Steven Scarpa Photos
John Bastone looked at the small stack of vinyl records a vendor had just dragged in on a dolly.
It was a stack of 1950s ephemera — Lawrence Welk and Christmas albums. Nothing that would likely grab a room full of men in their 40s, 50s, and 60s looking to recapture a bit of their youth. Bastone hopped on a table and pointed toward the back of the room. The vendor might be able to donate the records there, but selling them was going to be almost impossible.
“Records like that are in every Goodwill in America for a dollar and they can’t get rid of them,” said Bastone, a Westchester County native. “There are four things that don’t sell: classical, Broadway, big band, and pop vocals.” This stack had all four.
Later, Bastone grabbed an album by Blind Faith, the single 1969 offering from the English supergroup led by Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, and members of Cream. It was going for $30. An original sealed copy with the original cover art — a topless young woman holding a model airplane — could fetch in the hundreds, he said.
“This is collecting. You have to collect to understand the variations,” he said.
It was nostalgia as much as music on sale at the Record Riot, a traveling flea market of vinyl records and other rock memorabilia. This past Sunday the show settled at the Annex YMA on Woodward Avenue, a regular stop on its circuit through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Bins filled with records dominated the room, with a modest selection of CDs — decidedly not the romantic choice — and piles of concert T‑shirts all looking for new homes.
Bastone (at left).
Bastone makes his living running Record Riots and selling music. He took over the operation over a decade ago. Bastone, like most of the people who showed up on Sunday, is immersed in vinyl. He has a personal collection of around 15,000 records above what he sells. He started the collection at the age of four with The Chipmunks Meet the Beatles. His second album was A Hard Day’s Night, and he was off.
“Everything from classic rock to punk was the area I grew up in,” Bastone said. “I’ve been interested in soul and blues the last 20 years. Even a lot of country stuff, which I swore off my whole life.”
Vinyl isn’t making a comeback; the comeback already happened about a decade ago, Bastone said. The vibrant album art, the warmth of the sound, the rarity of some titles, fancy stereo gear — all of it contributes to a type of collectible that makes audiophiles salivate.
Bastone has his own ideas as to how this all happened. “Want me to give you my stock answer? First, people are always saying it is retro. It isn’t retro at all. The people who are buying the most records are between 18 and 30. Their parents didn’t have records. To kids, it’s like records were just invented,” Bastone said. About a decade ago, he thinks that college students were buying records as cheap decoration for their dorm rooms. Then they realized it was something more than a wall hanging. It’s his theory and he’s sticking with it.
Dino Proserpio, a Port Chester, N.Y. resident who spent a lot of time promoting and presenting shows at the Tune Inn in New Haven in the 1990s, also makes his living selling records. He was in grad school for American studies when a professor invited him to a record sales event in his neighborhood. So much for grad school.
For young people who want to demonstrate the next level of their commitment to an artist, buying the record is something they can do. “There is a better chance that the band will see the money,” Proserpio said.
While the room at Record Riot skewed older, there were a few young people on hand. New Haven resident Andrew Kurzrok was there with his friend Michelle Dover from Washington, D.C. It was their first record show. They hadn’t found something right away, but said to come back in about an hour and talk to them.
“We aren’t looking for anything recent,” Dover said.
“This is a bit different,” Kurzrok said. “It’s not iTunes where everything is in front of you all the time.”
“I like the sound better,” Dover said.
“It’s nice to have a sound that fills the room,” Kurzrok said.
“There is a human need for tangible objects,” Prosperio said. “People want something that physically connects them to the past,” he said.
Visit the Record Riot website for locations across the Northeast and to learn when it’s returning to New Haven.