Disques

Name: Mike Murphy
Comment: Disques of Heathfield (date open c.1987 – 1997?) Started and run by Julie Healey.

Disques was a small-town, one-assistant, cover-all-bases type of store. Selling mainly CDs, cassettes, and some vinyl - 12” and 7” singles, both mainly chart.

The store returned its figures to the national register and from which the sales were added to stores around the UK to form the industry chart of ‘hits’ and sales. I can’t recall who ran this or what it was called now. This meant the shop, though small, was well serviced by reps and displays by the main labels and distributers.

There was a particularly good classical music section and we managed to keep most of what was going on currently. But nothing too adventurous, it just wouldn’t have sold in large enough numbers to support the store in such a small town.

I enjoyed my time there, helping customers with ‘wider’ tastes searching for lost treasures or obscure re-issues. People even stopped me in the street after I left to tell me what a pity I had left as ‘no-one else knows how to find my stuff’ anymore. I left because Julie the owner was one of the most horrible people I’ve ever had the misfortune to work for.

About the only other thing even mildly of note about the shop was that the previous assistant had been Keith Emerson’s (Emerson, Lake and Palmer) son. Aaron, I think his name was.