“Before that, when I was teenager, the place to go in Southport was a grimy, smoke-filled little shop called Discount Discs, hidden away in a side street under a bar, and owned by a grimy, smoke-filled little man of indeterminate age called Keith.
“This was the classic second-hand shop – rack after rack of tightly-packed vinyl albums and singles. You used to hang around hoping you'd be first to rifle through a new load of albums that had just come in, and before Keith had a chance to weed out the rarities.
“I miss the excitement and the serendipity of going into shops like Andy's and Discount Discs. To find an album by one of my obscure favourites, like the Krautrock bands Can and Popol Vuh, or 60s West Coast psychedelia like The United States of America, was a real achievement. Now, on the web, I can find the entire back catalogue of those bands in seconds; that's fantastic, but it's no fun.”