NEWS

Record Store Day: Local shops, patrons celebrate vinyl

Jack Howland
Poughkeepsie Journal
Natalie Huey, 30, of Ridgefield, Connecticut, and Richard Kokinchak, 27, of Southbury, Connecticut, look through records. This was one of three stops at record stores for the couple.

Matt Ramey saw a pair of lustrous green eyes set against a black background and knew: This was the soundtrack to the musical “Cats.”

The 27-year-old resident of Danbury, Connecticut had come to Darkside Records in the Town of Poughkeepsie on Saturday on a mission to pick up a few records for a friend, but he didn’t know exactly where his search would take him.

“Cats” turned out to be only a small part of a novelty soundtrack buying spree: Ramey also purchased music from the film “Top Gun,” TV series “Miami Vice” and — the “la piece de resistance,” as he described it — movie “Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.”

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He proudly carried the collection under his arm.

“I don’t want to get corny,” he said, “but (with records) you can have something tangible, and you can come out and somebody goes, ‘hey man, that’s cool — check this out.’”

People across the country poured into their local record stores on Saturday for the tenth annual National Record Store Day, a celebration of vinyl and record store culture that featured plenty of bargains, new releases and live in-store music.

In the mid-Hudson Valley, several stores participated in the holiday, according to the National Record Store Day website, including Darkside Records, Rhino Records in New Paltz and Woodstock Music Shop, which has locations in Woodstock and Kingston.

Justin Johnson, a co-owner of Darkside Records, said there were people lining up at 7:30 p.m. Friday night with blankets and coffee pots, coming out early for the special releases and good deals that quickly sell out every year.

When he got in at 9 a.m., the line twisted around the entire building.

“It’s the biggest day of the year,” the 31-year-old resident of Hyde Park said. “It’s the one day that everybody is here. All the people that you see throughout the year — they all come on one day.”

The store celebrated the holiday in more than just its releases — there was also food from local restaurants, a rotation of local bands and specialty chocolates from Bittersweet Candy in Schenectady in the shape of records, microphones and boomboxes.

The holiday, which is always the store's biggest day for business, is more about the patrons than the records, Johnson said.

“It’s about the community you find in a record store,” he said. “You seem to find a lot of like-minded people.”

A sign advertising Darkside Records' National Record Store Day celebration hangs on its front door. It's their biggest business day of the year, according to management.

Hudson Valley Vinyl in Beacon — though it focuses on used vinyl records and doesn’t officially participate in the national holiday — still had special deals Saturday. Co-owner Chris Reisman, of Warwick, Orange County, said the month-old store has been getting plenty of business lately, but there might have been an uptick Saturday.

“It’s exciting,” the 34-year-old said, “because it brings a new generation into a field of collecting they wouldn’t have known existed if it weren’t for their parents saying, ‘This is what we used to collect.’”

Dan Gaffney, 52, who was at Darkside Records Saturday, said he grew up in Brooklyn and would spend entire days in Greenwich Village record stores rummaging through bins.

The middle school band teacher from New Fairfield, Connecticut — as he held onto records from Steppenwolf, Steely Dan and Bruce Springsteen — said he was reminded of those times.

“I knew everybody down there (at the record stores),” he said. “They were my haven.”

Jack Howland: jhowland@poughkeepsiejournal.com, 845-437-4870, Twitter: @jhowl04