The old curiosity shop

I've been sharing the odd beer and an occasional cup of tea with a chap called Geoff Davies recently. Geoff is the bloke who set up the legendary Liverpool record store Probe and then went on to create the indie record label Probe Plus.

I always thought Probe Plus was a label for noisy punks with three chords and anger management issues. It is actually, but that's certainly not all that you'll find there. Geoff kindly filled my pockets with all kinds of old CDs from the different bands that have appeared on his label over the years and, cliche as it is, I'm finding myself actually interested in music for the first time in ages.

Some of the stuff is hard to listen to and some of it is not my cup of tea at all, but bands like The She, 420, Dead Poppies, The Onset and The Doonicans have reminded me that there's loads of good music out there that I haven't heard yet. I really should stick my head outside of my La's, McNabb, Waterboys bubble every once in a while.

I met Geoff at a Half Man Half Biscuit gig in Preston before Christmas (he's the band's manager, of sorts) and he's patiently put up with me badgering him ever since about working together on some kind of potted history of Probe and Probe Plus.

Maybe that will happen, maybe it won't but either way, he's a fascinating bloke. His head is full of tales about the shop and the bands that made underground waves in the 70s and 80s and he's more than happy to talk about them.

In fact he thinks there are a lot better tales to tell than one about an old record shop and the owner's gigantic collection of underground records.

One of them is about Crass, the anarcho punk band of the early 80s. Given that he used to distribute records to just about every indie record shop in the north of England, Geoff had a fairly good idea of what sold and what didn't. Crass sold - and then some.

He played one of their records to me when I visited his house a few weeks ago. It was hard going for someone with sensitive ears like me (!), but the story behind it is astonishing. The sales figures would make Simon Cowell's eyes water and Geoff reckons the band were easily selling enough singles to be number one in the charts.

But guess what - they never even made the top 100. Given that they were hell bent on disrupting the Thatcher regime and that for long periods they were rumoured to be under surveillance by MI5, conspiracy theories abound.

Fascinating stuff, even if you don't like the music.