Music / vinyl
Butchery, rogue toads and High Fidelity: 25 years of Prime Cuts
“I’ve had the shop for almost half my life, which is weird.”
Mike Savage opened his Gloucester Road record shop Prime Cuts in 2000, at 28 years old.
The shop is still thriving today, in its original location below the vintage clothes shop RePsycho, and a celebration at the Gallimaufry on July 26 to mark 25 years in the business will raise money for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP).
is needed now More than ever
But back then it must have been hard for Savage to imagine the success it would become.
Savage was obsessed with vinyl as a child, he says; after working as a DJ and promoter, opening a record shop seemed an “obvious choice”
Initially inspired to open a record shop to rival another across the road where he had been treated badly as a staff member, his enduring love of music and vinyl also played a big part.
A decade as a DJ and promoter meant he’d amassed “an awful lot of records,” having been “obsessed” from a young age with vinyl “as an artefact – the artwork, the sound quality, it just gives me a warm fuzzy feeling being around it,” he says.
The basement space he found had been a storage area for a butchers for decades and then a toyshop in the 70s. Savage set about the mammoth renovation task: “It was full of butchery equipment, blood on the ceilings, it was just disgusting,” he recalls.
“The floorspaces were full of solid maggots, I had to put on breathing apparatus to remove them. The only evidence of it ever being a toyshop was a tiny model hoover and one wheel off a toy car.”
The record shop is still located in the basement below RePsycho vintage clothes shop at 85, Gloucester Road
The 25 years that followed saw some downs but mostly ups, as well as their fair share of high profile visitors and oddities.
US hip hop artist Cash Money was the shop’s first customer, followed over the years by producers Diamond D and KutMasta Kurt, and an array of “famous actors”.
The shop helped Savage to launch his own band, the Fauns, and to organise the Toto marathon, for which he played Africa nonstop for 12 hours to raise money for charity.
And, bizarrely, “someone left a toad here once,” he grins. “One of the customers was quite an eccentric chap. I suspect there was some sort of magical reason why he left it. I set it free in the garden out the back!”
At the beginning Savage had no idea how memorably things would play out.
“If you’ve read High Fidelity or seen the film, I’d say most of that is actually my life!” he laughs. “When I opened the shop I couldn’t read the book, it was too weird – it’s scarily real!”
Savage’s ‘Africa by Toto marathon’ raised £5,000 for TEMWA, with attendees sponsored for how long they could endure hearing the track on repeat
As in that Nick Hornby mid-90s classic, Prime Cuts became a hub for music lovers, and a place where people could make meaningful connections.
It helps that vinyl is perennially popular, says Savage: “It never went away. It was very difficult around the time when iPods came out. That was a game changer – there was one Christmas where everyone got these little white headphones and stopped buying records. I don’t know how I got through that actually!”
But with the help of national initiatives like Record Store Day vinyl came back into public consciousness, where it has remained.
Savage also notes the same genres repeatedly come back into favour: “It’s definitely cyclical – certain genres just keep coming round every five years,” he says. “Disco, deep house, there’s a massive resurgence of jungle, drum and bass, garage, grime.
“Also dubstep – for me it still feels like a new genre when it actually started over 20 years ago, so even that has gone in and out and then back into fashion.”
All ages use the shop and Savage says the younger generations are more on top of music than ever.
“They’re very clued up. They’ve grown up on their parents’ record collections and they’ve also got Spotify which does lead them down paths that perhaps people wouldn’t have before.
“I’m always really impressed by what 19-20 year olds are buying, they really know their shit, it’s amazing.”
The shop is a place people meet and connect, and it has helped “launch a lot of dumb ideas”, says Savage
The 25 year party he’s planned will raise money for humanitarian aid in Gaza. “The shop’s been good to me, I’ve been very lucky,” he says, “and I just want to do something.”
The four DJs playing on the night are all ex-staff members: Borai, October and Johnny Popcorn, along with Mike himself under his DJ moniker Michael Vinyl, will be spinning a mix of disco, house and club classics, all on record of course.
The night will also be a celebration of the Prime Cuts community.
“I want to thank everyone for supporting the shop over the years, it’s been an amazing experience,” says Savage.
“I’ve recently got back into clubbing and every time I go out, all night long people who used to come in here 20 years ago – they’re now in their late 30s or 40s or they have kids – will come up to shake my hand or buy me a drink. They tell me I was quite influential on them. It amazes me.
“So thanks for 25 years of support!”
The Prime Cuts 25 year party takes place at the Gallimaufry on July 26 from 9pm-2am. Stay tuned to thegallimaufry.co.uk/whatson for details.
All images: Michael Savage
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