Papa Ray’s Vintage Vinyl Roadshow
Cincinnati's "King of Records" & The Musical Colemine of Loveland
Episode 6 | 25m 31sVideo has Closed Captions
Papa Ray visits Shake-It Records, Plaid Room Records, & the indie label, Colemine Records.
Shake-It Records, Plaid Room Records, & the indie label, Colemine Records, is proof that Cincinnati is a 'crate-diggers' delight.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Papa Ray’s Vintage Vinyl Roadshow is a local public television program presented by Nine PBS
Papa Ray’s Vintage Vinyl Roadshow
Cincinnati's "King of Records" & The Musical Colemine of Loveland
Episode 6 | 25m 31sVideo has Closed Captions
Shake-It Records, Plaid Room Records, & the indie label, Colemine Records, is proof that Cincinnati is a 'crate-diggers' delight.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
How to Watch Papa Ray’s Vintage Vinyl Roadshow
Papa Ray’s Vintage Vinyl Roadshow is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipMy first record was stat of the Art by the AAC, a Swedish glam rock band I think I bought in the summer of 1975, and it was by the Eagles first album that I purchased by myself.
I was like, ready to.
And on the same, my first album was called Surfer Girl by the Beach Boys.
My first album growing up was registration.
It was the, Beatles number one hits album.
My first album was Metal Work and I believe cargo Surfer style, and that was the first thing I bought on the same terms.
Now this is a media storage unit that's called a vinyl LP, and this is a media storage unit called a seven inch 45.
Both of these have been around the block.
Both of them are a little worn, but they still sound better than that MP3 or iPod.
Remember, there's nothing like a good vinyl fix.
So the question is, what else are they lying to you about?
Back in the late 1940s and 1950s.
As far as what you could call American roots music that was becoming popular, the big labels really didn't know what was going on.
It took the independent label industry, which was just growing up after World War two, to really be able to hold the handle as far as the kind of music that we associate with rock and roll, rockabilly, country music, blues and soul.
Now, this edition of Papa Ray's Vintage Vinyl Roadshow brings us to Cincinnati, and I'm here at one of the very best indie record stores on the planet.
It's called Shake It Records, and we're going to find out what's shaking.
It is an overcast day here in Cincinnati, and we are standing in one of the sweet spots for vinyl in this town.
I'm here with my good friend and compadre, Darren Blase, who with his brother, has operated one of the best vinyl shops in the United States.
How's it going?
It's going great.
Life is awesome.
And I get to do what I want to do every day.
And so do you ever feel like all you need to do is come into the store and do this?
I wish I did, but there's always a stack of records that need to get, you know?
I was downstairs the other day and I was like, oh my God, here's another 2045 that I have to go through.
It's kind of like, oh, I know it, I know it.
The folks at the post office feel like, you know, so it never stops coming in.
But that's the fun of it especially with, like 45 for me.
They're all these like little one off people that never, you know, they did.
145 and that's it.
And you put it on there like, this is brilliant.
You know, and then never to be heard from again.
So.
Well.
But what's also brilliant about 45 is that back in the day, let's say you were, you know, putting out a 45 and you realized that you wanted that to sound really good on the radio and that it was going to be coming out to people in their cars on a speaker about this beer.
So you really had to make sure that 45 or Sonic was.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Whenever I deejay in a club and I do an entire set with 45 more than once, I've followed somebody who's doing a show with a laptop.
And the only problem with that, dear heart, it sounds like a laptop, but the vinyl really, you know, fills that room.
Oh, it's great with that magic.
Yeah.
And Cincinnati is such a great, city for 45.
We have so many pressing plants here in like, the from, like the late 40s through the mid 70s and early 80s that there are so many, like, small vanity projects that were being pressed by people and this stuff still is sitting in people's basements and stuff like that.
And every day you get to see something that you've never seen before, and that's what makes it awesome.
Cincinnati was home to one o the most important music labels in the world.
The name of those labels was King and Federal, owned by a gentleman named Syd Nathan.
Geographically, Cincinnati was in the perfect spot for all those artists out of the South looking for a place to record whether it was country, rockabilly, blues or soul.
Cincinnati was the place to go to from honky tonk star cowboy Copas to the astounding James Brown, as well as the blues artists John Lee Hooker and Freddie King.
