It Records

It Records was a retail chain owned by Cliff Moore. At one point it had six shops - Belfast, Bangor, Lisburn, Craigavon, Lurgan and Portadown. The latter was the home of the It Records label, launched by Cliff in 1977 in response to punk rock. The label used the famous International Times logo. It Records released the first Northern Irish punk single in November 1977 by the band Speed. Cliff tried to sign SLF and found they were already beyond his labels' means but he did release the Outcasts debut which is one of the essential Northern Irish punk rock records. The sixth single was to have been the debut single by Belfast punks Ask Mother, but it was never released. The label ran out of cash and stopped operations sometime in 1978-79. There was also a sub-label called Band-it Records which released country rock records. The Portadown shop was damaged in an IRA car bomb blast which destroyed the labels archives. It has been claimed (usually be dealers) that a (significant) portion of the Outcasts pressing was destroyed in this blast but it seems that it was only Cliff's spare copies that were destroyed. As a result, he has few mementos of the era. The It Records chain itself disbanded in the early 90s.