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Perched behind his old Apple laptop and a glass counter filled with stickers and buttons emblazoned with the names of various punk bands, Scott Wishart is an anomaly. Lunchbox Records, the Central Avenue storefront he owns, is one of an ever-slimming number of truly independent record stores. As the posters for local shows and indie-label releases plastered on the windows of the shop can attest, Lunchbox isn’t the place to go to pick up the latest T-Pain or Taylor Swift CDs. But that’s precisely what drives Wishart’s business.
As a specialty shop, Lunchbox has been largely unaffected by the record industry’s catastrophic fall from grace that began around the turn of the millennium when a kid named Shawn Fanning developed a little computer program he called Napster. Internet file-sharing boomed, then gave way to digital music sales through services such as iTunes. All the while, CD sales busted with little help from the antagonizing efforts of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Big box stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart continually downsize the floor space devoted to shelving music. At large, the future of recorded music looks dismal.
But at Lunchbox, business is doing just fine, thanks in no small part to the store’s unique and eclectic offerings—and helped along by a surprising resurgence in the popularity of the most outmoded of recording formats, vinyl records. Wishart, who has been in the music retail business since 1997, says, “I’ve always bought records, but when I first started, records were on the way out. Labels, especially big ones, weren’t even releasing them and it kind of continued that way until a few years ago.”
Today, I’m talking to Wishart with an armload of new (or, at least, new to me) records stretching the flimsy handles of the plastic bag in which they’re ensconced. He’s blasting Old Wounds, the latest CD from the Louisville, Ky.-based punk band Young Widows, through the store’s speakers as customers thumb through shelves for hidden treasures. In the course of our conversation, Wishart sells three copies of the Charlotte-based band Yardwork’s self-titled EP to three separate customers. He sells an armload of obscure metal LPs to a couple who sheepishly admit to one another, to Wishart, and to me that they didn’t intend to spend so much money. They couldn’t help it. “People like to own things,” Wishart says. “Even though you can go and download anything in the world, if you want to look at the art or something physical, it’s a nicer, more tangible product.”
“Me buying 1,000 records is just like some guy that has 200 pairs of shoes in his closet,” he adds. “It’s just different consumer addictions.”
And he’s happy to be the well-stocked dealer-of-choice for the Queen City’s discerning music junkies. As record stores close nationwide, Lunchbox keeps its doors open. As the record industry as we know it spirals down a slipstream, wings ablaze, Lunchbox’s CD sales stay constant, and even rise some months. And with vinyl’s new vogue status, Lunchbox reaps the benefits of being one of only a small number of retail outlets in town carrying the hip toy. Says Wishart, “Most stores it’s like less than 10 percent of their sales, and for me it’s like around 40 percent from [vinyl] records.”
Success stories like Lunchbox are beginning to perk journalists’ ears nationwide, too. News stories in big-time publications like Time, The Chicago Tribune, Wired Magazine, and NPR all point to a dramatic resurgence in vinyl’s viability as a recording format. Industry statistics showed a 15.4 percent increase in vinyl sales from 2006 to 2007—from 858,000 records to 990,000, overall. But that doesn’t include small stores like Lunchbox. More telling are the record pressing plants that can’t keep up with demand, the small record labels offering vinyl editions of albums also available on CD or digital formats, or the mere fact that retail giants like Best Buy and Amazon.com have begun making room for vinyl records.
What then would bring a younger generation of music fans back to the format their parents discarded years ago? Well, price could be a factor. Used records often sell for much less than a new—or even a used—CD would. While visiting Lunchbox, I bought used vinyl copies of Willie Nelson’s classic Red Headed Stranger and Marvin Gaye’s essential Let’s Get It On for a paltry $6 each. There’s the collectible nature of records, as well. The cover art is much bigger, making them seem more like a keepsake for many consumers. Records also tend to be more limited in quantity than their five-inch counterparts. Most records are limited to only a few thousand—even for bigger releases. Boutique records are often made into limited-edition items with mere hundreds of copies in existence. Plus, say some consumers, a record just sounds better.
Or does it? “If you have good equipment, yes it does sound better,” says Wishart, “But, I mean, most people have crappy record players. If you get one of those crappy USB Ion turntables, and you play it on that, versus a CD player through a real stereo, the CD player’s gonna sound way better.”
He adds, “Then people talk about, ‘Oh, I like the pops and clicks of vinyl.’ If you have pops and clicks in your vinyl you have scratched up records and you’re not taking care of them. That’s not what records are about. Good records sound good. If you have pops and clicks then you’re doing something wrong. That’s like saying, ‘I got a hamburger and there’s pieces of bone in it, but I like that because it makes it more homey.’”
