Record Shop Bags

The biggest pile of rubbish or insight into life in the 20th century? While you decide, I’ll tell you why I love these bits of ephemera.

Lets start with graphics and design. Throughout the decades, graphics and design have always reflected popular tastes, fashions, fads, trends and styles. Some of the bags are fairly plain and dull, while others really set the scene. From the austere perfunctory Klitz’s bag to the more stylish Aldersons’ with its’ early 60’s TV and spiral note to the quite funky, “we sell it all” Rumbelows bag of the 70’s.

What they sold too in an interesting snapshot into the high street. Most record shops were born as an accessory rather than a main store. So, if you sold musical instruments and sheet music, it made sense that you ended up selling radios, televisions and gramophones. Why not start selling a few records too?

Department and chain stores were just as happy to flog you records as they knew that stocking records would bring in those teenagers who had a bit of cash, and they’d be in week after week. I remember my local WH Smiths had a purple room upstairs with six listening booths where you could check out the latest releases.

So, these bags which should have ended up getting thrown out are an important social statement. They’ll not have made a jot of difference to life as we knew it, but can now tell their own story some fifty years on… Some are current.

This part of my site is an add-on only. Something of interest, but there’s only so much time! If you like these bags you should really see http://www.britishrecordshoparchive.org/

The British Record Shop Archive is a superb, and dedicated archive of these wonderful items and filled with detail. The images are divided loosely into geographic regions.

North & Scotland

Midlands & Wales

East

South East

South West

National

International