David

David – “I was born and raised in Belfast, over 50 years now. From 7 to 11 I lived in East Brunswick in Melbourne which I believe now is a hip and trendy place. It wasn’t so hip and trendy in the early 70’s.

We opened No Alibis Bookstore in 1997 so we celebrated our 20th anniversary in June this year. My partner Claudia and I own the business. Initially we started as a specialty book shop in crime fiction and American studies which was the core and the niche area that developed our identity. We kept that core but we were able to expand into different areas we’ve always had interests in. At the start we didn’t want to over expose ourselves and become a shop that was too big to manage. Thankfully over those 20 years we knocked down walls, put in more book cases and gradually grew as our customers came on board.

We found out quite early on that music and spoken word go well together and it was almost by accident we had a charity concert for the Word Wide Life Fund. A lot of musicians came up to us and said, ‘The acoustics in here are brilliant. Would you consider doing gigs?’ You know musicians, any excuse to play somewhere! What then happened was we developed a program of events and bought that on board.

We decided to bring musicians in on their own and it proved very successful so we invested in a really good hi-tech sound system, a multi channel desk and put all our book cases on wheels so we could get 50 to 60 people in the shop with the musicians.

Just before Christmas in 2016 we organised a poetry and music night. We received a phone call saying a special guest was coming and could we reserve a spot where they could be a bit private. Twenty minutes before the gig our special guest arrived but it was actually two special guests. Thankfully when they arrived there was no one in the audience so we were able to get them comfortable and obscure them a bit. I had to tell the musicians who was going to be coming. When the musician came in I had to say to her, ‘By the way, there is going to be a rather famous singer and a rather famous guitarist here tonight watching. ‘She’s like, Oh yeah who’s that? I said, Van Morrison and Jimmy Page. She was 6 months pregnant at the time and she said, you shouldn’t really be telling me this as I’m about to sound check. The young guitarist let out an expletive which we can’t repeat.

It turned out to be a wonderful event and in fact where we are sitting at the moment we could sort of block it off a wee bit. This is the kids section. The audience didn’t even know. At the end of the night when it had all finished Jimmy Page got up to thank the band and the poets and the audience gasped. A couple almost fainted.

They both loved the poetry and the music and they loved the opportunity to be able to sit somewhere where it was private with no one bothering them. They could relax and listen to good poetry and good music and they genuinely sat back and enjoyed themselves. That was one of the most special occasions ever. “