So without audiophile equipment or misguided notions of aural “authenticity,” it would seem consumers are left with little incentive to purchase a record over a CD. And that’s why many records offer a little something extra. On their latest Top 100-charting album, The Second Gleam, Concord’s favorite sons The Avett Brothers offer two extra songs exclusive to the LP version. Many record labels also have begun to include coupons for free mp3 downloads with LPs, giving customers the improved sound quality and novelty of owning vinyl and the convenience of the digital format.
But even at a vinyl-centric store like Lunchbox, CDs are still the most prevalent format. “There’s only been a couple months where I’ve sold more records than CDs,” says Wishart. Despite the Chicken Little claims of music industry reports, it seems unlikely the CD will ever disappear entirely. “They’re too cheap to make,” Wishart opines, suggesting the five-inch plastic discs might eventually assume an entirely promotional role, or become the provenance of small, local bands eager to get their music out there quickly and cheaply.
This, of course, leaves a wide opportunity for vinyl to reassume its position as the dominant physical format for audio—especially in the realm of independent music. “Some genres never stopped making records,” Wishart says. “All the indie rock stuff always came on records…if you go down to Reggae Central they still sell 45s that they get from Jamaica because they never stopped making them.” And as more and more independent—and even local—bands begin to release records, it certainly seems to be possible. The Raleigh-based punk band Double Negative released its debut, The Wonderful And Frightening World of Double Negative, exclusively on vinyl in 2007. It sold out its initial pressing in a matter of days. Wishart runs a boutique label that has released 7-inch EPs from local bands Obstruction and Calabi Yau. And the sale of turntables has increased, as has their availability in mainstream outlets like Urban Outfitters and Target.
Already, vinyl records have moved beyond the provenance of obsessive collectors and teenagers unearthing their parents’ dusty collections in the attic. The once-obsolete format, it seems, is regaining its footing in a very real way. Just spend some time in Lunchbox Records watching the customers coming in waves as they file through the store’s inventory for a dusty classic or a shrink-wrapped new release to fill some 12-inch hole.
N.C. Releases (available on vinyl) to check out
The Avett Brothers – The Second Gleam (Ramseur)
A spare affair from Scott and Seth Avett brings a subdued sound, led by banjo, guitar and the brothers’ preternatural harmonies, to this six-song mini-album. The vinyl version boasts two additional songs.
RIYL: The Louvin Brothers, Wilco, Bill Monroe
Bellafea – Cavalcade (Southern)
The long-gestating full-length debut from the Chapel Hill-based post-punk trio provides an album bristling with energy. It’s frantic enough to provide an adrenaline rush, but also reined in enough to provide moments of tender beauty.
RIYL: Polvo, Fugazi, Liz Phair
The Foreign Exchange – Leave It All Behind (Nicolay Music)
The second collaboration between Wilmington-based producer Nicolay and Durham-based MC Phonte (of Little Brother). Soulful, intelligent hip-hop laced with ’80s synths and an easy-going attitude.
RIYL: Little Brother, Kanye West, Common
Lost In The Trees – All Alone In An Empty House (Trekky)
Using folk-based pop songs rife with lush flourishes of orchestral texture and instrumentation as a template, Lost In The Trees creates a dynamic well-suited to frontman Ari Picker’s reedy soliloquies. Vinyl includes CD and mp3 download.
RIYL: Arcade Fire, Andrew Bird, Danny Elfman
Obstruction – Obstruction 7” (Lunchbox)
Old school hardcore punk from the Charlotte band. Five songs of pedal-to-the-metal angst with a deceptive complexity and unshakable groove. The 7-inch record is packaged with a CD-R.
RIYL: Minor Threat, Black Flag, Bad Brains
The Rosebuds – Life Like (Merge)
The fourth full-length album from the Raleigh pop act finds the band focusing its lyrics on the natural surroundings of N.C., and its music on rhythmically engaging, guitar-pop—a contrast to 2007’s dance-ready Night of the Furies.
RIYL: The Smiths, The National, (early) Radiohead
Waumiss – Waumiss (Little Ramona)
Clarque Blomquist, the bassist of Chapel Hill pop-rock outfit The Kingsbury Manx, lets down his hair with the assistance of his wife Caroline. The resultant LP is a wrangling of reggae, Phil Spector- esque pop, and electronica. Comes with mp3 download.
RIYL: The Ronettes, Lee “Scratch” Perry, (late) Radiohead
~ Bryan Reed |
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