Re-Vinylized (full documentary)

the first record I remember buying on my own with my own money it was kiss rock and roll all over I think maybe out of our heads by the Rolling Stones either the blue or the red like Beatles compilation a Rafi Shankar record at a yard sale probably about eight years when I was 8 years old Aerosmith permanent vacation and I bought that through the BMG Club which I definitely exploited I'm old enough to say that I was of the age to tape the penny on to the card and send it in for free goods under a false name Pink Floyd's relics the Beach Boys little deuce coupe who's next I think in 1959 the Belafonte at Carnegie Hall album it was a 45 by a group called Frankie Lymon and the teenagers and they had a song called I'm not a juvenile delinquent I told my sister I wanted a record player for Christmas and she let me know she was getting me that so rather than leave it up to anyone else I went out and bought myself records and wrapped them and put them under the tree it was Prince sign of the times Sinead O'Connor's the lion and the Cobra and public image limited happy those Beatles best of singles collections the red album and the blue album you know attic Corvettes in Jersey City New Jersey but I was like you know 12 or 13 and I wanted to own those and I didn't I didn't know independent record stores existed at that point Wow there were over 7,000 record stores in the US in the early 90s and now there's fewer than 2000 the whole idea of a physical product being the the engine that drives the music industry which is essentially the case of the last 50 years of the 20th century is no longer the case in the last 10 years people aren't going to brick-and-mortar stores to buy product anymore it's certainly significantly fewer numbers and they did ten years ago as most people know there has been the single most dramatic change that I've known in the 50 years now that I've been involved the advent of the internet and downloading and mp3s has changed the world enormous Lee when I opened up pavements brighten the corners was something that came out and I expected that to be a big sell out I was close to a college campus for the original location and I asked my customers you're not interested in this and they said no that someone had already gone through the college dorm to RA selling CD AHS of it from you know a promo copy that someone at the newspaper had gotten a month before because we were in a position where people would talk to us all the time they would say well I can get this free and probably by 2000 I could see the writing on the wall as far as independent stores downloading and buying online devastated us in terms and it still does in terms of dollars it takes us a month to do now what I did 35 years ago on a good weekend across the country in big cities and in college towns we have lost a tremendous amount of great record stores in some college towns we've lost the only great store in some cities like Chicago we've lost half a dozen great stores 2007 I guess we kind of shuttered the store and I bet I'm lying us sewing off my inventory ever since I did it for you know 27 years and you put in 60 hours a week and you knew you could maintain it maybe but you weren't going to improve and things weren't gonna change Saturn bastard broke America I didn't necessarily been there in the days when you know the store was doing really well but I mean just talking to Mike about like five years ago we'd ring $1500 on a Saturday and you know now we're we're at a couple hundred there just wasn't as many CDs being sold downloading has bitten not only the stores individually but the general overall sale of CDs I was one of the first people at Kerry compactors I just jumped on that when it came out so you know I would embrace new technology if there was anything there but I mean what was there to embrace what what could it what was the next thing I could go onto you could sit at your desk at home and basically get any piece of music you want it instantly so you've got a generation that doesn't even know what the experience of going to a record stores like you're American I'm Lincoln Avenue right where the Starbucks is now there used to be a record store called blue no it used to be called Rolling Stone records it was on Washington Street right right near City Hall an independent record stores champagne called periscope pure platters record store on North Street in Hoboken you went to open to like 3:30 4 o'clock in the afternoon that I would sit wait for the record store to open it was one big room the middle of the store was all these cutouts remember kind of vinyl cutout records had the racks all the way down it was run by two music obsessives he had like all the ventures 45 posters everywhere it was like a dollar ninety-nine a record 45 George 59 cents there was a small stage at the back where people could play I go here it is it actually exists the New York Dolls actually exist and I have both their albums right now and I'm walking out of the store that would shovel snow for 4:45 I'd go in there and Bill Ryan was a bald chain-smoking grouchy son-of-a-bitch who prided himself on that description you know dog used to park when he tried to leave me takes pity on me says you ever hear the soft boys I bought most of the British Invasion it was just like the greatest day of my life finding those records in that store and they were playing the show they're one of my first show he puts on the record and it's you know I want to destroy it like yeah bite a bite of every is just a great great experience I'm not one to lament the downloading and all that because I think you know with the internet you just have to figure out a way to make it work to your advantage and when you can sell things online and have like you know literally like a global marketplace you can find buyers for items that you know might sit here indefinitely in the store and you know there's that weird guy in Sweden that's looking for that CDs we are generally appealing to people who are interested in the original artifact collectors but at a certain point when the internet shopping thing started people stopped walking around and coming in on a daily basis but then once the website started it was like all