Paul Doege is the owner and manager of Recycled Records, 822 S. Virginia St. He opened the store in 1980 and has been here ever since. Record Store Day is this Saturday, April 19.
What is Record Store Day?
Record Store Day is a celebration of the culture of record stores. It’s a different experience—just like it is for most things—when you buy things in person as opposed to buying things, let’s say, online. Music is one of those things where interaction with other people can really turn you on to other things that you wouldn’t expect. … It’s making the music and movie buying experience more sensory, it’s more tactile. It’s things in your hand. It’s not just an image on a screen that eventually shows up. And so to do that, they started in 2007. The record companies issue special releases that are only available to independent record stores … there’s less than 1,500 in the United States now. And in the past, we’ve had groups like the Rolling Stones, Foo Fighters, White Stripes. In fact, on Record Store Day, Jack White is going to cut a record and have it released by the end of that day. … As a result, it’s turned into the biggest day of the year for any record store that’s taking part in it. Our biggest day in our 35-year history was last year for Record Store Day, so we’re expecting the same thing. We celebrate it by having live music playing all day long. We’ve got a lot of those Record Store Day releases, stuff like that. … And then we issue special edition T-shirts. We’re going to have a St. Lawrence Pizza truck out here. We’re gonna have mimosas in the morning and beer in the afternoon for free, and we’re also gonna tie together with the food bank. If people bring a canned food item in, they can save an extra couple bucks on any CD or DVD that they wanna pick up.
What’s special about this Record Store Day specifically?
We get families coming in, parents with little kids. It just shows us in a nice favorable light and the fact that it is the kind of place where people know—between the crew that I have here, we have over 100 years worth of record store experience. So we’re well-versed in that kind of stuff and we can talk about whatever kind of music, for the most part, that you want to discuss and maybe give you some direction to go in or something else that you might like. It’s just a cool vibe.
As far as live music, who will be there?
Let’s see. I’ve got Max Volume, Chris Scott, Failure Machine, The Kanes, Shatterbox and more. Those are probably the most exciting ones we’ve got. And I’ve got guys that have been playing for years with us. Last to Leave will be here. Spike and Jackson. There’s a few. We’ll be rocking.
What about the releases that day?
I’d love to tell you what I’ll have. The problem is I won’t know until those boxes arrive, and I open them.
So that’s going to be exciting for you, too.
Yeah. Exactly. In most cases, when they say limited releases, some of these will have as few as 500 and some as many as 5,000. Last Record Store Day, there was a Dave Matthews four LP boxed set of a particular concert that wasn’t issued any other way, and they only made 500 of them. So that’s the kind of thing that has some of these people waiting outside the door. I’m gonna get here at 8, and there will be people outside waiting.