Spent a nice hour this afternoon over at Autism East Midland's Enterprise Hub at Raines Avenue Worksop. Went over to present them with a cheque for £400, money raised by my charity auctions on ebid.net. The money will go towards a poly tunnel for their new unit here in Mansfield that opens later this year.

I will be running more charity auctions throughout the year, they run from 24th to 28th of each month. It is so easy to make a bid and costs nothing to sign up to ebid. So why not join in the fun this month and help some very worthwhile charities. Just look out for the YDC (Your Donation Counts) listings.

B.B. King

Despite what Don McLean sang many years ago, for lots of people today is the day the music died with the passing of blues legend B.B. King. B.B. influenced so many other artists, the list too long to even contemplate. And not just blues artists, he can rightly be called legend who's music will live on for generations to come. Has been stated this morning on TV you really only needed to hear a couple of notes from his guitar and without even seeing him you knew it was B.B. R.I.P. great man, I for one will always remember you. 

Along the years many of the British white pop and rock bands and singers who were greatly influenced by him have paid him back by either recording his songs or having him play on their albums and have him on tour with them. They have all appreciated what a big, big influence he has been on their lives and the music scene in general.

Here are just a few of his collaborations.

    

    

Has I have been compiling this tribute I have noticed that several of these other great musicians and singers are no longer with us, maybe, just maybe their souls are all playing and singing together.

More Pride Records Days Grantham

Right then, as promised here are some pictures from the Grantham store. Most are from before we opened and feature the three staff who worked there. Again forgive me if I have got names wrong, getting older is not beneficial to the brain cells!

This first one features me doing a slimmed down impersonation of Ian Botham at the back with from left to right, Martin (Surname?), Tracy/Jane can't remember which (Surname?), and finally Adrian in the striped shirt who was the manager. This would have been in the very early days of inputting stock.

This is the three staff again with owner Mario, sporting a fine mullet. Stock has started to arrive and being shrinkwrapped and input onto computer system.

As well as direct deliveries we took stock over each day from the central stock based upstairs at Newark.

A few days later and more stock has arrived and display teams have started turning up to put up wall displays. This was back in the days when all the companies had their own display teams travelling the country putting up displays in all the independent stores as well as the chains. This shows a display for Kiss "Animalize"

In this pic you can see a better view of the computer, looks very dated now and the small box on the left is the 8" floppy disc drive, that was backed up every night and once opened was available for Gallup to download the days sales. This was pretty advanced for this time, most stores were still using the old diaries.

Punk was still selling pretty well, note Oi! The Album.

Featured such bands as Cockney Rejects, Peter & The Test Tube Babies, 4 Skins, Slaughter and the dogs Etc. It was through EMI and had the wonderful catalogue number ZIT1.

This is Mario doing a David Bailey and shows how we displayed albums in the window.

More boxes have arrived and the store layout is staring to take shape.

More displays are up and the window strips are mirrored on the walls, featured here David Bowie "Tonight"

All set up and ready to open. The display on the back far corner is the latest and best selling 7" vinyl with the rack below dedicated to singles. We stocked an extensive range of new release and back catalogue singles. This was still at a time that singles remained in the company catalogues for more than just a few weeks, some for years.

This was the front of the store just prior to opening and before the signs were fitted. We had a big opening sale, bringing in lots of stock from the other three stores to give the opening a bigger push. We had LPs from only 50p !

Last one looking up into the shopping centre and just after opening. The signs still not up so must have been very early days. Also we had a couple of A boards outside with new albums on.

So this was all in 1984, and the store sadly did not take off. It seemed as though Grantham was not ready for a store of this size at this time.

Still need to find pics from Lincoln store, but will keep on looking.