When and why did you decide to open a record shop?

Martian Records originally opened in 1989 by owners Martyn Alford and Ian McCord in Bristol market. They later opened branches in Exmouth and Weston-super-Mare.
I left art college and was working at 10:15 Records in Weston-super-Mare but decided to join Martian in 1992 while figuring out what to do with the rest of my life… I’m still here today!
Over the next decade the shops became more successful. We added new releases alongside the used stock and opened further branches in Cheltenham, Honiton, Taunton and Exeter.
In the early to mid-2000s, music stores came under massive pressure from downloading and supermarkets using CDs and DVDs as loss leaders. We survived better than most, but after the collapse of chains like Zavvi, the market became saturated with cheap stock. I was the stock buyer for Martian at the time, and chains like Head and Fopp were selling bankrupt stock for under the dealer price.
In 2011 my old bosses decided to leave the business. I used my redundancy to take over the Exmouth and Weston-super-Mare shops. Unfortunately we lost the Weston shop due to the redevelopment of the town, but Exmouth — the last outpost — is still a great business, largely driven by tourism in the summer and the surge in popularity of vinyl.

Tell us about your store – what’s the vibe?

I feel so old that the only time I use the word ‘vibe’ is in conjunction with Roy Ayers!
We have always tried to make everybody welcome. Despite being known primarily as a rock shop, part of our initial success came from something most shops were unaware of at the time: the massive popularity of easy listening, country and Irish music. Our company was built on the blood of Daniel O’Donnell!
These days music is still our main focus, but we also sell guitars and Lego.

Can you remember the first record you sold in the shop? And the last?

I can’t remember the first one I sold, but I do remember the first one I bought from Martian: Stuart Copeland’s Rumble Fish soundtrack. The last one I sold was an original Hawkwind Space Ritual with the log book!

Do you remember the first record shop you went to? And do you remember the first record you bought?

I had a few records that my parents bought for me, but the first one I bought with my own pocket money was Madness Absolutely from Camden Market.

What’s your most memorable record store experience?

Probably the first Record Store Day after lockdown. It was a tough time for everyone, so I was really touched to see such a big turnout and a return to something like normal trading.
We have taken part in every RSD since it started in the UK. In the beginning there were only a handful of releases and we had to explain the concept to customers. It’s been fun watching it grow exponentially.

What’s the best gig you’ve ever been to?

Fugazi in 1989 had a massive impact on me and changed my musical trajectory. The only gig that has eclipsed that was ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ curated by Shellac — an immaculate live performance made even more precious after the premature loss of Steve Albini in 2024. A true legend of independent music. He will be most remembered for his unique, meticulous recordings of Nirvana, Pixies and countless others, but to me his own band Shellac are the apex of post-punk music.

What’s your all-time favourite book?

Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature, as it shows how hard statistics provide a better reason to be optimistic about how society has improved, rather than relying on our personal intuition and bias. Particularly relevant at this time…

What’s your all-time favourite film?

John Carpenter’s The Thing.

What would make up your Desert Island Discs?

Bad Plus – Physical Cities
Captain Beefheart – Where There’s Woman
Curtis Mayfield – We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue
Joanna Newsom – Emily
Fugazi – Shut the Door
Gavin Bryars – Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet
Immortal Technique – The 4th Branch
King Crimson – Starless
Minutemen – The Glory of Man
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – And No More Shall We Part
The Paperchase – The Return of the Don’t Talk Backs
Philip Glass – Einstein on the Beach
Rollins Band – Blues Jam
Shellac – Billiard Player Song (Peel sessions)
Tom Waits – Make It Rain
Frank Zappa – Echidna’s Arf (of You)

Who would form your all-time festival line-up? (Past & present)

Army of the Pharaohs / Jedi Mind Tricks
Acoustic Ladyland / Polar Bear
Bad Plus
Bad Brains
Björk
Cloroform
Captain Beefheart
Nick Cave
Fugazi
Focus
Funkadelic
Philip Glass
Jimi Hendrix
Immortal Technique
Joanna Newsom
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Led Zeppelin
Mars Volta
Minutemen / Firehose
Mule
Curtis Mayfield
Mahavishnu Orchestra
Meshuggah
MF DOOM
The Make-Up
Mule
Nah
Necro
NoMeansNo
The Paperchase
Phronesis
Primus
RATM
Rollins Band
Slint
Smog
Shellac
Tom Waits
Voivod!
Ween
Wu-Tang Clan
Yowie
Frank Zappa

What’s your all-time favourite record?

At the moment it’s probably Yowie’s Synchromysticism from 2017. When you’re young there is so much music to discover, but as you get older it’s harder to find something that doesn’t echo something you’ve heard before. Yowie smash music to pieces and reconstruct it into an atonal rhythm machine, venturing into one of the rare unexplored avenues of rock music. Probably not to everyone’s taste, but I think it’s a stunning achievement.
Overall though, I’d have to give it to Nick Cave’s No More Shall We Part. He has consistently produced fabulous albums throughout his career, but this one really hit home lyrically at that time in my life.

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