News this week that there may be retail space available at Bounds Green Tube as Hairdresser "The Cut" is moving on.

Bounds Green Tube Station, opened in 1932, was designed by  architect Charles Holden with space in the "wings" either side of the entrance. The areas have had various uses over the years - most recently as a taxi office and now newsagent / confectioner on the Brownlow Road side and an estate agent then hairdresser on the Bounds Green Road side. 

But one fondly remembered incarnation was when the small retail unit was used as a record shop. Initially opened in the mid 1960s as The Record Bar it included the late great Sandy Denny as a customer as well as her fellow members of Muswell Hill / Fortis Green band Fairport Convention.

The shop later became known as Morgans Records and is fondly remembered by blogger Colin Cunningham in his "Thoughts of Chairman Arthur" site. He says:

The most important record shop in my formative buying years was Morgan Records in Bounds Green Tube Station.

I know it has long since closed but I’m not sure when; it was certainly still going when we moved in ’81. The two blokes that ran the shop were fairly easy going, tolerant of endless browsing, more than willing to play a little bit of any single that looked slightly ‘punk’ and be happy to answer questions of pretty alarming stupidity, eg ‘what version of ‘The Kids Are Alright’ is better, The Pleasers or The Who?’

Shortly after Ian Curtis of Joy Division committed suicide in 1980, I went to Morgan’s to buy my bandwagon hopping copy of ‘Closer’ and one of them said ‘actually mate I think you might prefer this’ and sold me a copy of ‘Strange Days’ by The Doors, which kick started a love of West Coast and psychedelia that I have nurtured ever since.

It was Morgan’s that I would leg it to the instant I heard the latest Bowie single on the radio, getting them to play me both sides in full before handing over my 45p and it was from Morgan’s that I bought nearly all of those 1976 reissued Beatles singles in the green sleeves with a photo on the back.

They also had the honour of selling me the first proper rock album I bought in my own right which was Bowie’s ‘Pin-Ups’, just after Christmas 1975, £2.99 plus 12p for a protective PVC sleeve (I do however remember the first actual album I bought – it was ‘Pinky & Perky’s Hit Parade’ in October 1968, aged 4 – a cracker of an album with some top notch cover versions – similar in fact to ‘Pin-Ups’)

Up until I started secondary school and my horizons broadened to Finchley and beyond, the only competition Morgans had when it came to my pocket money were the boxes of ‘ex juke box’ singles in newsagents (cheaper at 25p a throw, lots of tat to rummage through but great for an occasional lucky find) or the record departments of WH Smiths , Boots or Woolies in Wood Green High Road.

However once I hit my teens and certainly once I had started earning a few quid a week in my Saturday job (another subject for another time) I showed a shameless lack of loyalty to my long suffering friends at Bounds Green tube as I sniffed out bargains or elusive back catalogues further afield.

... it was Morgans Records that made a hopeless music junkie out of me and to those chaps that used to run the shop, whoever they were and wherever they may now be, I sincerely thank you.

(Reproduced from "Thoughts of Chairman Arthur" blog site)

Do you remember Morgans Records?