of those people just sort of became Internet people I know collectors who said they would never even look on eBay and they're out there or Amazon or whatever vinyl site they'd be like I could never do that I couldn't just sit down and like read a title it's like alien where you been the last year since eBay has been around if I have a rare record or an expensive record I put it up on eBay and sell it and there are lots of stores that close up just purely because they can save money on rent and just go purely online in 2002 there were five locations and I pretty quickly saw the direction things were going as far as online sales and as a result I either sold or closed some of the locations once the lease is expired and currently probably half of our business is done online what it did was expand our world because now we deal in a worldwide market and we ship music all over the world every day it allows people from other countries who did not have access to the things that we specialize in to have it out their fingertips on a daily basis the reality is buying online is very easy if you want to buy the new REM it really doesn't matter where that physical CD comes from because it is the same CD so now you have to come in to this store for some other reason I mean I still like to buy it go and buy the records of bands that I like it feels more personal to me it just as a completely different experience than clicking you walk in with those places then it feels like you're in somebody's basement that hasn't been cleaned in 30 years and that's kind of cool and there's a lot of things to go through and that part of the experience I'd like to say I personally built wax trax records in Chicago I walked into that store every week and never walked out without spending you know more money than it probably should have and it was all about what's playing on the stereo right now what's in the little video monitor in the corner I remember seeing the first public image limited video of that band I go oh my god what is this I have to have this people that work stores like this generally can recommend stuff for you like if you're a regular customer I'll know what your tastes are and I'll play something I think you might like when somebody comes in looking for a record by a specific artist if you know about that artist and and have a historical perspective you can get that person started in their educational process and if they're are responsive to that then it's very exciting the shop here before it worked here and it got to be the point where I just walked through the door and Steve was just kind of leaned back over and open up this shelf and he pulled out a brown paper bag with my name on it say Timmy and inside would be like just awesome stuff going through that indie store was all about that curated experience and I think that's the experience that people are still looking for they're still looking for those guides who can steer them to the really good stuff it's about you know find me that new band that I don't know about yet I think you know talking to someone rather than looking at like Fall Out Boy fans 72s review on iTunes you know if someone comes in and they see something on our pic shelf and they agree or they disagree you know they'll start a dialogue I learned stuff every day from people of different age groups who tell me about bands that they're passionate about that I may not have knowledge of the social aspect I think is a lot to offer it people just the camaraderie just to be able to go and talk to human beings the thing that people get when they come here is that there's a possibility of a lot of conversation and relationships established I've had people who've been shopping here from the first day that I opened and they come in every single week and you develop those relationships over time which i think is a factor that's missing someone in the internet world Facebook and Twitter and MySpace and you know the virtual communities that the internet have created are wonderful but but they are virtual communities you know it's the difference between virtual sex and real sex at some point it is really nice to be in a room with another human being who is excited about something as you are you know and you cannot have that experience online and now is standing in the last in the planning racket stuff over the years I will say that I have acquired everything that I ever really wanted in terms of having records when you're on that quest it's more about the actual challenge of finding it sometimes when you find it it's not quite as exciting as you may have thought because it's really about finding it the top item on my list forever was 45 by a British band called John's children it was a band that included marc bolan who later became t-rex and became huge star in the UK and they put out a 45 that was banned by the BBC because of lyrical content so the record was pulled off the market instantly and there was only rumor to be 99 copies available so that became my Holy Grail when I finally found that and have it now sitting in a safe-deposit box that that pretty much was the the top for me once that was actually in my hand I had heard the record I mean it wasn't like I didn't know the music but just to have the actual artifact was it was that holy grail moment over the last several years vinyl has started making a huge comeback vinyl has certainly increased in sales since I started here new and we do sell probably 80% vinyl and 20% CD and that's changed just over the course of the last three years it was probably 60/40 CD at the beginning of our tenure here in the last two years you know you can seem like a 200% increase in in vinyl album sales a medium that was thought to be dead five or ten years ago is is coming back in a big way and is now the the fastest selling physical product in the record business you now have to pulse you've got the digital realm the mp3 files obviously are increasing dramatically and then you've got vinyl sales with CDs in the middle drop new vinyl is not cheap it's at least as expensive as CDs that doesn't seem to be stopping people who want to buy Smashing Pumpkins LPS and Smith's LPS and for a price that they'd be screaming if we were charging that much for