The glory days of vinyl heaven
Huer’s Call relives fond memories of Chy-An Stylus Records – good times, where you could leave your cares behind, in search of everything from David Bowie to the St Ives Minstrels, from punk to disco and even the odd LP of steam trains
IWAS pleased – and amazed – to read that sales of vinyl LPs have taken off, almost 5 million sold last year. This is a reflective, nostalgic time of year and, looking over my shoulder I remember it was 50 years ago this summer that I first opened a record shop.
Records were my passport back to Cornwall. I’d done my time away but needed something to come home to, not the standard options of serving teas or picking flowers, but what else was there?
I’d done my apprenticeship in London, working in a couple of record shops during the reggae boom of the late 60s. It’s a lovely job if you like talking music with enthusiastic kids all day and keeping ahead of the trends.
It was edgy, a constant gamble. Records had to be in the shop before the public knew they wanted them – it was too late once they were popular – you needed to guess which of the scores of weekly releases to bet on.
People imagined that unsold records could be returned, but no, once they were in the shop they were yours for good and if you guessed wrong they stayed around to embarrass you forever (there’s a Stevie Wonder record that I can still hardly listen to, thinking of the large number I had to give away).
My budget was small, all I could afford in West Cornwall was a former garage in a back street of St Ives. It was far more seasonal then than it is now, twelve weeks of hectic trading and a very long winter, going from a village to a seething town and quickly back again.
We were Penzance folk but we soon knew all the locals, especially the teenagers, and they were pleased when we didn’t shut in October but kept going all year.
Of course we sold everything, from David Bowie to John Barber and the St Ives Minstrels (not forgetting brass bands and choirs, of which St Ives was particularly fond).
The customers also varied immensely and, being in St Ives we sold disco records to DJs one minute and classical cassettes for Barbara Hepworth and Bryan Pearce to play in their studios the next. Plus one customer who bought only LPs featuring the sound of steam trains. And the surprise hit we had with an LP of BBC Radio sound effects – the horror edition of course, with lots of screams and noisy murders – which the kids loved.
Our ambitions grew and after a few years we took on another shop in Penzance.
As before, popular ular music was in a poor state – Boney M, Showaddywaddy, etc – so we delved into the more left-field music which didn’t make the charts, like folk-rock and pub-rock, and also into oldie singles and back-catalogue LPs.
We knew our stuff by then so keen record buffs would walk in for a minute and stay for hours. When punk burst on the scene we were more than ready. Our tastes had never embraced Prog Rock with its hours and hours of improvisation and its double and triple albums, so a return to hard fast basics was music to our ears.
Luckily the owner of the local dance hall was similarly adventur
We had a surprise hit with an LP of BBC Radio sound effects – the horror edition of course
ous, o and so bands like the th Damned, The Adverts, A The Sex Pistols an and unforgettably the Ra Ramones (supported by Talking Ta Heads) played in Penzance.
Their audiences were ou ours and at weekends they spent most of the day in our shop, especially if we could persuade band members to make an appearance.
A punk band formed in our shop and rehearsed in our cellar. We were as cool as could be (including Simon Parker, our young assistant, later author, publisher and long-time journalist in this newspaper).
I’m sorry if I’ve lost you here. Perhaps you had to be there, but the excitement of those days was something palpable, and the music was so simple to play that scores of bands formed, wrote songs and lifted their spirits up out of the 70s jobless gloom.
It’s the nature of trends not to last. Disco rose again and stole the scene. Records only needed to play for a long time on one monotonous beat, and exciting bands became a rarity.
Worse for small record shops, the large multiples like Woolworths and Boots started aggressively discounting chart singles and albums, robbing us of our bread and butter.
In 1980 Chy-An Stylus Records closed its doors, sinking into history. Perhaps one day vinyl sales may justify another record shop in Penzance. But if you mention that name to locals, probably now on the verge of retirement, you may just see a nostalgic glint in their eye and a quiet smile. They were good times.
Scores of bands formed, wrote songs and lifted their spirits up out of the 70s jobless gloom