The prompt brings to mind the title of the Style Council’s 1985 album, Our Favourite Shop. One side of the cassette tape had the album, and the second side had a kind of “director’s commentary”-style interview. It was one of the few albums that I bought new in the 1980s. I liked the music, but I had moved on from the left-wing politics by that time 😀. Well, let me think of my favourite shops.
I was born in the 1960s. My favourite shop back then might have been Kilgrews in Merchant’s Quay, Cork, which had toys as well as bikes, prams etc. That whole row of shops is “all gone away” now (to quote a Style Council song)😀, replaced by the Merchant’s Quay Shopping Centre. And bigger shops such as Munster Arcade, Cashes, Roches Stores, Easons, and Buckleys had toys too.
One of my favourite shops in the early 70s was Trains, Boats, and Planes in Princes Street, where I bought my model railway accessories and a few airfix kits, including one of the Endevour sailing ship. I used to work on it on Sunday afternoons for most of 1979 😀. I still love model railway shops, though most of my interest in trains is on the computer nowadays, with games such as Train Simulator.
Moving back to the early 70s’s, when I got to about ten years old, I became interested in pop music. So, I spent the next decade in record shops, and dreaming of owning one, or at least, working in one.
- The ones that I remember in 1970s Cork are:
- Roches Stores, a separate shop from the main one, which had a record shop downstairs and a toy shop upstairs. I think that I bought my first few records there in 1972 and 1973. Carroll’s Irish Gifts is in the same location nowadays.
- Easons, which sold records upstairs. Again, that would have been one of my “go to” places before dedicated record stores came on the scene. The old store is long gone. One of my early memories of Easons is going to a personal appearance of Eurovision entry, Muriel Day one evening in 1969, but it was so crowded, we couldn’t get in. She sang The Wages of Love. Dana won it the next year with All Kinds of Everything.
- Pat Egans, which was initially in Patrick Street in Autumn 1974. That was my “go to” store when I was into punk and new wave. But I also got Saved by Bob Dylan there in June 1980. I think they were in the Queen’s Old Castle later, where I purchased Dylan’s Shot of Love in 1981. One of the guys who worked there had a shop in the Casbah market, near the Opera House, in 1977. My memories of the Casbah includes a lovely smell of hot doughnuts and hearing Hotel California and Maybe I’m Amazed for the first time.
- Hennessys in Oliver Plunket Street, where I bought my first Beatles Album in 1974. I think they moved to Cook street, or one of the streets off Patrick Street later in the 1970s or maybe they had two shops. I remember hearing Pink Floyd’s Animals there in January 1977. Oliver Plunkett Street also had a few Uneeda record stores and Ursula’s record store. I used to spend ages browsing in the Uneeda. I remember buying On The Threshold of a Dream in a sale there in March 1977.
- Another nearby store was K-sons which was a second-hand book and record store. That’s where I bought Gilbert O’Sullivan Himself in 1973. I think it might have been in Malboro street. And I bought Revolver by the Beatles there in 1975, my first proper Beatles album 😀.
- Kenny’s Corner, a corner shop at the junction between Paul Street and St Peter and Paul’s Place, where Zane’s Barbers is nowadays. I think it was run by an English guy. That’s where I heard the Strangler’s first album back in September 1977. A couple of years later, I remember overhearing the guy advising a Cork man named Mick Lynch about finding a manager. Then, a few years later, I saw Mick Lynch on The Tube. He was the lead singer of a group named Stump. Sadly, he passed away back in 2015.
- Golden Discs, which arrived around 1979. The shop moved around at various stages, but it began near, or at, where the old Roches Stores record shop used to me. It’s also worth mentioning a shop across the road from Cork Baptist Church in MacCurtain Street. It was a little secondhand store. I seem to remember some connection with Nirvana, who played in Cork in August 1991. It’s gone now too. There were many more. The one in the Savoy Centre comes to mind, where I first heard Rivers of Babylon by Boney M and Tragedy by the Bee Gees. I thought they were singing “Hercules” rather than “Tragedy” 😀.
I stopped buying records around 1981, when Walkman cassette players became available. I think that my first cassette tape was the Chariots of Fire soundtrack, or it may have been Madness Greatest hits.
Madness came along for a personal appearance at HMV in Oxford Street when I was on holiday there in May 1982. I had booked a coach tour of Windsor, but I hung around and waited for Madness and then I had to dash to my coach, but I made it. And I got a picture of Suggs. I only used slides then, and they age and scan very badly 😀.
I’m not all that excited about modern record shops. I do like second-hand bookshops, and coffee shops, or shops that combine both. One of my favourite shops currently is Mother Jones Flea Market in Cork. It has all kinds of everything.
And then, of course, I like Christian bookshops, but most people nowadays make use of online resources or buy their books online, so it generally isn’t feasible to run them. Maybe I’d like to open a general store like Mother Jones Flea Market, and ensure that it has some Christian books and memorabilia as well as general memorabilia.
The most impactful shop of my life was the Christian Bookshop in Tuckey Street. I spent much time there in the lead up to my conversion in 1980 and in the years following. I mention it in a few places in this blog, including in my Conversion Chronology post. It did last a long time, but it’s an old building and it had to close a few years ago.
So, we’ll end with a song from the first LP record that I ever bought, Hot Hits volume 14 in September 1972, and the last LP record that I ever bought, Shot of Love by Bob Dylan in September 1981😀.
Hibernia Gospel 