Ames

Name: Angelo Pingerna
Comment: Ames, from summer 1982 until spring 1983, was my record shop. Every Saturday I used to get there and buy at least a couple of heavy rock LPs. I was learning English and working at the Saxon Inn in Blackburn. I bought so many records there that, when the time to go back to my land came, I had to buy a second suitcase.

I remember that the shop was run by two very polite women and it was placed inside a mall in the town centre. I don't know if it is still working.

In my homeland, Sardinia in Italy, I then started working for 20 years in the most important record shop in Sassari. Selling LPs and I remember when CDs came, we made a big sale of all the vinyls we used to have.

Name: Lorraine
Comment: I used to work in Ames record shop in Nelson, Lancs from 1975-1979. Very fond memories. I only left because the owners emigrated to Canada. I've been trying to find the owners who were Tony and Anne Ames and wondered if anyone knew their whereabouts?
(28 October 2015)

Name: Charlie Bravo
Comment: Ames, Nelson - In the early 1980s there were two parts of this shop. Both were in the Arndale - one was on the balcony and sold only cassettes and the other was on the floor below which was the vinyl section.

The cassette shop closed (probably 1982-ish) and both vinyl and cassettes were sold in the part that had previously only sold vinyl. Sometime around the mid 1980s (probably 1984/85-ish) the shop became Virgin. (The first record I bought here was The Who’s 1978 LP Who Are You in 1985… I also bought Samantha Fox’s debut single on 12” here the following year.) A short while later (probably 1987-ish) the shop became Our Price. It was still Our Price when I left the area in the summer of 1996.

I also have brief recollections of an Ames being on the balcony in Burnley town centre in the early 1980s. See my post on Flickr (username: Thora Bloc) and follow the link towards the bottom of the page which states that Wayne Hemingway (of Red Or Dead fame) bought David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane here.
(5 July 2016)

Name: Wayne Hemingway (of Red Or Dead fame)
Comment: I was lucky enough to spend my youth immersed in the myriad of 1970s youth culture movements that cemented Britain as the pre-eminent modern-day creative nation. My first concert was David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane tour at King George’s Hall in Blackburn in 1973. I went out, got my hair 'feathered', bought a tight-fitting canary yellow T-shirt from Clobber and the album from Ames Record Bar in the Arndale Centre.​

Name: Laurie Peake
Comment: I worked at Ames Record Bar in the Arndale Centre in Nelson on Saturdays from around 1971 to 1973 and sometimes in the one on St James Street in Burnley. I was there the Saturday when the Chi-Lites' Have You Seen Her? came out and we could hardly keep up with the demand!
(3 February 2017)

Name: Gail Whitlock
Comment: I worked at Ames, Blackburn from 1974-77 then 1981-82 (I think). Made some lovely friends but lost contact now. Sue, Manager. If anyone knows whereabouts? Also Lorraine and Janet. Been a long time.

Name: Peter Jackson
Comment: Went to Mansfield School with Tony 1957 through 1961. Great guy, I would buy folk albums from his shops when I was on leave from the Navy. He never forgot me and we always had a catch-up chat. Fond memories.
(2021)

Name: Andrew Booth
Comment: I worked in Ames records and tapes in Chester at the town hall square.
(2018)

Name: Alan Crosby
Comment: There was an Ames in Warrington. It was above Harry Fenton's clothes shop on Bridge Street.
(2020)

Name: Alan G Parker
Comment: I used to shop at Ames in Blackburn all the time, I loved buying albums and singles there, along with posters and badges downstairs. At that time there were loads of record shops and/or departments in Blackburn, but Ames was always first choice.... Once they closed we all migrated to Reidys. But Ames began my love affair with The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Queen, Elton, KISS - the list goes on.... Slade, Sweet and The Rollers too, when I was younger!
(2021)

Name: Alan Philips
Comment: I've just purchased a second-hand copy of Roxy Music's For Your Pleasure and it has an Ames Record Bar price sticker on it, £2.19.
​(2022)