On holiday in Cornwall this year?
Let me recommend a second hand record store:
Retro Sounds Records is a small but perfectly formed shop just off the high street in Newquay, a minute from the station and rammed with used vinyl of all kinds. I stumbled upon it a couple of weeks ago and thought it would be nice to get the word out.
Run by Ian Bunten for the last twenty years, inside its tiny walls I found a great selection of records. It’s a positive Tardis with far more records inside than would appear possible from the outside. What’s more, they are all pretty well organised – always a positive when poring through boxes of stuff whilst the family look on tapping their feet and metaphorically checking their watches to see if they have stopped working. Whilst I was there the clientèle ranged from a lady topping up her jukebox with old ’45s to a teenager poring through an old drum and bass bin. I stuck to the indie, rock and eighties boxes and came away with a couple of “finds” (see my Twitter feed or Instagram).
Clearly I realise this is not a massively useful post if you are reading this from Tahiti or Hawaii. Indeed, if you are in any of those places, I would probably be feeling reasonably pleased – as lovely as Cornwall is, it tends to err on the chilly side in comparison to the aforementioned Pacific islands and it probably isn’t worth the trip just to pick up a copy of Gary Numan’s third LP, a £3 copy of Tin Machine or even a mint £400 copy of Dark Side of the Moon or an early pressing of Black Sabbath’s debut LP – but don’t worry – we’ll have something else for you another day.
UPDATE – May 2015: Retro Sounds is now under new management and a new owner, Steve Godwin-Day. You can find Retro Sounds, Newquay’s Facebook page via this link
In the meantime – here’s a map:
Every record tells a story 
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