Venus Vinyl

So, I am originally from Winchester but fled to Brighton as soon as I could, to study, which is also around the time I started collecting records. I used to visit Resident Records back in the day (when it was 90% CDs and only one small section of vinyl) and loved their curated vinyl selection. I also re-call a wonderful (but short-lived) tiny record shop above a tattoo shop in the lanes, right across from Resident. Can’t remember the name now, but the drummer from Charlottefield & Ack Ack Ack worked there. He was great at recommendations and introduced me to a then very underground artist by the name of Floating Points! A white label copy of ‘People's Potential’ secured.

Fast forward 2-3 years and I move to Hackney, London and was disappointed with the lack of decent independent record stores in my area. Especially one that had a wide but curated selection. After many, many grumblings about this, over pints of ale and whitebait in The Clapton Hart, everyone told me to shut up and do something about it…

Well, I couldn’t just “start a record shop”. I was on a very low graduate salary and the opposite of being from wealth. It was during one Saturday strolling the market in Hackney that I had an epiphany… I could start my record store on the market! And so, VENUS VINYL was born. I spent the early summer of 2014 researching and contacting labels, distros, and artists and on Saturday 30th August, VENUS VINYL started out as a market stall, selling and spinning exclusively new vinyl releases to the School Yard part of the market. It was, I believe, the first market stall to deal only in new vinyl records.

After a year of doing this most Saturdays along my day job, I quit the market to focus on setting up the website. For the next 6 years I built an online presence whilst doing the odd pop-up event (including a pub pop-up at The George in Dalston which was featured in Time Out Magazine) and festival.

After many years of working towards the final goal, in April 2021 I opened VENUS VINYL as a permanent physical record shop in Norwich! I chose Norwich as I had always loved visiting the city, and from playing gigs there in the past with former bands. It was clear it was a massive music city. Originally, we had a small concessions stand in my friend’s shop Quanstrom Studio, and the feedback was – open a proper record shop!

So, the shop is a little bit outside of the centre of Norwich (but still walking distance). Therefore, we have become a destination store as opposed to getting a load of footfall (queue your High-Fidelity references). But we have built up a lovely and loyal customer base in the 2+ years since the shop opened now. We also sell craft beer by the can (& very soon to be by the pint too!) in the shop, with a small bar area. The vibe completely differs depending on what we’re playing really. But everyone who walks in loves the design and look of the shop and is in awe of the 3,000+ titles we have in the racks! It can be a calming sanctuary on a Sunday, with some spiritual jazz spinning, or a raucous room-full on a Friday or Saturday, with rock tunes blasting out and people enjoying a beer in the meantime.

What gets me up in the morning is the sheer amount of work I have, haha! But there is never a bad day waking up knowing your workday is going to your very own record shop and not to the 8th floor of a central London office!

The best thing about owning a record shop, honestly, for me anyways – it’s about the amazing musical connections I have made with my customers. The most pleasure I get doing what I do, is spinning a record in the shop and someone loving what they hear so much they buy it. Or giving recommendations and then having the customers come back absolutely delighted, telling me how much they love it and now want the bands / artists catalogue and more recommendations.

Sadly, I cannot for the life of me remember the first record sold in the shop as I was running around like a mad man! But the first 3 sales on our system for our first day are down as:

Newdad – Waves / Sunn))) – Pyroclasts / Herbie Hancock – Flood

Which I think gives a great insight into the shop and the eclectic nature of the records we stock and our customer base too. And the last record sale I sold in the shop was:

Gia Margaret – Romantic Piano / Khruangbin – Live at Stubbs / Julie Byrne – Not Even Happiness

The first record shop I would have gone to would have actually been Venus Records in Winchester with my dad, as a young kid. Some of my earliest memories are going in there on my dad’s shoulders and listening to music in the listen booth with him! I remember thinking how cool it was that a shop bared our name - our surname is Venus, hence the name of the shop. I was originally going to call the business Venus Records in honour of the sadly long-gone store, but VENUS VINYL sounded and looked better.

That’s a tough one… well I love the guys at Stranger Than Paradise in Hackney! It’s great as they opened a few years after I stopped doing the stall at Broadway Market and their shop is only a stone’s throw from there. Noreen and Marv are such lovely people and their taste and curation in the shop is incredible. They really delve into the deepest regions of out-there music to a great degree. Also, I want to mention Elephant Records in my home city of Winchester. Alex who runs it has an incredibly similar taste to me, which is really varied and eclectic. It’s amazing to see him selling and promoting the best (and more unknown) artists out there and I think we share a similar ethos with that. Winchester doesn’t know how good it’s got it with the shop in my eyes!

As a punter, something so small but that blew my mind (and certainly has been the best little trick to show punters myself now I’m the other side of the counter), was being in a record shop in Brighton (sadly can’t remember which one) and the guy behind the counter showed me how to open a sealed record on the side of his trousers… I’ve never opened a record any other way since! (Contact me for a video demo, haha!)

Record Store Day has been incredibly successful for us since the first one we did in June 2021 and it has outdone itself year on year, with this past April breaking all records for us (not literally, don’t worry!). We are so lucky to have such an amazing customer base already in the relatively short time the shop has been here in Norwich. It’s something that I don’t take for granted and am incredibly grateful for. This year cycling into the shop with the queue all the way down the street at 7.30am was absolutely wild and brought a tear to my face!

There have been far, far too many best gigs and I am an indecisive man. So, I will just name a few that stick out off the top of my head:

Thee Oh Sees at The Coronet Theatre (which I am very sad to hear they demolished! It was such an incredible place inside. Like stepping back in time) / The Get Up Kids at Old Blue Last (& Boston Music Rooms too!) ((also, Glassjaw at Old Blue Last too!)) / Richmond Fontaine at The Railway Inn, Winchester (getting to see 1 of mine, my Dad and best mate’s favourite band together in the tiny venue we used to play gigs in ourselves when we were young, was special) / Refused at The Forum, (never ever thought I’d ever get to see them live growing up and they blew everyone away on that comeback show!)

Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski (the book that made me fall in love with reading!)

In Bruges. A Martin McDonagh classic. Brendan Gleeson, Colin Farr, Clémence Poésy, Peter Dinklage & Ralph Fiennes playing a cockney gangster ala Sir Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast. Dark humour at its best!

Would take me a decade to decide… too much choice!

LIKEWISE!

No such thing as 1 favourite record in my eyes!