Okay let me take you back to 1985, I was fresh faced 14 year old. I had just gotten of the 73 bus in Belfast's, Great Victoria Street. I was dressed in what I thought made me look like a cool mod, in reality I was 'the one', with ill-fitting clothes and a voice far too loud. I crossed to road and made my way towards a record shop that I heard about, I was in a search for something that was different to the sickly sweet Motown soul I had just got interested in, but I was looking for something a bit more biting and rougher around the edges. The first thing I noticed was a wooden cut out of Elvis, pointing up a set of stairs, proclaiming this was the way to Good Vibrations. I walked up the stairs and into the door of a small room, which was filled with racks of records. I started to browse through the soul section. I had just lifted a record by Booker T and the MG's, entitled Time is Tight. When this bloke pops up from behind the rack, he's got a funny eye and he's dressed like my Da.
'That's a great record' he chirps 'It used to be my own copy'.
'Oh right' I reply, 'Who are you?'.
'I'm Terri Hooley, this is my record shop and that was my record, but you can buy it'.
I'm looking at the Godfather of Belfast punk, a man I had heard off but never met before, he didn't look very punk at all, but he gave me a kindly smile, still looking at me and that one gammy eye was starting to unsettle me. (he lost the eye when he was a kid, there are many stories to its lose, all told by him, the glass eye that replaced it, has ended up in many a pint glass when your not looking, and by last look of my record collection, I own most of his record collection, or so he has claimed.)
'I can play it for you' he says, he takes the record from me and goes behind the counter, he removes it from its cover and puts it on the turntable. What happens next changes how I listen to music. The title track on the LP begins a gentle bass line with a steady drum beat, then the organ kicks in and I'm hooked, he stands there smiling at me. I'm in heaven, this is what I have been looking for, I buy the record of him and for there begins a friendship, that is still going strong some 30 odd years later.
Over the years Terri helped me to find records I couldn't get any where else, introduced me to different styles of music, let me help him on a community radio show, let me and a friend open an art gallery above one of his record shops, that had a girl stripping off and pouring all sorts of gunge on herself, during the opening, welcomed me behind the DJ decks, for Reggae nights, Soul nights, Alt 60's & 70's nights and Punk night, we've had plenty of laughs and heartache along the way, far too many drinks and ended up in some bizarre situations.
But through it all we had Terri's many different record shops from the original Good Vibes (which was also his label, Teenage Kicks by The Undertones being the labels hi-light, and if you haven't seen the film Good Vibrations, watch it) The Vintage Record Store, Cathedral Records (where we had the art shows and was burnt down along with the lovely arcade it was in) Phoenix Records and at last back to Good Vibes, before Terri retired after having a hear attack and stroke, he is now thankfully recovered and I got the the chance in May to spin a few for the Belfast Reggae Society, with him. The shops he owned are now all gone, but those of us who used them where lucky, it was more than a record shop, it was somewhere to pop in for a chat and a cuppa, maybe even go for a pint or 10. We also had the Thursday Club in the shop, Terri got into bit of bother after he fell foul of a well known UDA member, who threatened to kill him and that when he did do it he would do it on a Friday, so in the Hooley way of thinking, if he was going to die, then the night before he was killed he might as well have a big piss up in the shop surrounded by friends, this practice went on for many years and there was never a dull moment.

After Good Vibrations, closed down many times. Terri Hooley set up the Vintage Record Shop, not far from Belfast City Hall in Howard Street. It was a great wee record shop, with something for everyone. It sold everything from the blues to a cd of Laurel and Hardy songs, which for sometime was reported to be the shops biggest seller, who knows you can never tell if Terri is spinning a line or not.
Well any way it was whilst the shop was based here, the infamous Thristy Night Club was born. Terri had fallen foul of a local paramilitary psycho, who back in the early 80s had an Oi! Band, that was very neo-Nazi, he refused to sign them to his label, rightly so. When yer man grew up, he became a very well known figure for the terror he and his unit would unleash on the divided streets of Belfast, he was later to fall foul of his comrades and was exiled to Scotland, where he pops up on TV now and again, in hardest men shows, including one where befriends a mental German called Nazi Nick, if you've seen the show you'll know this boy, is a bit of a header. He sent his nice friendly boys down to see Terri and they gave him a real hard bashing, Terri claims it was worse than any he got from the police north or South of the border. And was told he would be taken out on a Friday, so the record social club was born, so we could all have a good piss up with him, if he got took out on the following day. I've just realised how mental that looks now, back then it was oh well, lets have a other drink, more speed vicar?
This unusual night out in a record shop would start around 8ish (if I wasn't on lates), some of us would turn up with beer and wine, Terri would be selling some really bad Irish country music to a country yokel up in the big smoke for the late night shopping, The night would progress with more people turning up and the drink flowing. There where some right characters at this meeting of minds, drink and other such things. There was the caveman who was a scientist, though I suspect he was making his own acid in the lab, Owen an old hippy, who would talk only about the workings of church organs, Outer Space Paul a conspiracy theorist, musicians would pop in on their way to and from gigs various people with no home to go to and not forgetting the growing harem of future misses Hooley's, that sort of every girl that entered the shop, I was told I was a future Mrs Hooley once, though we where drinking absinthe out of mugs at the time. Music would be played and would amuse ourselves by hunting the racks of Cd's and Lp's for say the best or worst cover art work, or my favourite going through the large singles sections, to find the worst single in the shop, we did this one night whilst a customer was in the shop, he was buying a copy of Red Sovine's Greatest Hits. I push by him and Terri clutching my find in my hand. I placed it on the turntable and as the track starts I shout across the room, 'Yes, I have found the worse record in the shop, now listen to this' Red Sovine's Teddy Bear, fills the speakers, to great cheers from the masses. Terri is giving me daggers with his one good eye, I'm going 'What?' then I see what the customer has just bought. It was that sort of place, do you want to have your musical taste questioned, we'll do it for you, its a free service.
Around 10ish we'd leave the shop and head around to the Crown where we would drink more and then at closing time buy a crate of stout and load of wine to take back to the shop, where the party would continue until the wee small hours, it was known for me to leave the shop, go an get a fry somewhere and stagger into work. Terri had a thing for half a pint of red wine, mixed with half a pint of Coca-Cola, he claims he was introduced to this drink by Jimi Hendrix when he played Belfast in 1967, I have never found out if this is true or not, one of these days I will ask Tiger Taylor of Erie Apparent if he ever saw Jimi drink this, when Jimi produced their album and the band supported him on a European tour.
This was much more than a record shop, it was a social club, made up of misfits, the mentally unstable, artists, poets, musicians, drunks and those on the outer edges of society. We did buy the odd record as well, it wasn't all about drinking....well some times...not often mind.