it on a CD they're not screaming in vinyl it's simply I think because the electronic way people are getting music is so disposable that it started losing meaning for a lot of people there's a certain impulse that people who love music people who love literature write they want to own the hardcover book you don't want to read moby-dick Kanna Kindle I mean you can write but if you love on the road or you love you know it's just some book you love some album you you want to have it in your space it still means something to have a hardcover copy of on the road to have a wonderful virgin vinyl pressing of sticky fingers complete with the zipper that goes up and down but you have to be careful and put the piece of cardboard so it doesn't hurt the other album that's in front of it I think vinyl as a format is very emotional and appealing to people in a way that other formats just are not the CDs I can put on my hard drive and they'll stay there if I need them there I can access them I find them very young tiny and breakable I like having records it feels more tangible and real there's a lot of characteristics of listening to vinyl that probably appeal to someone versus just you know downloading a song onto your computer and hitting play and there's no real tangible thing that you can touch and feel with that there's just something about holding the record in your hands and reading the information looking at the images it's about the entire piece of art it feels like a piece of art it feels like the painting or something the artwork is there you've got the artwork that's very interactive it's the sound the sound quality is there it's also about the sound it's warmer warmer warmer it's less compressed it's fuller and get the full like the highs and the lows and everything just has a real natural more realistic more intimate warmth to it but that's how personal preference I think it's more fun to play LPS I think that's why people like to do it personally the ritual of taking the record out of the sleeve and putting it on the turntable or dropping the needle on it pull it out and put it on the turntable you want to go around you're watching when you're coming to the last track and you're paying attention to what's happening on that record and you're reading the liner notes and you're reading the lyrics 20 minutes later you have to get up and turn it over and I think that's part of it there's something about 22 minutes on an album side well that's just about perfect that's like you finish one beer you finish that joint and then it's time to get up and you turn it over or you know if you're in bed I mean that's pretty good for most mere mortals right about 22 minutes that's realistic and then if we get up and change you probably need a different rhythm by that point anyway the much-older market never left tailpiece they've been buying LPS all along for the last 40 years the younger market are the ones that have discovered it more recently in the rock world in the late 90s there weren't as many vinyl reissues and there weren't a lot of younger kids coming in you know it was fewer and far between and about that time as more and more new vinyl became available you know and people could come in and they could find Neutral Milk Hotel on vinyl it's like oh okay well that's cool maybe I'll go get a turntable and then really in the last four or five years I think every Christmas I get it's coming in on getting my first turntable it's so cool every single day there's somebody coming in looking for a turntable or looking for needles for a turntable that they just dug out of the basement or the attic that belonged to their parents or their grandparents I inherited my grandfather's United Audio dual 12:25 record player along with this kind of wood kr 4400 and from there I kind of looked in my dad's old record collection he had every single Beach Boys record pretty much ever imagined so I went online and looked up my favorite bands pretty much Radiohead so but I went online looked up a bunch of Radiohead records and I said it might invest in I think kids are defining themselves in some ways by buying albums that they really love on vinyl as opposed to just a now that they may or may not love you know they're gonna download that they're gonna sample it and will live with it for a while on their mp3 player and decide if this is something that actually is going to define who I am then I want to own the vinyl version it's actually been very exciting after being here so many years to see people coming in now that are in their late teens and early twenties buying turntables from us as well as buying records when I asked them what the appeal is for them some of them say they have a nostalgia factor for a period that they don't even know about buying albums buying vinyl albums for a 19 year old college student now is akin to being an art collector on a budget you can't go out and get that Picasso but you can get you know fun house that they did the gatefold sleeve a funhouse by the Stooges and and so this is a really cool piece of art and there's great music and there's liner notes and this is a cool thing to have a lot of albums are coming with the CD in it or a download code so I think it's just like they're making it as easy for you to buy something cool and to listen to it as much as possible I feel like the Indies picked it up first and brought it full-force by starting to put every artist that they had on vinyl pretty much with every release vinyl and CD vinyl and CD and then they started at offer vinyl and mp3 combo with the CD which was perfect the effect has almost come full circle from when we started 30 years ago which was that now we're seeing a lot more enthusiasm in terms of people coming in actually wanting to have a record of course the record companies are recognizing this and are actually starting to do vinyl versions of albums again you name any current artist or group and if you wanted to purchase their album actual album on vinyl you could the major is that definitely over the past few years figured out that they can sell some some vinyl too and even chains like Best Buy are starting to carry new records again the big-box stores don't really have a sense of what our pulse on what the