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talking shop<br />
................................<br />
Photo by Rebecca Cunningham<br />
The Record Album<br />
Soundtrack specialists<br />
When did you start selling records? I took<br />
over the shop in 1962, but I was selling records<br />
before that. When I was in the RAF, stationed in<br />
Germany, I would collect records and sell them<br />
on. I used to trade under the name ‘Film Fanatic’,<br />
purely selling soundtracks. British film music has<br />
always been my main interest, my favourite period<br />
from the 30s to the 60s, but into the 70s as well.<br />
The stock of the shop when I took over didn’t impress<br />
me that much, but I gradually got rid of the<br />
old stock and replaced it with my own interests.<br />
When did you become interested in film<br />
soundtracks? When I was seven - that was in<br />
1937 - well, in those days children were allowed to<br />
go out on their own without the fear of anything<br />
dire happening. I was out and I joined a cinema<br />
queue, without any idea what it was. I sneaked<br />
in – we used to call it ‘bunking in’ – and I plonked<br />
myself down on the first seat I saw. I remember<br />
the film well, Camille, starring Greta Garbo and<br />
Robert Taylor. I was gazing up at the cinema<br />
screen when I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder<br />
– it was the commissionaire, who had noticed this<br />
little squirt of a boy sitting there, and he yanked<br />
me out of my seat, cuffed me around the head and<br />
sent me out. There began my love affair with film.<br />
What was the last film you went to see?<br />
The last Bond film – Skyfall – but I do not like<br />
Craig. Bond, to me, is Sean Connery – he’s suave.<br />
Why did you move to <strong>Brighton</strong>? We’d lost three<br />
houses to German bombs, so my mother decided<br />
to move to Nottingham, where we would be safer.<br />
After the war ended in 1945, she pulled out a map<br />
of the country and unfolded it on the table. She<br />
closed her eyes, got out a pin and said ‘wherever<br />
the pin lands on the map, that’s where we’re going<br />
to live’. And so we ended up in <strong>Brighton</strong>.<br />
What do you listen to in the shop? I enjoy<br />
listening to classical music, although recently I’ve<br />
taken a liking to 80s electro-soundtracks. I love<br />
the synthesizers and Synclavier they used.<br />
George Ginn, interview by Rebecca Cunningham<br />
The Record Album, 8 Terminus Road,<br />
therecordalbum.com<br />
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