It was not a record store, but it was my first record store.
Soon after he bought retail space on Oxford Street, London's busiest shopping strip, and opened his first record store.
As well as his academic role, he has decades of experience of the music business and an impressive track record - he was responsible for opening the first Virgin record store.
Beginning in February of 1978, I'd been working at Free Being, literally the first used record store in the world, as far as research shows by those obsessed enough to have checked.
Once there, we walked east to 2nd Ave and St. Mark's Place to start with Free Being (literally the first used record store in the USA. I'm proud to have worked there for 18 months some 9 years after this adventure) and then head back west, hitting all our favorite spots.
"I used to work at a second-hand record store as a vinyl buyer and grader, and the amount of dope covers I'd see from early '90s hip-hop, R&B and new jack swing releases with Air Max featured prominently on the cover art was phenomenal.
Well, 15 years ago some records were absolute paradoxes, these weird little things that might turn up in tiny second hand record stores in New York, London or Paris.
In his forays into thrift shops and second-hand record stores over the last few years, Smith discovered bands such as Steeleye Span, Pentangle and Fairport Convention, and it shows.
Buyers realised that the album was not another (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, and by 1999, Melody Maker reported that it was the album most sold to second-hand record stores.
When the magazine began losing money in the late 1960s, he formed Virgin Mail Order Records (so named because Branson considered himself inexperienced in business) to raise funds, and in 1971 he opened the first British discount record store.
