“Still have customers from the first week of opening. Some have gone by the “digital” wayside and others have shuffled off this mortal coil, but at the same time have picked up a younger crew too. A lot more female customers now, record collecting was pretty blokey 20 years ago.”
“We’ve had some pretty interesting customers over the year’s but some memorable ones include Henry Rollins, J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr), Dylan Moran, Stan Grant, Murray Cook from the Wiggles, Jimmy Barnes and Tim Rogers.”
“Everyone knows the first record on the table will set the mood for the day. But it always depends who is on as to what notes you will be hit with…. If it’s me on open, you are likely to hear a mixture of Jazz and Blues…. If the boss-man is in early, then you can expect Led Zeppelin or Beatles”
“I think I bought “Devil’s Gate Drive” Suzi Quattro 7’’ for Margie, my mate and she got me “48 Crash” also Suzi Q. We were mad for her and her leathers! We drove all the parents and neighbours mad playing them over and over. I can still see the label RAK with an old ship. Where was that purchase made, I’m guessing in Brisbane, we didn’t have a lot of choice back in the early days: was it Brashes or Myers – yes, Myer used to stock vinyls.”
“I am a little bit late to the train, but I have been loving Yasuke, Flying Lotus’s latest album. It genuinely makes me feel like I am a samurai warrior walking through an old video game, which makes sense seeing as the album was made as a soundtrack to a new anime Yasuke, about an African warrior who served under Japanese daimyo Oda Nobunaga.”
“We do get a lot of good looking dogs in store, I mean..it is Fitzroy. Yeh but ahh who else, well sometimes you know DJ’s I don’t know what they look like, so we had Dani from Motor City in here a few days digging thru 7”s before someone whispered he was a well known dude. A nice guy, We had most of Fat Freddies thru, there’s been heaps over the years I guess.. Haruki Murakami came in one time.. and more dogs.”
“Daily I have amazing musicians walk in all the time. Recently the woman who painted the artwork for the Hiatus Kaioyte’s incredible GRAMMY NOMINATED ‘Mood Valiant’ walked in the store with her family. I was suggesting funky local goodness to them and that was the first record I showed them, she demurely told me that she was the artist who painted it. I squealed and span around in excitement.”
“The very first celebrity we had come into the store was Hayley Williams of Paramore who bought some really cool hardcore records and gave us a shout out at a sold out Entertainment Centre show. Tom Green the actor was a cool one. Most bands tend to come in when in town particularly Randy from Lamb Of God, John from Baroness, Cold Chisel are all regulars and our most recent celebrity was comedian Jimeoin.”
“Arcade Fire’s Funeral came out about a month before we first opened and it was played so much in the first few months of the shop, every time now that I hear something from that record it still transports me back to that time of opening a record store with no idea what we were doing.”
“The first record I bought was actually a cassette tape from the Earlwood (in Sydney) Record Centre in 1978. My mum bought me an ABBA Greatest Hits tape which, while appreciated, wasn’t actually what I wanted. So I went back and exchanged it for what I did want, which was The Sports’ first album Reckless.”