record record LP buying public is looking for nine times out of ten the majors are picking something that sold really well either on its initial release on wax or or on CD over the years it's every issue they're kind of clueless in this deal where they are picking the worst things to reissue for example Herb Alpert Tijuana brass whipped cream which you see every single dollar burn and every single record store the store now at Best Buy brand new for $30 it's very likely that the vinyl phase may come back on a much stronger level because there aren't as many CDs to shop for I don't think it's gonna be a passing fad the marketing of it has been a little more mainstream where it's drawing more people back into being aware that records are available you see on TV a lot of times now instead of holding up the CD then a talk show and they'll hold up the album and they'll make note of oh and it's on an album the mainstream casual music listener is gonna stick with probably a digital format whether it be CDs or just go all all digital with mp3s anybody who's gotten really serious about you know collecting has probably started purchasing vinyl and almost always when you go vinyl you never go back you know this art form is vital and it's revitalized and seems like it's in for the long haul basically for us it's been a part of our businesses at the beginning and it has its ups and downs and ins and outs but it always comes back around to vinyl it's different when you work at a store what becomes your Holy Grail there was a record that Bill Murray did it was a radio show was promo only of the Fantastic Four and he plays he plays Johnny Storm on it was like a radio record produced by Stan Lee I only went out to radio stations today we begin a two-week epic our heroes will encounter the world's most incredible supervillain dr. doom once again the Human Torch is flaming overhead something must be wrong at headquarters nobody answered my signal flaming fireballs there's not a sign of life Johnny what were you doing just before you shrank well I was working on that new ride of mine down in the garage or when I'm not flying around on our adventures I sure get off messing around with cars hey what's happening well just do what I always do any trouble finally found that record it was it was worth every penny I think that the means of success for the stores that are remaining and and that I think will remain our diversity you know they're they're not only offering CDs but but no he's 4578 cassette tapes 8tracks bootlegs all genres and neither one used imported DVDs VHS B movies horror movies we handful of blu-rays books magazines Brown posters memorabilia of t-shirts etc and they've become part of the community Chicago is a large metropolis but it has neighborhoods of every little portion of the city so you can easily have a self-sustaining small business in your community and be a part of a neighborhood it really is kind of like a neighborhood record store and many of our customers that shop here have done so for a number of years a lot of our regulars I've known since I started working here ten years ago and there are a lot of new regulars too were kids we've seen a renaissance especially in the record stores who are doing it well they're being curated by music lovers who are stocking their store was with cool stuff that has value intrinsic value beyond you know it's just the latest billboard hit we don't really carry that many things that you're gonna hear on the radio we wanted to have a big focus on independent music underground music psychedelic rock punk rock we focused on being a unique store more of a niche market for our customers with mp3 isn't like with the the ease of distribution of music now that there's been a lot more diversification things are falling into individual little niche markets and with record stores if we you know find a way to deal with those niches well it'll still be viable people that are buying records nowadays they want to go to a record store if you know what people are looking for having on hand and have a base of knowledge to kind of share with people you're gonna do okay it's never going to be easy but you're gonna do okay if you have somebody in a shop who really knows what they're doing and what the shop is about and our experienced with the artists that they carry and can talk about it I think that's what really can keep a business active and thriving it's like anything old whether it's motorcycles or antiques you know there's gonna be a market you know however big or small for it but I'd still joke with my friends that sometimes I feel like I owned like a men's hat shop or something like that or a cobbler or something I hope the stories will keep going I mean that just record stories either the small little bookstores little bakeries in that you know when I open this business I thought if I'm closed in six months is still the best thing I did a lot of people are going to work and just doing a job and I feel like for us this is not just a job this is our life and we're happy to share our life with people and we're happy to make them happy there's really no reason to be things to be doing this you know aside from the love of doing it and keeping it open and trying to turn people on to new music and I appreciate everybody that's still out there trying I think that the ones that have survived may be able to hang in there it's really the love of the game that will sustain whatever stores if you can just survive that's your doing as well as a lot of people are doing it but you're doing it in the world that you you go to his I don't repeat I'm really sick it's really me really it is a disease he's got you know three or four rooms devoted CDs and albums and and now you know a Gordon Lightfoot ok perfectly fine artist wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald okay we all need to own I own still my wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald 45 right good and and I own a fine Gordon Lightfoot to disc CD best stuff he owns the best of right and 16 or 18 Lightfoot studio albums you don't need 18 Gordon Lightfoot come on you do I go to your house and I always listen your lifetime it's just knowing it's there that's the most important thing

