I went to see George in his lair a few years ago and it will be something I'll remember until my dying day. An incredible selection of music covering the whole spectrum, I remember I pulled out a huge pile of rare Reggae, Krautrock, Industrial, Jazz, Afrobeat but he was very reticent about selling any of them, even if he had multiple copies.

He is the true definition of an obsessive collector and I could see myself going that way. I really hope he finds somewhere to store this incredible archive and he doesn't go the way of Gollum.

He said he sold his disco / house 12" collection to someone a couple of years ago for £10,000 (didn't say who) so he could fund his legal fees to keep his stock - according to George "after paying the lawyer so much money he turned around & said he was now a partner of the firm and therefore, was now to be paid £200 an hour or he'd do nothing" Then charged him that retrospectively on the work he'd done already & threatened to sue him to get the "balance" paid

He's still got at least 5,000 library / instrumental albums in there.

Plus stuff like this:

This must be the place John McCready told me about years ago. He spent hours looking through stuff, found some interesting things only to be told he wouldn't sell any of them but he'd do him a tape of them for £8

It is - Richard Hector Jones said the org shop used to be based next to Mcr Poly but due to his refusal to sell records, had to move. Check the comments for someone else's experience at that time.

The guy I was with tried to buy a Japanese issue 'White Album' from him whilst we were there & was told "I'll have to check the market value before I can sell it to you. I can record a cassette for you now though"

Scruff's experience was that he got refused when trying to buy African music albums & there's note to say so:

Hoarding cock if you ask me, maybe if he sold some of that gear instead of letting it rot in puddles of water on the floor, he wouldnt be in such a shitty pickle

0 sympathy IMHO

gotta agree with man traic. dude's fucked.

it's fun to try and get every one, but you can't take it with you. his hoarding tendencies have been bested by water, gravity and time.

again... dude's fucked.

it seems like there's a dude like this in every major town... won't price records, won't let stuff go... every transaction's a "look on ebay and decide on the price at the counter"...

fuck those guys. if you wanna have a bonkers personal collection, fine... but don't call yourself a fuckin' shop.

and don't expect any sympathy when your landlord/nature/the taxman comes for you.

i've bought more than one of those types of collections from a dead man's relatives (as a proxy to a store, not for personal ownership), and i feel no shame in cleaning up in bulk once the owner's in the dirt.

cycle your stock, people.

This

I remember going to his shop sometime in the mid-80s, finding a few things which had stickered prices on, and him giving me some story about those not being his price labels. Also he wouldn't let me buy a copy of Donald Byrd's "Places & Spaces", in fact he wouldn't even let me touch the cover ... but he said he'd do me a tape of it.

There was someone a bit like this in Harrow a while back. He was a greengrocer but had a room at the back of his shop full of records. However if he didn't like the look of you he'd say you could only come in with a written list, and if you did come back with one he'd quickly look at it and say he didn't have anything on it.

I did get him to sell me a record once.

It was in the early 90's when the shop was on Oxford Road, he let me have the Phil Spector produced Dion album for the bargain price of £30.

I'm no doctor but both the greengrocer and George giving out signs of OCD wouldn't you say?

No piss take, serious question.

totally agree... look its even got a wiki page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_hoarding

such a shame for it all to deteriorate like that. Theres nowt worse then the smell of a damp mouldy record sleeve :/

To be fair to George he's been dealt a fair few shit hands in life that haven't been mentioned in any of these articles. I think he stopped being a trader a long time ago, the artifacts mean more to him than the music contained, he seems to be more a Country & Western fan.

This is his life and it's not going to make him feel any better to see all the vultures (me included) circling his (very) personal collection that he's amassed over 50 years. It's his to do what he wants with, give the guy a break.

I used to go in around 1982/ 83 and he was always ok to me. He sold me records by the score. Original mint Can albums for £3 (which I still possess), funk and soul, 60s psych and the like.
He was friendly and very helpful when I mentioned I was after an Ed Askew album on ESP. He brought it in from home for me and sold it to me for £8.... I named the price as he wasn't sure.
Pandemonium was very near where I lived at the time (Perryman Close, Hulme) and I was in there several times a week. It was definitely the same guy. Maybe he had a breakdown of some kind which led to obsessive behavior. Perhaps he sold some rare stuff too cheap one day and it harmed him. I know loads of 2nd hand dealers who have gone onto the dark side with their penny-pinching ways. Wanting to milk the last 50p out of every collection they ever bought. There's loads of em where I live now. The shops are more like museums than places where you buy records.
I hope George finds some eventual peace.

Sabotage Times feature: http://www.sabotagetimes.com/music/the-music-cave-of-newton-heath/

Er... he could try maybe SELLING some of his supposedly super rare collection?

Out of all the needy causes in this world why the fuck are people getting doey eyed over some prick with an overblown 'my toys' complex?

Pure pure bollocks this, im sorry