We had a really nice time today browsing Ron's Records, which is a tightly curated collection hosted by The Merchants Warehouse in Annandale.
These are my purchases from today, my first time visiting:
Chris Abrahams & Melanie Oxley - Resisting Calm (1990) - $30
Bob Dylan - Street Legal (1978, an incredibly good condition "back then" era pressing) - $20
Boomgates / Super Wild Horses - Split 7" (2010, "29/500") - $10
Radio Birdman - Radios Appear (1977 first pressing of 3000) - $40
I partially bought the Radio Birdman record due to where it came from. This original pressing is released on Trafalgar Records, which was based out of Trafalgar Studios, on Trafalgar Street in Annandale - which was where the album was recorded. That same studio space ended up being where I did a bunch of my recording much later (2008-ish) because it happened to be cheap, owing to it having been bought by a church music record label... yes, really...
The church music record label couldn't afford to hang onto the studio, so they sold it to someone that demolished it and built a house on the land.
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Back to Ron's Records. I just want to draw attention to the prices. That Radio Birdman is going for hundreds in some cases on Discogs (are Discogs prices even real?)
The other three can best be described as extremely reasonable prices. In a world where people are charging $40 for mid-tier second-hand ordinary condition pressings of popularly available records, this is really decent.
Just to give a bit of an overview, Caitlin also picked up standard garden variety used pressings of:
Grimes - Visions - $20
Alvvays - Antisocialites (yellow vinyl pressing) - $15
Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Multi-Love - $20
Some other highlights I noticed:
No Age - Weirdo Rippers EP (self-released, no label, no serial number) - $20
A box of 7"s that honestly started to get overwhelming - bands like Nikko, Circle Pit, Dead Farmers, a random Faith No More original... all $10 as far as I could tell.
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Now, I'm speaking from limited personal experience - there are a lot of vinyl curators and store/stall operators and they are of multitudinous range in all directions, catering to a broad range of customers, a broad range of budgets and tastes. In a world where there are many Really Good Options, this feels really super nice and tasteful and reasonably priced in a way that makes me keen to keep an eye on it.
The people working checkout that took my money didn't have direct involvement with Ron's Records, and when asked said that the collection sees pretty high turnover and that there's a significant flow of LPs walking out the door.
Reading Ron's website (apart from the goofy auto-generated 3D avatar video on the homepage) I get the impression he runs a highly principled operation that prides itself on The Good Shit.
Cheers Ron!
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Curation can be such a critical part of a small record stand's appeal ...
Last October we went to the incredible Leaving Records x Feels Like Floating collab "Listen To Music Outside In The Daylight Under A Tree" which had a vinyl store curated by a Mitchell Brown (who I do not know anything about), which an absolutely astounding limited collection - a good spectrum of musical universes, with really interesting selections.
I frequently get really tuned out or bored while browsing record stores, and often it feels like it's because it's less a curatorial journey and more just a "bunch of stock". I wonder if record stores should experiment more with categorising their collections more like "exploration journeys" and less like categorised / alphabetised stock maybe that would make it easier to relate to and contextualise titles that you might not otherwise know anything about.
Speaking of, that whole event was wonderful - highly recommended if you ever have the misfortune to find yourself in LA, it's a good palette cleanser.
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Keen to hear your thoughts and experiences on tightly curated record and CD stores! I'm really interested in how human-driven, intentional, thoughtful curation can help to provide a sense of context and facilitate discovery for people wanting to learn about music based on the knowledge, the culture and the craft.
