It was the jukebox in a family friend’s basement and all those 45 rpm records that put the bug in Scott Tarasco as a kid and set things in motion for his adult obsession.
Thirty or so years later the 40-year-old Gilroy man’s childhood fixation has turned into a bona fide vocation as a collector, buyer and seller of what’s referred to simply as vinyl.
As in records.
That’s right, those round, black disks that gave disk jockeys their name and spun gold for million-selling performers from Ray Charles and the Animals to Sinatra and Dylan and Stones of the rolling variety.
Tarasco, a bassist who also works in the Fairmont Hotel restaurant in San Jose when he’s not mining for vinyl at record shows and estate sales, has been building and refining his collection of LPs and 45 rpm records since he was in his early teens and was encouraged by his mom, a fan of “oldies” tunes of the of 1950s and 1960s.
His collection now numbers around 8,000 disks–and not an MP3 audio file or digital download in sight.
It’s so big and so valuable, in fact, that he keeps it in an undisclosed, temperature-controlled storage unit somewhere in the continental USA. He sells them at fairs and through vendors.
“It has taken me awhile to get to the core collection I have,” he said in the Gilroy home he shares with his parents.
“I see so many records on an almost daily basis, I have the primo of the primo. They are in perfect mint condition; the collection’s really amazing.”
He’s a man who finds himself in the right place at the right time–vinyl is the new rage in the music industry as seniors seek to relive the sounds of their youth and the younger crowd, weaned on the slick, sanitary sounds of digital music, discover the magic of the recording technique that put the groove in music.
Indeed, the vinyl record business is expected to top the billion-dollar mark this year, according to experts and, in some markets, vinyl now outsells digitally downloaded music.
Headlines in the mainstream and music industry press say it all.
“Strong sales of vinyl LPs are fueling an explosion of new record players for 2016,” Consumer Reports announced last year.
“According to a recent Nielsen report on the U.S. music market, Americans are falling in love with vinyl LPs again,” the magazine reported.
“Vinyl Sales Aren’t Dead: The ‘New’ Billion Dollar Music Business,” Forbes magazine shouted in January.
“Vinyl records are projected to sell 40 million units in 2017, with sales nearing the $1 billion benchmark for the first time this millennium,” the business publication reported.
Locally, records and turntables are sold at Barnes and Noble and Target and you can find used classic records at downtown antique stores, Garlic City Auctions and Booksellers.
Tarasco says the explosive interest in vinyl cuts both ways for folks who buy and sell the collectables–it makes for more potential customers but also increases competition.
But he’s enjoying it.
“Vinyl sales are up higher than they have been in 30 years,” he said, attributing it to a sort of rebellion against the “invisible” sameness of digital sound and a craving for something to put your hands on, according to Tarasco.
“It’s the physical element,” he said. “People miss having an album they can look at and feel and touch and put in their record player; it’s almost a human quality and people want that, to be able to hold something–the physical element is here to stay.”
He’s also encouraged by the number of young people flocking to vinyl, he said, at first as a novelty but then liking the sound.
Tarasco go this start as a kid when his mother started buying him records in the 1980s, when Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” was a global sensation.
Then came breakdancing music and the punk sound that was a staple of his skateboarding years.
And through stints of collecting other things, vinyl was always a constant, he said, from “oldies” to the punk sound of the 80s and just about every genre under the sun, including some of the earliest Sun Records, the studio that made Elvis a household name.
Tarasco’s collection includes hard rock, jazz, folk, blues, reggae, soul and rockabilly, to name a few musical styles.
“I’m all over the place as far as genre,” he laughed.
Sure, he has original, mint condition Beatles albums, such as “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” that fans of the fab four would drool over, but because sometimes they were made in the millions, those albums aren’t as valuable as more obscure performers.
Take for example the group, Black Flag a 45 by the band is worth somewhere between $600 and $1,000; because so few of them were pressed they are exceptionally rare.
But among the rarities are the more common — a 45 by Annette Funicello of Mickey Mouse Club fame, an early Little Stevie Wonder 45, John Coltrane, vintage Van Morrison and the King himself, Elvis.
Tarasco, 40, was hard pressed to put a dollar value on his collection, which includes a robust showing of Asian albums from Japan, China, Korea and even Cambodia.
Over the years, he has managed to refine his collection to the point that every disk is notable in some way–a first pressing, a rare sleeve, one of only 500 ever made, the earliest efforts of big stars like Stevie Wonder or Van Morrison and classic punk bands of the 80s.
“But it’s pretty substantial,” Tarasco said.
See an interview with Tarasco at Amoeba Records here.
Back to the Future: Vinyl is Hot
