No matter how you spin it, vinyl records are seeing a resurgence. Vinyl sales even surpassed $1 billion in revenue last year, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
Ahead of “Record Store Day” this Saturday, WAMC spoke with record spinners, record collectors and others about why they love the analog format.
A 1975 Brian Eno pressing, some Italian disco and maybe more Steve Winwood than I should have purchased: it was an eclectic haul for me but barely a smattering of what was being offered up at Northampton High School earlier this month.
Once again, the Recordville Record Fairs group put on a “Northampton Record Fair” last Saturday, featuring dozens of vendors, thousands and thousands of records and, at-times, so many collectors and listeners, admission was paused due to capacity issues.
“… this is some sort of reissue of ‘Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake’ by the Small Faces, I think this is a cut at Sterling [Sounds] by Lee Holcomb, which I think is fun,” says Paul Bolinger of South Hadley, sharing just some of his purchases with WAMC. “Got some Martin Denny… ‘Quiet Village: Exotic Sounds,’ ‘Exotica.’ I got a UK [pressed] Fleetwood Mac ‘Then Play On,’ and then I got a UK [pressed] Fleetwood Mac, ‘[The] Pious Bird of Good Omen,’ which is like greatest hit sort of thing… and then we've got Savage Rose’s ‘In the Plain.’”
More than a few vinyl fans were happy to share their collections with WAMC.
Brett Matthew Starr, who recently made the move from Texas to Northampton, says he was surprised by what he considers a lack local records shops and that he was more than happy to stock up.
“I got some sealed, first pressings of Beastie Boy records I've been looking for a long time - ‘Check Your Head’ - I can't find that anywhere, I finally got it," he says. "Guided by Voices’ ‘Alien Lanes’ - that album I've been looking for a long time: [I got it] sealed, perfect condition.”
Both he and Bolinger say their own collections have likely passed a thousand records over the years.
WAMC estimates that of all the people who spoke with the station on April 11, a thousand [records] seemed to the average collection size, give or take.
It’s not a surprise Starr says: vinyls have plenty to offer in his opinion, especially compared to its streaming counterparts.
“One is just the nostalgia associated with it. Two is I don't think people are used to listening to an album all the way through anymore and third, just the physicality of it, being able to look at the entire creative production, from posters to the vinyl to the color of the vinyl to the artwork on the front: it's just a real multi-art experience,” he adds
Scott Weber of Easton, Massachusetts tells WAMC that he can still remember being 11 or 12 and getting excited whenever he’d fold open a record jacket and put a vinyl on a turntable.
Some 40 years later, he says there’s plenty of excitement to be found at gatherings like Saturday’s.
“It can be chaotic and a lot of people come in with an agenda - I don't mean a negative agenda, but an agenda of wanting specific records - but you can also meet like-minded people, and most of the people are pretty cool,” he says. “They'll talk to you about music: you might end up on a side conversation, you might be talking about concerts that you saw. It might dovetail into a conversation about the Patriots or a football game! But it's people that just like to experience stuff like that: music and getting out there and seeing concerts and also collecting and stuff. And you can certainly meet people… it's a social thing too.”
That’s what record show husband-and-wife organizers Justin Cohen and Janice Chaka were going for: an experience that, due to its growing size and logistics, made Northampton High’s cafeteria ideal for the fair.
Somewhere between three dozen vendors set up an ocean of milk crates and cardboard boxes loaded with records that spanned genres and the world. Italian disco, Japanese ambience and, for some reason, a large number of Linda Ronstadt albums were on display.
It’s one of presumably few spots in western Mass. where one could purchase The Care Bears Christmas Album and also a pristine, albeit expensive Pharoah Sanders record at the same table.
Running one of those tables was John Gorlewski of Bad Kitty Music and his operation’s unique take on record sorting – with signs like “Always Good Rock,” “Cheerful Rock” and more.
!["I grew up in a house that looked very much like one of these rooms," John Gorlewski of Bad Kitty Music tells WAMC (center, behind records). "My father was a disc jockey for over 40 years and so this is normal." "Vinyl was the dominant format at the time, and... I think it definitely affected the artist in terms of [the artist thinking] ... 'What's going to be the first song on side two?' 'What's going to be the last song on side one?' I mean, the medium affects the art."](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/dea0337/2147483647/strip/true/crop/866x563+0+0/resize/840x546!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fb3%2Fb8%2F73a8d1854ee1b9aea34dccc75e27%2Fgorlewski-northampton-record-fair-4-11-26.png)
He called the event “mayhem and pandemonium at its finest,” even if there was an overabundance of Fleetwood Mac “Rumors” albums, in his opinion.
