81 Renshaw occupies the basement of a building that once housed Bill Harry's Merseybeat magazine, the paper that first documented the Liverpool beat scene around The Beatles. Owner Neil Tilly converted the space into a full-time vinyl shop during the pandemic, when the venue upstairs stood empty of the bands, comedy nights and life-drawing classes it usually hosted. The basement stocks new releases, reissues and coloured-vinyl pressings alongside a second-hand crate, spanning indie rock, hip hop, jazz and electronic music. Upstairs, the bar and venue space has since reopened around the shop, hosting live music and open-mic nights again in the evenings. The building's music history predates the shop by decades, and Tilly leans into it rather than away from it, keeping Merseybeat-era clippings and photographs on the basement walls among the record crates.
Surveyed