Pride Records Days

Anybody who has been following my Diskits facebook page will have seen that I recently posted a picture of myself during my days at Pride Records. I must thank Richard Murdoch a producer with the BBC in Glasgow for giving me the inspiration to track down some old photos of the old Pride shop at Newark. Thanks also must go to my wife Jenny who found them. Richard is currently working on a book about record shops in Newark and contacted me a while back for any info I could pass on. So I thought it might be a nice idea to post all the pictures I have and maybe some of the old Pride employees might just spot them and get in touch.

First up some from the Newark Branch, featuring Richard Young (manager) and the girls who worked with him. These are from 1983.

Right to left are Tracy (surname?) Jane (surname?) Richard Young the girl on the left I think was called heather but most likely not! Jane married a roadie & part time drummer with the band The Meteors.

This was at the time vinyl sales were more or less at their peak, note masterbag system. Also the selection of David Bowie picture disc albums.

LP compilation browser at front of picture with the This are Two Tone album cover, what a track listing this had.

A side
The Special AKA - Gangsters
Madness - Madness
The Selecter - On My Radio
The Beat - Tears of a Clown
The Specials - Rudi, A Message to You
The Selecter - Too Much Pressure
The Bodysnatchers - Too Experienced
The Beat - Rankin Full Stop
The Specials - Too Much Too Young

B side
The Selecter - The Selecter
The Specials - Stereotype
The Swinging Cats - Mantovani
The Specials - Do Nothing
Rico - Jungle Music
Rhoda Dakar - The Boiler
The Specials - Ghost Town

When I first started working at Prides everything was filed away under 

catalogue number, but by the time of these pictures we were using alphabetical

 filing under artists or band names.

The above picture is the front of the Grimsby branch, the signage was later used at all four shops. Grimsby was by far the biggest store. Based in the Riverhead centre it was a former Dorothy Perkins store. At opening we stocked vinyl & cassettes but as soon as CDs started being issued we were in at the start and probably had the largest selection for miles around.

This is inside the Grimsby store looking toward the front of store from around half way down, the young man sat at the check out desk was called David (surname?) The photo is from 1984 spot the Roger Taylor "Strange Frontier" album cover on the wall. When we opened the store it had just about every current catalogue album from all the major distributors, many that people had never seen before. We stocked all genres of music and had extensive sections for Jazz, Folk, & Classical as well as the usual rock & pop. 

This picture is taken upstairs in the staff room and shows Rick (surname?) who was doing his Limahl pose!

This is again upstairs and shows David with the infamous shrink wrap machine in the background. All stock apart from chart singles went out live with electronic tags inserted and removed on purchase. The entrance had alarm loops that got set off when someone tried to go out without paying. This idea was still fairly new to Grimsby. All stock was on computer and fed into the chart return system, again a fairly new idea at the time, doing away with the old diary system that was still being used at Newark.

I will post more pictures soon including some from Lincoln & Grantham.

Meanwhile if anybody out there can help with names or have any memories of any of the Pride shops please do get in touch.

Mel