All of those artists had their releases at one time or other coming out of Cincinnati.
Originally from Detroit.
John Lee hooker may very well be one of the 2 or 3 most recorded blues artists ever, and the records that he did for King were pretty solid.
And then, of course, there was Freddie King, a ma that some people call the equal to his namesakes, Albert and B.B.
Freddie King' first records became a standard for endless numbers of rock bands, and as far as a rock icon a blues icon, and a great singer guitar player, let's not forget Lonnie Mack, who recorded his songs on Cincinnati's fraternity label.
So can you go back and remember the first LP, or for that matter, the first 45 you bought the first 45 I bought was Gran Funk Railroad Do the Locomotion on gold vinyl, and I got it at Sheila Toes while my mom was shopping fo my school clothes for the year.
She just kind of sent me off to the record department, so I bought that there.
My first LP that I bought like with a real memory, was, my brother, my older brother discovered the clash.
And so, I rode to Globe Records and bought a copy of London Calling, and I was probably 15, 14, 15 at the time now probably younger, maybe 13 at the time, and had to ride my bike all the way back to and from the store.
And the record was just hanging in a plastic bag off the front of my, of my handlebar getting destroyed in the spokes and beat to hell, and then finally got home.
Put it on.
It played perfectly, and I still have that record, so.
But the cover was shot.
The cover is shot.
That cover was completely blown.
Darren Blaze of Shake It Records is good friends with Bootsy Collins, and I know at one time the two of them were doing their best to try and convince the city fathers of Cincinnati to set up a museum at the Old King Label Building as a fitting gesture to their city's musical heritage.
You know, it was in Cincinnati in 2009 that I met the patron saint of funk bass players, the great Bootsy Collins.
He was talking to a group of us who had record stores all over the United States.
And, it was a little sketch at times as far as the economics of being an independent music store.
He came in front of us and like the most impassioned preacher you could imagine, told us those big box retailers, they don't know about Bootsy Collins.
You do.
It is so important for your stores to keep the music culture going in your communities.
So I am asking you, I am begging you, keep going.
Talking about Cincinnati's King Records label.
A young Bootsy Collins met James Brown for the first time at that location.
It was because James Brown had fired his band that suddenly Bootsy had the opportunity to become a member of the James Brown organization.
Story is JB sent his private jet to Cincinnati to pick up Bootsy and his guys, brought him into Atlanta, and immediately put them on stag for the very first time to back.
So, Godfather number one, fro that point on, for about a year, you had Bootsy strutting at the feet of the master.
After his stint with James Brown, Bootsy Collins kept going.
By 1976 he was not only heading his own band, Bootsy Rubber Band, but he was also a part of the mothership Connection Parliament, George Clinton' masterpiece of funk in the 70s.
I remember so wel seeing that tour in about 1976, and it was like watching the Red sea part right before that show with Parliament and Bootsy.
We were selling box lots of the store I was working at of both their releases.
It was blue Street's first record.
It was the biggest recor that Parliament would ever have.
The mothership connection.
And here we are in the Vinyl Grotto of Shake It record stage two there.
And as you can se with the shirt that I'm wearing, there is a dark side to the vinyl business.
But I'd prefer to talk about light.
And speaking of vinyl, let's talk about that maligned item for some people in the music business called CDs.
What's wrong with CDs?
I love them, I think they're great, man.
That's, you know, we still do a very robust business in CDs and, we've been around for 25 years.
I've been doing this for 35 years.
Just from previous stores that I worked with.
You know, you kind of, like, follow your barber around, you know?
So, you know, so I have folks that I've been selling records and CDs to for 35 years, and there's a huge chunk of our clientele that ain't switching back t vinyl and are still buying CDs.
And right now, it's it's an awesome time for them to buy amazing catalogs for decent prices, but also at the same time, you know, probably ten years ago, we saw a huge uptick in cassettes because of all of these high school kids who were inheriting their parents 86 Corolla with a cassette player in it.
And now those high school kids are inheriting their parents 96 Corolla with a CD player in it, and they want to listen to CDs in the car and all that kind of stuff.
So, and I think also at the same time, the economics involved with reissuing LPs for all these different titles is not economically feasible for labels.
So there's a ton of catalog.
There's just never, ever going to come out on LP.
