Where I worked as a salesman in the 70’s, Transatlantic Records they used to have an incentive at Christmas, a drinks offer….like retailers needed an incentive! Buy music and get drunk. It was very hard to entice them, they were going to buy the stuff anyway so why not tempt them in to buying more with a few bottles of wine or some of the hard stuff? They’d be ordering records and spending their profits on booze anyway. Let’s all have a party!
When I used to pull my van up outside a shop sometimes I couldn’t get in the back of it, the booze was piled higher than the records! I’d have to shift a few crates of wine to find any albums to sell! When I was negotiating the Snake Pass, a very hairy route that crossed the hills between Manchester and Sheffield I could hear the constant rattle of bottles in the back. It got so loud I’d have to turn the car stereo up, if I drove through a little town like Glossop and there were road works and a less than level road surface people would stop and stare. My van was sign written, ‘Transatlantic Records’ and yet passing through their hamlet was the sound of a Mercedes milk float, it just didn’t add up! Nice bit of respite for an otherwise sleepy town where nothing really happened. I would try and pass through the same time each Tuesday so the natives could be out on time to greet me.
The retailers too would rush out and welcome me like I was the messiah, the booze messiah. ‘Great I was just going to go to the off license but here’s my boy’ They would order a box of this album, a box of that album and then they’d be asking what they needed for ‘Pack A’ or ‘Pack B’ or the much coveted ‘Pack C’ which would require no further visits to the off license for another couple of weeks at least, or realistically until my next visit. I’m sure off licenses must have hated me back then, I’m quite suprised they didn’t start to stock the Transatlantic catalogue. ‘Here buy a crate of ale and get a free album.
