PLATFORM ONE RECORDS
By night Nick Saloman is The Bevis Frond, by day he’s a seasoned vinyl purveyor with a lively shop by the sea.
In 2013, East Sussex became home to London-leaving progressive psych-rocker Nick Salomon. But he wasn’t there just to kick out some jams, brothers and sisters. He was opening a record shop.
“I’ve been into record collecting since I was about five,” he says. “I’d go out with my mum and buy singles by people like Johnny Kidd & The Pirates. The first album I got was by The Shadows, when I was about seven – and that’s when I started playing guitar.”
Now 66, Saloman has had decades to accumulate a “healthy” personal collection while being in a variety of bands, and finally solo-ish as The Bevis Frond from the late-80s. For 30 years, he wrote and released dozens of records, ran his own label, Woronzow, and co-published psychedelic bible Ptolemaic Terrascope from his Walthamstow home. Then the bohemian seaside life beckoned, and the impulse to get an ever-growing vinyl collection out of the house “so my wife could get her dining room back!
“I used to sell records at fairs in the 80s, and I’d do a bit online. I never enjoyed that, though. It was quite remunerative but a real drag. I always fancied a record shop, so took the plunge and took over a spot in an old railway station-turned-antiques centre.”
Wittily named Platform One, and initially situated in Eras Of Style in Bexhill-on-Sea, the shop was soon very popular, but cramped. Saloman had to relocate. Platform One is now on London Road and double the size. And collectors who remember Plastic Passion in Portobello Road might see a familiar face now and again, too. Saloman discovered PP’s co-owner Bill Forsyth was a neighbour, with some bounty for sale, so Forsyth was absorbed into the set-up. “It started as ‘Bill’s Box’, now he’s got two,” Saloman says, laughing.
With a vast, all-vinyl mix of singles, EPs and albums from the 50s to now, Saloman’s strength is 60s and 70s beat, psych, rock, prog, jazz and blues, and he has a keen eye for rarities such as Clear Blue Sky, May Blitz and Monument. And business is booming. “The shop reflects my own taste, largely, as that’s what I know. And my customers have followed me wherever I’ve gone. I’m very lucky.” JK
“I had to start the shop to get our dining room back!”