SNV music. (Store Of The Week).

"We still stock chart material though we don't carry anywhere close to the amount we used to, given the competition in the pop area from the supermarkets. That said we obviously stock chart material that fits our customer base. Linkin Park and Cradle Of Filth are our kind of band and their albums are doing very good business. We're also doing well with the new Placebo album--their back catalogue has always sold consistently here.

When we first opened it was the era of the big-hair bands like Bon Jovi and Def Leppard who don't sell in anything like the same quantities these days, though Iron Maiden, from the same period, still sell well. These days the demand is for harder music. We didn't start out as a rock store. Originally we had more of a cross-section, but we finally realised that our knowledge of the rock scene was better than anyone else's in the area so it was a natural progression to move into specialising.

Merchandise is something we've done well with, though it is cyclical. It did well when we opened, but with the dance scene in the mid-Nineties the whole thing dropped off. Then, about three years ago, it started to pick up again and has seemed to have peaked again. The high point was Christmas 2001 when numetal was fresh. Now that the music is fading, so is the fashion.

There's not a lot around here for teenagers. There are a couple of local pubs that put on bands and a hall that tends to play safe. We try to support the local acts by stocking their CDs and T-shirts. We tend to be the Saturday meeting place for the local rock crowd, though during the week our customers tend to be more mainstream. We've been here long enough to build up a solid rapport with people who were our first customers and have moved on taste-wise. We have been running a loyalty scheme for the past 10 years that gives people ...