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By MarkWoolsey
The dark-haired young lady knew
exactly what she wanted.
“What do you have by Minnie
Riperton?” she asked Mark Methe, co
owner of Decatur’s Wuxtry Records.
“Come with me and I’ll show you,”
said the genial, somewhat garrulous senior,
leading his prospective customer through a
small store that’s a riot of organized clutter,
a process that rinses-and-repeats regularly.
You could say that Methe, pushing 70,
has gown old in the service of vinyl, with
his store having opened in 1978.
Wuxtry is one of a half-dozen or so
Intown independent spots specializing in
vinyl, most of which have been around
since the heyday of arena rock and disco.
The mainly modest enterprises have been
subject to two centers of gravity pulling
them in different directions. One is the
COVID-19 pandemic, which led to multi
month closures (except for online and
curbside service in some cases) last spring.
The other is increasing interest in vinyl,
with healthy pressings of new product
as well as re-issues from the days when
CDs ruled the musical roost and pressings
were an afterthought. Think albums like
Nirvana’s “Nevermind.”
It’s made for a roller coaster ride akin
to watching the gyrations of a long-
neglected and warped album.
There’s Methe, who at one point
used the term “scraping by” and points
out “I never went to business school”
while allowing that between his store and
another location in Athens, they did about
a million dollars’ worth of sales in 2020.
He adds that they were closed for a
couple of months during the first wave of
the pandemic but that Christmas brought
them a burst of sales. There are some
numbers that pump up the volume on that
last assertion.
Billboard magazine, quoting Nielsen
Music/MRC Data, says a record 1,842,000
records were sold in the week ending Dec.
24, buoyed by Christmas sales and easily
eclipsing compact discs. That’s the highest
36 February 2021 | HU
Groove On
Intown record shops weather the
pandemic as vinyl popularity flourishes
number since Nielsen began tracking vinyl
sales in 1991. The website Statista quotes
Nielsen as saying vinyl sales grew for the
14th consecutive year in 2020.
On the less rosy side, Wax’ n’ Facts,
a longtimer in Little Five Points, closed
for almost three months and resorted to a
GoFundMe campaign which raised some
$12,000 to stay afloat and cover employees
lost wages. The store is also only open half
its former hours and had to let a part-
timer go.
But not all of the previously pandemic-
darkened stores are on an equal footing.
Open since 1976, Buckhead mainstay
Fantasyland Records has seen vinyl sales
rise considerably, especially that of new
product, despite their spring in the
wilderness.
“I would say for us it probably goes
up 10 percent each year,” said longtime
manager (since 1981) Mark Gunter,
including 2020 in that skein. “We’ve been
busier than ever since we reopened in mid-
May. And we probably had our best in
December in the past five years.” Not only
were vinyl purchases robust he added-their
sale of turntables scored a five-year high.
Gunter said a good percentage of sellers
are those who stored their records away
for a good long while, with many of them
now downsizing. Rock is their biggest
category.
At Criminal Records in Little Five,
you’ll find folks like Sean Zearfoss. No
greybeard, he’s in his mid-30s but loves
vinyl and is firmly in the camp of those
regarding it as a warmer and richer-
sounding medium than digital.
“It’s kind of an experience,” he said.
“Give me your best 40 minutes on a
vinyl record and let’s see what you’ve
. >5
got.
Zearfoss explained that “We’ve sold a
lot of hip-hop and R&B in part, I think,
because Atlanta really is a hip-hop town.”
Childish Gambino’s “Awaken, my Love!” is
the top seller in that space, he noted.
Other stores said they’re sending
customers out the door with plenty of
Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar albums
and that with their status as local icons, it’s
hard to keep anything by Outkast in stock.
But rock and classic rock is still a
mainstay of theirs, said Zearfoss. “We still
sell plenty of Eagles and Fleetwood Mac.”
Jazz, soul, world music and country are
also well-represented in the spacious, well-
organized store.
Fans of those classics — both young and
old — are among those re-upping on vinyl,
said Methe at Wuxtry.
“Every week I hear a sob story from
someone saying they sold their record
collection in 1987 and now that stuff is
hard to find.”
Re-issues of albums from the tail end
of the 80s to the mid aughts — the vinyl
dead zone — seem to be helping to fill that
gap. And then there are others of a certain
age who simply never stopped opening
their wallets for vinyl.
Another significant buyer demo:
much younger folks who have embraced
vinyl and snap up product from current
performers as well as those already-
mentioned re-issues and even classic rock.
Nobody’s blinking when someone totes
both Imagine Dragons and David Bowie
to the checkout counter. And there are the
hardcore collectors methodically perusing
the bins, their narrowed eyes missing
nothing.
Co-owner Harry DeMille at Wax ‘n’
Facts has seen a plethora of them over the
years.
“I can’t stress the avid nature of the
collector enough. Some of them told me
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