Steve Free’s Music In The Green is a crate-digger’s heaven, the shop chock-full vinyl and CD stocked, yet carefully organised by genre and vibe so your geek antennas can twitch away happily towards your preferred sounds.
And if you’re after a compass towards stuff you might like, the very knowledgeable Steve will very happily throw in suggestions based on what you know already gets you off.
Steve’s Music In The Green also covers festivals too, and has been known to natter to some pretty famous folk along the way. So for ‘You met who!’ gossip and a crate-digging delight, Steve’s shop is a music lover’s must.
1. What’s your earliest memory of music?
“Probably at primary school. This would have been early seventies, and our music teacher was obviously a folkie, playing us Pete Seeger and stuff like that. I was absolutely blown away with what people could do with their voice.” Photo: Steve and vinyl
2. How did you start selling music?
“It started 2011, I took a stall in the market. Similar to Richard Branson… we started in the same way… Mainly selling second-hand CD’s. I had a massive collection of CD’s, and I just thought ‘Let’s see what happens’.” Photo: Steve at the counter
3. How would you describe your shop?
“Ten years ago it was a different beast. Now what you see is 80% vinyl, pre-owned and new. And within that it’s 80% pre-owned and 20% new vinyl. Because vinyl that was done in the nineties and noughties, to buy that second-hand is so expensive because there wasn’t a lot of it produced to start off with. And there isn’t a lot on the second-hand market because people are holding on to it. They’re still playing their Oasis, Stereophonics and Smashing Pumpkins. You can’t get hold of that. So we tend to buy all that as new pressings.” Photo: Tote bags and vinyl
4. Favourite three albums?
“Astral Weeks, Van Morrison. Jethro Tull, Songs From The Wood. And probably Fugazi by Marillion. It does change though.” Photo: Steve outside Music In The Green, Bakewell