Roger St Pierre recalls the start of Beacon Records

David Shrimpton explains the joys of the manual stock figures when all you had was an abacus to work it out with and then explains the stages necessary for making a piece of vinyl come alive and sparkle on your record player

Here is a little clip to tell you about our latest book

Derek was the MD at A&M records in a period when they signed a huge number of British artists like Joan Armatrading, Police, Squeeze, Supertramp and many more. Before that however he worked for a music publisher or two and learnt the business as it was then. Here he tells us what used to happen:

We have had the pleasure of interviewing one of the great guitarists of this country recently, Chris Spedding. The purpose was twofold as we had questions about his years in Pete Brown’s Battered Ornaments for the film we are making about Pete Brown, then secondly we have embarked on a programme about the Session players…

The new book ‘Over Under Sideways Down’ culled from various of these interviews is now out there in the big wide world – via our very own www.MagpieDirect.com and also through Kindle and Amazon so you have no excuse not to find it and enjoy it. Graham Jones, the author of ‘Last Shop Standing’ was…

and here is the story of just one of them, the mighty Thin Lizzy