Owned by 'Lee Wood' who started the record label 'Raw Records'. Bands who recorded for his label were ' Users', 'Hammersmith Gorillas' and 'Killjoys' who featured Dexys Kevin Rowland on vocals. Comment: Alan Esdaile.
Extract from Lee Wood Interview
I had always bought lots of obscure records and as I toured the country in the Cabaret band I always visited junk shops to purchase vinyl. Usually these shops had records scattered all around in no order. But prices were usually between 10p and 25p each. I thought that if I opened a shop with all the records in sleeves and in good condition, people would be prepared to pay between 50p and £1 each. So I opened a stall in an indoor market. This expanded and I opened a shop at 48 King Street in Cambridge called "Remember Those Oldies". This was around 1974. We sold 60's stuff plus re-issues of early Bowie, Roxy Music, Led Zeppelin and other stuff. I found a couple of shops in London doing the same thing as me. Read more
Comment
I bought my first LP in 1974 when I was 9 years old. Using pocket money I got it at the first proper supermarket that Cambridge had ('Bar Hill Tescos') whilst there in tow with my mum and dad. I've still got the LP, like a talisman! It was a greatest hits type album that covered the year and had a track on it that I played over-and-over ('Cindy Incidentally' by The Faces) which set me on the road to a love of power chords and drums. By the time punk happened in '76 I was buying proper rock records and visiting record shops but not really 'in the know' about punk as such. One record shop was 'Remember Those Oldies' (48 Kings Str eet) which opened in '74 and was run by the enigmatic 'Lee Wood'. Wood also started one of the first punk labels and managed bands nationally. Don't ask me how he did it - stuck in a tiny shop in Kings Street, but he did! At around the time punk was breaking and the Pistols would have been gigging I bought 'Blinded By The Light' by Manfred Mann's Earth Band in Wood's shop so that shows you that I wasn't really aware of punk at that time. Lee Wood was generally nervous about selling records to kids and often wouldn't serve us at all! I can clearly remember going in to his shop in 1978 (by which time I knew about punk) with James Gawne who tried to buy a tee-shirt. I was fascinated because Gawny, who was my age but tall, looked older and knew some prototype Cambridge punks (i.e Nigel Woodrow, Steve Cheese, Lisa Bernard and Geoff Peacock) had heard a rumour that Wood was selling tee-shirts from Malcolm MacLaren's shop in London. Sure enough we were shown a suitcase, literally f rom 'under the counter', which contained a selection of shirts with all the different designs on them. These would have been designs screen-printed by Vivienne Westwood on the kitchen table of the house she and Maclaren lived in in London. When Gawny asked to buy one Wood told us to get out. There had a been a police raid at Maclaren's shop (by then called 'Seditionaries', formally 'Sex' and where the Pistols were put together) and this may have made Wood nervous. Indeed one of the shirts showed a picture of the Cambridge rapist who Cambridgeshire Constabulary had been unable to catch during 1974 and '75!
Name
Tom Tremayne
(2018)