Channel: Whiskey Bender Productions

Views: 410,232

Keywords: independent record stores, records, Chicago, documentary, Permanent Records, Dave's Records, Vintage Vinyl, lauries planet of sound, 2nd Hand Records, Val's Halla Records, Village Records, Deadwax Records, Hard Boiled Records, John Boston, Jim DeRogatis, Greg Kot, Sound Opinions, music

Id: -SGk76IqlSE

Length: 29min 49sec (1789 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 05 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Aquagoat]

People tend to think pirating stuff only effects the big guys. Lars Ulrich doesn't need my dollar. Dr. Dre isn't hurting financially.

This documentary is an eye opener. People are hurting. Communities used to have stores, where people went, to talk about, and purchase music. These types of places are becoming a rarity and it's a shame.

[u/cybin]

Joe Shanahan (owner of The Metro) sighting @ 25:54. lmao!

Also, nice find!

[u/yanggmd]

Commercial for Periscope from 1993 It was mentioned early in the video *by Cameron Mcgill.

[u/matthewmendoza]

"1959... The Bellafante at Carnegie Hall album." RESPECT.

[u/webhead311]

I'mm starting to feel like there are millions of documentaries about records.

[u/NIU_1087]

Chicago does have some badass record shops

[u/kidmonsters]

I love my local record shops in Chicago. Dusty Groove has made it more convenient for me to shop in person than online. I tell them what I'm looking for, they'll shoot me an email when they get it in. The record is in my hands the same day and I don't have to deal with shipping. Errbody wins.

[u/BombedShaun]

Awesome documentary! Thanks for sharing. Anybody know of any more record store or vinyl collecting docs on YouTube?