“I really think most of the time, the best record at the record show is the one that finds you, the one [where] you're looking through the ‘Mixed’ box, and you don't know what you're looking for it and you're like, ‘What? What is this? This looks interesting,’” he explains. “You buy it, you take it home, and it becomes your favorite record. I would say to people, give that record a chance, look at things you're not trying to look for.”
Concurring with that was Chaim O'Brien-Blumenthal, helping operate a table across the way. He’s also a music archivist and radio show host at WESU at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
He tells WAMC his station prides itself on being community-based and focusing on freeform radio. He also says whether its 45s, fresh reprints or a scratched-up LP, there's a lot to be found at your local record store or show – and that any record snobbery one might encounter should be promptly trash-binned.
“There's this element definitely in our culture where there's been this personification of record shops, in a way, as this elitist experience of high fidelity and… where you go in and they know everything. They know everything, and you're kind of intimidated,” he says. “I don't think a record show should be that way. I don't think a record shop should be that way! I think you should go in and if you’re quiet and you don't want to talk, then just come and browse. If you want to have a conversation and you find some records and you love, then do it! There's no pressure in that regard. It's a fun place to go to hunt for music, discover some music, maybe come with friends, come with family… have a good time!”
Co-organizer Janice Chaka tells WAMC she and her husband have been putting on the fair or something like it for years. According to Cohen, some of the Northampton fairs go back to at least 2015.
They tell WAMC their residence is home to thousands upon thousands of records, waiting either to be sold via discogs.com or appear at a later fair. Cohen says he abides by some rules, including no storage of records in the kitchen or bathroom.
In terms of the record fairs, there's been no lack of enthusiasm among patrons and newcomers sharing record lore and recommendations, both of them say.
“What I will say is people are always willing to help out, people are always willing to spread the word, and it is a tightknit community, but it's not one of those communities that you can't crack into. Everyone's very friendly, happy to share knowledge,” she tells WAMC. “Everyone will talk about, ‘Oh, we did this,’ or ‘we tried this,’ or ‘have you tried that?’ and that’s one of the things that is unusual in the record community: I know other communities that I'm part of that will gatekeep, and the record community, from what I've seen over the years, has not been like them.”
Manning one of the larger tables at the entrance of the fair was Cohen, praising almost every customer’s selections and giving advice on where to look for what.
After praising a customer’s love of “The Jam,” he confessed he wasn’t carrying any records belonging to the English, early Punk Rock band.
He tells WAMC one of the bigger sellers that day was Mort Garson’s electronic masterpiece, “Mother Earth’s Plantasia.” Though, of course, he noted someone had just come through with a massive stack of Polish records in tow.
“There are so many records in the world, it's just never-ending. The biggest collectors in the world don't have one percent of the records that that have come out and so, it's always exciting finding things that you don't know exist,” he said. “That's what I'm looking for more than anything, like, yeah, I have a thousand records that I'm looking for in particular, that I want, but what I really want is records that I don't know. So, it's exciting to just come and dig in the bins and see what you're going to find.”
That ended up being the experience for Jay House of Springfield, lugging a packed satchel on the way out.
“Yeah, I’ve got a wide range of music, all the way from Bob Marley to Lou Rawls to Ray Charles. Earth, Wind and Fire: just a lot of funk and soul, I got Donna Summers… Luther Vandross, yeah, a lot of R&B, soul, a little reggae,” she said.
If anything, House says, some records can give listeners a real trip back in time – a trip she invites all listeners to take, whether they can get their hands on a record player or not.
“I wish more people understood that music, as we know, is timeless, but I think it's a different experience when you listen through vinyl,” she added. “It feels like I'm in a time machine: you could always put something on Pandora, and it's just a regular standard sound that we hear with our electronics, but vinyl, for some reason, it gives an old school feel to everything, and it's kind of what I want.”
Of course, WAMC is also home to its own record-spinning show: the WAMC Listening Party hosted by Lucas Willard.
A list of Record Store Day participants can be found here.
