I just enjoy the warmth of it. I know that's an overused term, but it does have a warmth
to it. It does feel more alive. The music tends to breathe. You feel more immersed in the sound
when you're listening to vinyl. The first real record that I remember going to the
store and picking up was the 45 of I Love Rock and Roll by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts,
which was the early 80s. I was probably about 11 years old. At first I just bought 45s,
and then it just kind of led to, you know, every time we'd go to the store I'd always
sneak off and go look at the records and usually come home with at least one or two.
My parents had an old console stereo in the living room. We didn't really go in that room
too often. It was kind of reserved for family events, holidays, things like that, so it was
kind of special to be in that room, and Dad would always put a stack of records on the changer.
Years ago my father gave me his old turntable. Through the 90s, just like most people,
I didn't really buy much vinyl. I bought mostly CDs, just like everyone else did.
I had always kept this turntable that he'd had, but I never really did anything with it. It always
kind of ended up in the basement on like a, you know, maybe a rainy day. One of these days I'm
going to get to that and fix that thing up. So that day finally came, probably I think four or five
years ago at this point, I just decided I was going to fix it. You know, I spent a month or so
just kind of tinkering with it, getting it, ordering the parts, finding the parts online,
just kind of, you know, taking that effort and then hooking it up to the system, and it was just
awesome. You know, it was really exciting to take that, you know, that was my dad's, and you know,
have it in the living room and actually playing records on it again. It was just a lot of fun,
and my wife thought so too. So that kind of started the bug back up again, and we started
buying more records, and some friends got wind that I was repairing turntables, and they gave me
one and said, hey, can you fix this one for me? You know, I've had this one, and so I did a couple
here and there, and I kind of discovered that no one was really doing this. I'd always dreamt of it,
and you know, I thought how cool it would be to own my own record store, and I talked it over with
my wife, and she's 100% behind me, very supportive. I knew I wanted to be in downtown Worcester,
and we got incredibly fortunate to find the space that we're in, so we opened in September of 2013.
We had a black cat named Lucky, who's no longer with us, but every time I would bring records home,
you know, I'd carry them in, I'd have like a bag I carry with me when I go record shopping,
so I'm always bringing the same bag in, and he got to the point to where I'd bring in a bag of
records, and you know, immediately he was peeking in the bag, what'd you bring home this time?
It was just really interesting that every time we played a record or had records out, he was either
sniffing them or rubbing his chin on the corners, or just he would sit by the record player while
we were playing records. We thought, well, it would be kind of cool as a little tribute to the cat
and his love for vinyl, then call it Lucky Records, so that's where it came from. It's named after a cat.
As far as I'm concerned, you know, I think it's going to be here a while, and I think there's
always going to be the collectors that are always going to be looking for it. You know, it never
truly went away. You know, it got very lean for many years, like in the 90s, but for the most part,
it never went away. So it's pretty much the longest running format out there, and I don't think
anything's going to kill it dead, at least not for a while.