So, you know, if you want a physical copy of it, it's going to be a see it's going to be a CD.
So well, you know, for the last dozen years, one of my catchphrases that our store is used CDs cheaper than a download.
That's true.
So looking forward, I have a feeling that this vinyl resurgence is not going to end anytime soon.
And we can see in the world, pressing plans, new ones being being open.
And, you know what I've also also seen as far as the the divide between L and CD, there's a lot of times, a customer of ours who might want the music on LP finds out it's not available.
So CD, is there an alternative.
And there's I mean w you look at some of the catalog especially a lot of the late 80s into 90s alternative rock.
98% of that stuff isn't on CD or isn't on album.
And that's, that' going to be the market you know.
So several years ago we bought a 5400 piec CD collection that was literally all heavy metal.
And while going through it, I, came to two realizations.
First realization was the vast majority of heavy metal music has been recorded since 1990, which means it never got on the vine.
And that's the format.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, the second thing I realized when going through the 5400 CDs of heavy metal was that it had belonged to a single man.
And so it goes.
Exactly.
And 95% of that is never going to be done on vinyl.
It's just not going to happen.
We just watch the six months those 5400 CDs slowly disappeared out of our store by young men wearing the same black t shirt, black shorts, shoulder lengt hair carrying armloads our CDs.
Because you had to buy in to the red phase.
You have to buy when you can because you never know when you're going to see it again.
Exactly.
So I never knew that the heavy metal band Cradle of Filth had 70 CDs.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Better believe it.
Huge catalog, huge catalog, al that a lot of those bands did.
So, yeah, I'm reminded of that line in the Clint Eastwood movie Outlaw Josey Wales that it's good when indie record store owners such as myself and Darren can meet on the musical battlefield, compare notes, and talk about the wa that things are supposed to be.
You know, when it comes to winning acts that are associated with the, city of Cincinnati, you got to talk about the Isley Brothers.
They started there in the 1950s.
They are a seven decades long band.
1989 in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
And with music such as Between the Sheets and For the Love of You.
That's some great baby making music.
So I'm sitting in a one time residence in the main drag here and, love the land, Ohio.
But it's now the nerve center, the really, really great record store.
Not only a great record store, but one of my favorite labels.
Ladies and gentlemen, Plaid Room Records, coal mine record label.
Would go, you know.
So tell us a little about yourself.
I think you mentioned at one tim you were a science teacher.
Was.
It was indeed.
So I am one of the owners with my brother Bob, who's diligently working in the other room right now.
So we both own the label in the shop together.
But we both grew up selling records.
We started selling records when we were teenagers.
78.
The first on eBay.
Like the late 90s.
We did that to finance or college education.
And then I went to school to be a teacher and started a label there, mostly to put out, and add legitimac to the records I was producing.
At the time, which were lik underground hip hop at the time.
And, so I was a teacher for about ten years, ran the label as a hobby.
I was in school to be a computer engineer and, you know, make a bunch of money.
And about my ninth or 10th year.
So that got the itch to get out.
Things were not great in my district.
And, one day my superintendent came in to watch me teach and said somethin about the length of my hair and that was like the last straw.
So I drove down here that day and looked for places to rent.
I called my brother Bob.
He just finished grad school and he was driving home from Minnesota on like a you just go on this, like six week wilderness find himself trip.
And as soon as he got a signal, I was like, hey, man, meet me at the music Indianapolis.
We're going to open a record store.
And so I drove to Indy.
He met in Indy and had some beer.
And this was the this was the concept far, far worse purposes in life to do.
Yes.
Yeah.
And you are of the generation of music lovers who, grew up under the influence of hip hop.
Well, what I've noticed is, the more discerning members of your generation realize, as, a gentleman once said, hip hop hasn't invented anything.
Hip hop has reinvented everything.
And people such as yourself have decided that what you could call the implements of sound that hip hop had in it meant that you could go and literally crate dig your way to the source.
And that's what I see a planned records.
Yeah.
No, it definitely I think a lot of the folk in the label, including myself, found a lot of the music that we love through the lens of hip hop, for sure.
You know, Bob and I had a particularly different upbringing because we were selling 78.
And so, like our point of reference for musical knowledge started in the 40s.
