiscences; a memorial Facebook age was set up. Inspired by so much enthusiasm, Woods decided to unpack his unsold records and re-available the shop, for two weeks only. He also invited me to return to my hometown to work behind the table for a day.
I arrive around lunchtime, to find the shop window revived with a life-sized representation of Frank Sidebottom and an intriguing array of vinyl. Inside, the empty range has been hastily transformed into a shop: plastic boxes of records one's name to on trestle tables; on the walls there are posters for The World Won't Listen by the Smiths, the Brio's The Drugs Don't Work , a Radio 1 roadshow promising Dave Lee Travis, as well as a option of vinyl rarities: White Stripes 7in singles, Barbara Woodhouse dog training recordings, singles from Nook and the Hard-Ons. There are cassettes with handwritten labels ("Babes in Toyland – Lodge at Leeds Duchess of York 3/10/90", with "Peel Sessions 29/9/90" on side B); there are old copies of the NME, Harmony Maker and Sounds. "Marvin Gaye Coming!" reads one concealment "… and Johnny Cash."
Source: The Guardian