Wolverhampton's last remaining independent record store: Vintage & Vinyl
Vintage & Vinyl's owner Claire Howell tells the Express & Star about her passion for vinyl starting from a paper-round when she was a a 12-year-old, and how it led to her owning her own vinyl store which has been open for over a decade in the city centre.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi, my name's Claire Howell and I'm owner of Vinyl and Vintage in Wolverhampton.
00:05Whilst I was born in Dorset, I now reside in the West Midlands.
00:09I mean, I started my first job when I was 12. It was paper rounds and it was every morning and
00:19yeah, I used to love to do that because I knew at the end of the week when I got my £4.50
00:25that I could go down to Woolworths and buy a 12-inch Madonna picture disc or a Guns N' Roses
00:32picture disc for £3.49. So that's kind of what got me into it. I loved picture disc records,
00:38I was a bit obsessed with them, so it didn't really matter to me what artist it was at that
00:42stage. I was still sort of understanding kind of what records people were putting out there
00:51and the different styles of music, so I would just buy them. I had an old gramophone box
00:56that my nan had and it was one of these that actually you could only put sort of something
01:00like 15 stacked 7-inch singles and it would drop them down. And so that's kind of how I got into
01:07it, plus the fact my brother wouldn't let me touch his records, so I decided I'm going to
01:11have to start buying my own. A lovely chap plays guitar himself, mad Iron Maiden fan,
01:19so he'll want every record that's been pressed. Now he's obviously considerably younger than I am,
01:25so he wouldn't have got those records first time round. There's a David Bowie collector,
01:30lovely chap, comes in every week without fail. What have you got for me Claire? It could be
01:35anything that's David Bowie related. A couple of fans for Michael Jackson, very popular again at
01:40the moment, but there's one chap that I've known probably for 20-odd years now and he will buy
01:47Michael Jackson, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Mariah Carey. I mean I opened my first record shop when
01:54I was 23 in South Wales, before that I was doing record fairs from all over the UK to Utrecht,
02:04to Sweden, Scotland, well I've put that in there I'm not quite sure, but you know what I mean.
02:10I've travelled around buying and selling records for a very long time. So I moved to the West
02:16Midlands in Pelsall when I was around 23, somewhere around there, still doing all the record fairs,
02:25I decided that I wanted to have a base again so I opened up a stall in Wolverhampton
02:32Indoor Market and that was about 13 years ago. Then I had a shop across the road,
02:40shared it for a couple of years with another chap doing some vintage clothing and then from there
02:45we've moved across the road now on the corner of Cleveland Street where I've been for six and a
02:50half years. So what's the demographic of a record shop today? I mean back in my day you used to come
02:56in there and you might have a cup of coffee, you might sit down and chat for hours on end you know
03:01to the record shop owner and things like that and it's quite similar. There are some people that
03:05spend hours in the shop in a day, there are some people that come every week religiously on a
03:12Saturday or on a Tuesday or every other week. It's interesting though because the people, even though
03:19they might collect a different artist or a band, they have something in common and that's really
03:25nice to see and you'll see people that will say, oh yeah you like that band do you? Well if you
03:29like that band you'll probably like them and so people get to learn a little bit more about it
03:35and I know that there's two camps of the younger collector now. I know some younger collectors
03:43that certainly come in here and they'll be diving in our 15 for a tenner and they go home and they
03:48play them but then there are other people that just want to own the record even though they
03:53haven't got a record player and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If they're
03:57still engaging in collecting and having the physical object and learning about what vinyl is
04:04I still think that's a great thing. So I mean there are some people that do get a little bit
04:09competitive about the records we have. We put a lot of new old records out every week
04:15and so sometimes you'll see somebody walking around with something in their hand and somebody
04:19else will come up to you and go oh I wanted that record and I'll say look if you want something
04:27and you can't afford it today for example, don't hide it in the shop, ask me to put it aside for
04:32you and the same applies if you've got a wish list of something then let me have it because
04:37if I get the next copy of Michael Jackson Thriller that sells every week it might not be a hard one
04:42to find but every time you come in I've just sold it then tell me and I'll get it for you.
04:47But yeah there's a bit of competitiveness sometimes that some people will pick something
04:52up and go oh I've got that already or oh you're having that are you oh okay then you know so I
04:59try to look after everybody but there's going to be crossovers where some people want the same
05:04record that somebody else wants and of course usually that's something that is harder to find.
05:11So I guess the question is what are you going to expect to find when you come to vinyl and vintage?
05:17Whilst I love records I love everything else about collecting and so for me the memorabilia
05:24goes hand in hand so I'm fortunate that my daddy lives in America he is an artist
05:32and a number of years ago he did lots of portraits for us and they're all limited editions
05:37signed hand numbered by him so I have those in the shop. Then I have some original vintage posters
05:43I absolutely love posters I think that this is certainly a market that's growing and to get
05:49posters that originally came out in the 60s 70s and 80s are becoming more and more sought after
05:56rather than buy a brand new sort of glossy poster it's nice to have that vintage look.
06:02So as clientele goes in the last 15 years I've had all sorts of collectors there are some that
06:08just want to come in and look in the bargain bins they just want records to play with their friends
06:14things like that but I've also had collectors that I've known for 15 20 years and some of these
06:21guys and girls they collect one artist and they will collect everything whether it is
06:30a record a t-shirt a poster whatever it might be and my challenge then is to find them something
06:37that they haven't got and I know what they like and I'll find something and it might be a very
06:42rare photograph of David Bowie for example that was taken by a Japanese photographer in the 1980s
06:53you know things like that which are much more unique you get to know what your clients want
06:58I mean I'm a collector myself so I get it even if it's a I don't know a Michael Jackson bubble gum
07:05card you know still sealed with the chewing gum in it you know I mean these sort of things back in
07:11the 80s there was masses of this sort of stuff around this memorabilia and now it's getting
07:16harder and harder to find so when you find something like that for your customer it's
07:20really great that you're passing it on to that collector