Featured Store: Clocktower Records

It is always a pleasure to visit Bridport, a town full of independent shops. The purpose of my visit was to call in on a corking record shop Clocktower Records.

Owner Roy Gregory is a fellow fan of Birkenhead’s finest football team Tranmere Rovers and one of their most famous bands, Half Man Half Biscuit.

Roy has had an unusual route to record shop ownership via Financial Services Banking & Insurance, Data Mining Analytics, Consultancy, Co-Founder of start-up business, Chair of groups, IFA, Bank Manager, Regional Manager, Business Greenfields Manager, Labour Party Branch Secretary.

Clocktower began by selling records and CDs on a Bridport Street market stall in 2007, in 2008 Roy was creating “Vinyl Saturday” a record fair that Record Collector Magazine voted it’s Record Fair of the Year.

Clocktower moved to a brick-and-mortar premises in 2015 becoming one of the first newer breed of record shops and made the decision not to sell online to make the store a destination only operation. Roy reckons that 95% of his customers are visitors to Bridport from all over the UK and many places in Europe, Scandinavia, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, USA and Canada.

The appeal of destination rather than internet selling continued to attract customers and when Long Live Vinyl magazine ran a customer survey of 260 Indie shops asking readers to vote for their favourite, Clocktower was chosen as 1st in the South and Southwest and 3rd in the UK.

As far as I know Roy launched the first CD shop of this century when he opened a second branch in the town. I think he was ahead of his time as the CD revival is beginning to take place. Sadly, he was too far ahead of his time and the shop was not viable He merged it back into the shop which is in Bridport’s Art & Vintage Quarter, which is part of the Industrial Heritage area of the town, which is also the Gateway to the World Heritage Jurassic Coast, which attracting many visitors.

The shops’ philosophy has always been to price competitively and constantly having changing stock that record buyers and collectors, constantly return. Roy describes his work as a ‘Labour of Love’ and a retirement hobby.

Roy remembers his first day worrying that he was not going to have enough sales to survive. The same thought went through his head as a few years later, when the other half of the building the shop is based in burnt down.

The shop could not open for the summer. What followed was 4 years of being in a building site cul-de-sac with no passing trade and surrounded by scaffolding and then Covid struck. Having survived fire and covid Roy has half expecting flood to be the next disaster to face. Luckily all good so far and the shop has gone from strength to strength.

For the lucky music fans of Bridport, the shop is still here as a vinyl record store, a venue and a gallery for famous rock photographers, sponsors of the town’s Men and Woman’s Football Teams, The Film Festival and Art Centre and the Community Skateboard Park. A great example of a community record shop.

Do check out the pinball machine and some of the fabulous music and space memorabilia.

“Probably the most fun record shop in the Galaxy!” claims Roy.

For me the shop is ‘out of this world’.

I asked Roy about any Proper releases he was looking forward to:
Being Birkenhead born and bred a huge release for me is the new Half Man Half Biscuit album ‘All Asimov and no Fresh Air’ I have followed the band since their early days and frontman Nigel Blackman is one of our greatest lyricists. You can’t listen to the band without smiling at his clever wordplay. One song ‘Record Store Day’ is bound to get people debating this once-a-year event. The event divides music fans with many thinking it is the best thing ever to happen to record shops were others describing it in similar terms to another HalfMan Half Biscuit classic ‘National Shite Day’. If you have not heard it you can find it on the wonderful ‘CSI Ambleside’ album.

July sees the start of our Reggae Festival. We are involved in a Reggae Bridport Art Exhibition at the Allsop Gallery. The exhibition features the work of internationally acclaimed photographer and West Dorset resident Adrian Boot, with images of Bob Marley and the Wailers, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Gregory Isaacs and many other reggae legends. It also includes other key figures from the period including lovers rock star Janet Kaye, poet Benjamin Zephaniah, Mick Jagger, Nelson Mandela and even a very young Naomi Campbell. Admission is free.
We will be putting on events through our shop. Proper have a great reggae selection so will be filling our racks with stock from labels such as VP.

The Vinyl Revival and the Shops That Made It Happen

Graham Jones is the author of ‘The Vinyl Revival and the Shops That Made It Happen’ which has features on over 200 independent record shops that he has visited. The book was made in to a film titled ‘The Vinyl Revival’ available on DVD. Both can be ordered from Proper, independent record shops, Amazon and other online retailers.

Read about the book, film and vinyl soundtrack here