Two of my favorite things together….being in Brooklyn and surrounded by vinyl.

I spent Sunday with a friend at the Brooklyn Record Riot connecting people with the records they were hungry for.

Rows and rows of boxes culled from various attics, back rooms and underground record stores all in one room for browsing pleasure

Held a few times a year at a Polish club called Warsaw in downtown Williamsburg where you can take a break in vinyl flipping to enjoy a potato and cheese pierogi (the best record show menu ever!).

Only in New York can you look up from your dealer table and see Joe Jackson (the singer, not the ghost of shoeless Joe) elbow deep in LPs like any one else

I have been behind the counter at a record store every Christmas since 1980 and feel like that’s where I belong.

There are many aspects to running a store that feel so natural to me and I thought I would list a few:

• Being able to help people find the music they are looking for and that sometimes they are even comfortable enough to sing the thing that’s in their head
• Sharing new and old music with customers and bonding with people with a common passion for an artist or style
• While looking at a collection of records I can get to know a little about the people who, throughout their lives put together these little pieces of time as their musical tastes evolved and went in different directions becoming part of an ever-changing life puzzle

The people who have come into my life as a result.

It’s music

The kids are back in back in school and there’s a crisp coolness in the air and what am I thinking about?

Well, the Beatles of course.

With all the media blitz about the release of the Beatles re-mastered CDs, I got a little nostalgic and decided to dig out the first 45 I ever got—at the age of four—to play on my little blue and white portable record player. The record was “Love Me Do” backed with “P.S. I Love You” on the Tollie label. I remember being mesmerized watching the logo go round and not really sure what I was feeling…but it was GOOD! Continue reading →