And then our dad was a doo wop collector, so we had quite a bit of knowledge and like 50s group stuff and sort of that sort of bled into the 60s and becoming interested in 60s soul and 60s R&B.
And then, you know, the to complete the circle was finding so many of those records that we liked being sample sources and just being like, oh, this is where I want to live.
And the deep groove, deep funk, you know, hard bop space.
So how many years have you had the store opened as a retail center?
This will be our ninth year this weekend.
Sweet.
Yeah.
And the labe has been around around 16 years.
But like I said, the first like 8 or 9, it was just a hobby.
So in this age of download music, it's interesting to see the vitality of indie record stores around the country and around the world.
You know, there's, record stores in pretty much every country that, you know, has an economy to support it.
Yeah.
And even though 90% of the planet's music consumption these days is by streaming and downloads and such.
Here we are with this very, very enviable niche where we can be not only retailers in our community, we can not only be promoters of the local music scene in our community, but we're also the curators.
There has to be somebody to filter.
There has to be a filter at some level, and people don't necessarily like that.
But at the end of the day, there's 100,000 songs come out every day on Spotify.
And somebody has to filter these things.
Whether that's a playlist or, record label owner, a radio station DJ, whoever it is.
But I think the power of retail is that if you're making a physica product you've already cut off, you've already filtered a bunch of people.
You're willing whoever is willing to commit to that physical product creation of an LP or 45, you've already filtered a bunch of people, probably 9,095%, and now it's u to the record store to go, okay, sure, all these records exist, but these are the ones these are the good ones that we think you should check out tomorrow.
We're planning to go to, got a groove.
Oh, yeah.
And I know they do.
Your pressing.
They do match ups pressing and, Wow.
Just a state of the art audi file product that they give you.
They're the best.
The the the design of.
And it's.
Yes, in Ohio, which I'm sure a lot of people go for in Ohio.
And, you know, you get them.
You know, to me, if I see a real, really well-made record and, you know, visually and musically, it's a of, noticeable worth, it's not a sentimental thing to see.
See them go.
There's a lot of love in this.
Yeah.
You know, I think to that point, you know, all of our hype stickers, whic I'm sure you've seen are like, very to the point.
And, you know, we put on there who cut the lacquers we put on there, who mastered the record and who press the record.
And 99% of our records are pressed to got a groove.
And there's a point to that.
It's because we are standing behind.
This isn't just like, oh, yeah it makes records up, you know?
Whatever.
Send them off makes them.
It's like now we either are partners, you know, we care about these things.
We're not just making record for the sake of making records.
You want to make good records.
And, Yeah, I love tha we put all of our lives together because of the transparency implies quality, you know?
And so if you're a record buyer and you're like, oh, I don't know who this guy is, but I'm putting his name on thousands of records, so they must believe in him.
That feels good.
I think more label should put that stuff on their.
It's not rocket surgery.
You know, as John Lee hooker said, nothing but the best.
And later for the garbage.
Yeah, right.
Hello.
I'm Paige, and, my first album was when I was, like, 5 or 6 years old, and, we all.
I listened to Matchbox 20 magazines, and I. I'm Hannah, and the first album I purchased was Meet Miley Cyrus.
Gross album.
I everybody I don't know where, my name is Carson and the first record I ever owe money was Michael Jackson's Thriller.
Hi there, I'm Jaron.
So the first album I ever bought for myself was a Vincent Price Witchcraft album.
My first record, and this was back in the 60s.
I'm giving up my age now.
Was by the Beach Boy.
You know, back in the 90s, everybody was talking about death of the LP.
25 years later, everybody's talking about death of the CD.
Well, you know what?
Neither did.
And CDs are great.
We love getting LPs, but we also love getting in our store a great CD collection.
I mean, it can be anything from a multi disc classic Santana collection.
Hey, how about Miles Davis Birth of the cool?
Maybe some, Rod Stewart in his prime?
Fact of the matter is, it's all your candy and it's all able to keep your party going.
First record I bought was an Elton John TPV record.
It was a Prince cassette tape with two songs on it, and I'm not even sure if I knew who Prince was.
My on, it was just, like I thought he look cool or something.
My first record was either Chumbawamba.
Todd something or, maybe Third Eye Blind, self-titled.
Support for PBS provided by:
Papa Ray’s Vintage Vinyl Roadshow is a local public television program presented by Nine PBS