Last month, Laura Barton wrote about her favourite and much-missed record store. When Alan’s reopened, they asked her along to man the till
Mesnes Street 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 quiet collection of buildings: a Hospice Shop, a fancy dress store, and the spot where Alan’s Records used to be. Alan’s stopped selling records in 2000, and for two years the shop stood shuttered ? a victim of bigger stores and the rise in online music sales. The shop’s non-music interests ? skateboards and BMX bikes ? moved to new premises near the railway station; the records were boxed up and stored away.
Then, last month, I was asked to write about a favourite record store of my youth, as part of a bigger G2 celebration of the UK’s fifth annual Record Store Day. I wrote a short piece about Alan’s, and about the teenage years I spent shyly perusing its selection of Tortoise and Bis and Slint albums. In the days that followed, the shop’s owner, Alan Woods, found himself inundated with inquiries and reminiscences; a memorial Facebook page was set up. Inspired by so much enthusiasm, Woods decided to unpack his unsold records and re-open the shop, for two weeks only. He also invited me to return to my hometown to work behind the counter for a day.
I arrive around lunchtime, to find the shop window revived with a life-sized model of Frank Sidebottom and an intriguing array of vinyl. Inside, the empty space has been hastily transformed into a shop: plastic boxes of records stand on trestle tables; on the walls there are posters for The World Won’t Listen by the Smiths, the Verve’s The Drugs Don’t Work, a Radio 1 roadshow promising Dave Lee Travis, as well as a selection of vinyl rarities: White Stripes 7in singles, Barbara Woodhouse dog training recordings, singles from Hole and the Hard-Ons. There are cassettes with handwritten labels (“Babes in Toyland ? Live at Leeds Duchess of York 3/10/90″, with “Peel Sessions 29/9/90″ on side B); there are old copies of the NME, Melody Maker and Sounds. “Marvin Gaye Coming!” reads one cover “? and Johnny Cash.”
A makeshift counter holds the cash box, a turntable and a collection of discount 7in singles. Behind it stands a former Alan’s employee, Whitey, and a man known locally as Paul Static (he used to run Static Records, a secondhand store). Alan hands me a staff T-shirt emblazoned with the store logo. “Hello,” it reads, “my name is Laura.” A handful of customers mill about while the staff hunt for the key to the float, take delivery of plastic bags and fiddle anxiously with the record player, last used three or four years before. “I think it’s just getting warmed up, Whitey,” Woods says, frowning. “Must be a valve.” Two seconds later, the speakers splutter into life and the shop is filled with the glorious sound of the Jam’s Town Called Malice.
“It would have been easier if we’d put it all away properly,” Woods admits, surveying the clutter, relocated from his loft and under the stairs, and mostly repriced at £3. “But when we closed, I just thought God, we can’t do it any more, and I packed them away. At the time you move on, you’ve got bills, a mortgage, kids. [Woods still runs the skateboard and BMX side of the business.] It takes time to look back and say, ‘That was good.’”
Alan’s Records began in 1985, born of Woods’ musical passions and spurred on, he says, by the example of John Peel. “I wouldn’t have ever done the shop without him.” He smiles and looks a little sad. “Without Peel it doesn’t seem right. It felt as if, with his death, someone should say, ‘Music should now stop.’”
The shop opened first in Hindley, then on Petticoat Lane in Ince, before moving to Hallgate and then here in 1992. “We didn’t sell what people wanted, we sold what we thought people should want,” Woods says. He also started a label, putting out 20 releases between 1988 and 1992. Several of these are here today, pinned proudly to the walls: the Drive album and some Jailcell Recipes records. The 1990s brought change. “The indie scene was waning,” Woods says. “It was a funny time. And as time went on, we sold a lot of dance records.” He grimaces. “The Andy Weatherall stuff was exciting, but piano house ? it was horrible. Still,” he brightens, “you had Tortoise and Godspeed [You! Black Emperor] and all those post-Sonic Youth bands.”
There is a steady stream of customers, sticking Elliot Smith 7ins behind the counter for later, spending their lunchbreaks at the punk singles box or flicking through the pricier records (in a yellow plastic tub marked Cycle Clothing). I meet Nigel, who swaps a July 1980 edition of the Radio Times for a Labi Siffre record, and Suzi, who once looked after me when I did work experience at the Our Price record store; I have a customer who buys a confounding selection of records ? a Rush album, a Divine Comedy 7in, Ultimate Phlegm, Cyber God by Nausea.
Some of the older customers come with their children. Others are hoping to stock up on records from their musical heyday. I watch a man’s face fall as Whitey tells him, regretfully: “I tell you Gary, I’ve been through it with a fine-tooth comb ? there is no Stereolab.”
In quieter moments, we scour the boxes for treasure: a holiday company flexidisc advertising skiing vacations, and Man to Man/Man Parrish’s Male Stripper go on the turntable. I put on Otis Redding’s Try a Little Tenderness and a James Brown compilation and, at a quarter past four, Paul Static puts up his hood, zips his coat and does a backspin to a funk record.
We also reminisce: Woods traces his own musical epiphany back to a school football match. “The other side were really into playing, and our team were more interested in talking about Joy Division. I remember being in the goal discussing Love Will Tear Us Apart. We got caned for that.” Whitey remembers sitting in class, writing out his favourite lyrics in his exercise book. “The teacher took my book and read them. He said, ‘You should be thinking about chemistry, not punk rock.’”
More staff from the old days are due to join Alan for his brief revival, which will include live shows with local bands, a DJ from Southport, Chorley’s finest proponents of hiphop (Krispy 3), my old teenage sweetheart’s band appearing live via Skype from Japan. “For the grand finale, before the fireworks go damp,” says Woods, “we might do a Frank Sidebottom take on Seven Nation Army.”
He is giddy with it now; there is talk of relaunching the shop online, maybe even resurrecting the label. As six o’clock nears, the shop begins to transform once more: amps and microphones are set up; the counter is repurposed for record decks; disco lights flicker red, green and yellow.
Alan’s two weeks came to an end last Saturday ? but when the shop begins its new life as a tattoo parlour, and this end of Mesnes Street goes quiet again, there will be something that lingers on: a memory of fine times, friendships and backspins ? and the music that made them all happen.
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While we’ve discussed 
