Probe Records

Geoff and Annie Davies opened Probe Records with friend Dave Keats in 1971, first from a shop off Brownlow Hill before a mid-1970s move to Button Street placed it at the centre of Liverpool's punk and post-punk scene. Musicians including Pete Burns, Pete Wylie and Paul Rutherford worked behind the counter, and Davies later launched the Probe Plus label from the room above the shop, releasing early records by Half Man Half Biscuit. The shop moved to Slater Street in the 1990s and settled into its current unit inside Bluecoat Chambers on School Lane in 2010. It still stocks new and reissue vinyl plus secondhand CDs, trading today from the same School Lane unit as part of the Bluecoat's retail community.