supplied by Jim Breeds
Jim Breeds… Spotted in a 1923 street directory under Western Road, Bexhill. Cycles and gramophone records together in one shop. Cycling home with the latest shellac 78 RPM records on the saddle rack. What could possibly go wrong
Alan Esdaile… odd combination
Jan Warren… Why not ………. if you “hooked up” ya wind-up gramophone record player to your bicycle and peddled like fuck, it could be the first “Walkman” (or “Rideman”?) haha
Tim Moose Bruce… Or hook up an alarm clock to the gramophone, set to wake you up with Rick’s Piano Portraits, it would be a Wakeman..
Robert Wren… I think you will find bicycle shops were the first to stock batteries for their bicycle lamps and slowly started to sell other electrical items. I can remember Currys in queens road were still selling bicycles in the late sixties.
Dave Nattress… Wow, Bexhill. I thought I knew a lot about the place but never heard of this and will research it. Looks like an old “Kelly’s” Street Directory? We used to use them in the architects office I worked in from 1969. This one 1923 was way before my time! By the way, if any of your SMART readers are interested, Bexhill’s fabulous music shop – “Music’s Not Dead” in Devonshire Road, is I much regret, pretty much dead. The guys, Del and Richard had to close up a week ago as simply (they told me) they were just not making any money as bigger music retail and on-line operations were sucking up all the business – well any profits to be had. Also of course downloads hit physicals badly. For instance, the new Kooks album on CD they sold for £10.00 – Tesco Church in the Wood were knocking it out for £8.00. A great shame – for 7 years the guys did their absolute utmost to succeed and sold a wide range of music on CD mainly, but then vinyl kicked in. They also sold T shirts, books, posters, you name it, AND put on a lot of concerts in the shop and at the De La Warr and other locations and gave much needed exposure to up and coming bands and individual artists. Keane played a couple of acoustic sets there and signed albums as did Tom Chaplin with his 2 albums. A very great loss to the local music world.
Jim Breeds… It’s a Pike’s directory. Similar to Kelly’s. Sad to hear about the record shop in Devonshire Road 🙁 I bought some stuff there over the summer.
