TALKING SHOP
Gary Walker
With a prestigious film and TV career under his belt that saw him work as a puppeteer for Jim Henson before becoming a self-employed animator, you’d have been forgiven for questioning Craig Crane’s sanity when, in 2017, he announced his intention to invest a six-figure sum in opening a record shop.
Having ‘been’ George on cult children’s TV show Rainbow, and worked on The Muppet Christmas Carol and Spitting Image, Crane foresaw the impact of the coming digital revolution on puppeteering. He set up his own visual effects studio, working on Hollywood movies such as the Harry Potter series, Thor and Avengers, and adding stellar clients such as Disney, Marvel and Warner Bros to his CV.
However, Crane decided to press pause on that high-intensity lifestyle, one day finding himself walking down South Street in the West Sussex county city of Chichester and passing a vacant shop unit that had housed a vintage sweetshop.
That transformative moment coincided with a challenge the lifelong record collector had set himself – a digital detox, banishing listening to music through non-analogue devices from his life.
MASTER OF PUPPETS
“I remember speaking to one of our suppliers now, and telling him I had this crazy idea to open a record shop, and he said: ‘Are you effing mad?’,” recalls Crane. “We’ve become firm mates since then, because I really enjoyed his honesty.