NOW that’s what I call a record store - racks of records, album and EP covers stuck up the walls, and even guitars for sale in case you want to try your hand at forming your own band.
For readers from Glasgow’s south side, it is probably somewhere they went to years ago. It is Gloria’s Record Bar on Battlefield Road in December, 1971. I’ve had a look at the charts for that week and I swear I could sing almost every chorus. The Who and Deep Purple are there. Rod Stewart with Maggie May - who can forget Ray Jackson’s mandolin solo?
T. Rex with Jeepster, and Cher with Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves - did St Mirren not used to play that when they played rivals Morton?
OK, we have to overlook what was at number one then - Benny Hill with Ernie the Fastest Milkman in the West, but every generation has its dark secrets.
Gloria’s Record Bar was run by the Blint family, and I think this is son Howard. His sister was Gloria.
One of the clever things they did was sell a lot of record tokens as Christmas presents and then opened the shop on Christmas Day so that folk could come along and choose what record they wanted and play it immediately - you don’t get service as good as that with Amazon. Well apart from downloads of course.
Not sure when Gloria’s closed. There’s a dentist there now, which is clearly not as much fun.
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