North Texas Daily

Listening to vinyl is truly an event. From filing through stacks of records in search of the one you haven’t been able to find, to placing the record on a turntable and turning it to the other side after a while, this way of listening to music is a different experience, which is no wonder there’s an entire day to celebrate vinyl.

Record Store Day, celebrated annually on April 21, is a recognition of the impact vinyl records have and celebrates the businesses that make them continuing to produce them possible.

Denton’s frequented record stores — Mad World Records and Recycled Books, Records & CDs — were filled with people scavenging through the record collections looking for rare treasures and new releases. 

Alex Taliaferro, a browser at Recycled Books, was introduced to vinyl by her father.

“My dad has the entire [collection] of Beatles on vinyl,” Taliaferro said. “He went to the U.K. and got all of their vinyls back in the ’70s.”

The Beatles have a large influence on Taliaferro’s love for records, with their “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album being the first one she ever listened to.

“I like [vinyl] most because it gives the true portrayal of a record,” Taliaferro said. “If you’ve ever listened to The Beatles it sounds so much more different as a record versus the newly produced stuff where they’ve edited it and regenerated it. It just feels more authentic.”

Taliaferro cites Spotify as the more convenient platform for listening to music but feels that records offer a more intimate experience for the listener.

“If I’m sitting at home and I really want to feel at home — just feel comfortable — then I’ll put on a record,” Taliaferro said.

For record store regular Aubrey Breazeale, records have been a constant in her life.

“My dad and my granddad both worked at record stores, so growing up I was always around that,” Breazeale said. “It just kind of reminds me of home.”

The family connection extends to the first record Breazeale ever received, which was a gift from her dad.

“My dad bought me the Led Zeppelin ‘Physical Graffiti’ album for Christmas a couple years back, and I guess the first one that I bought was George Harrison’s ‘This Too Shall Pass,’” Breazeale said.

Over at Mad World Records, friends Jillian Berndt and Victoria Fortune looked to expand their growing vinyl collection. The two friends are avid music fans and have recently become interested in records.

“I think a lot of it had to do with movies we watched,” Fortune said. “They had record players there, and they were also just the ‘in thing’ at the time.”

Berndt finds that vinyl has unique qualities other mediums don’t offer.

“It’s kind of fun to have a collection of something, and sometimes they’re different colors,” Berndt said. “It’s just a different experience.”

Don Foster, owner of Recycled Books, has taken note of the vinyl resurgence that has occured not only in Denton, but nationwide.

“If you look in music magazines, they’ll have guys [with] record collections behind them, and they’ll talk about how much they love vinyl,” Foster said.

As for the reason behind the renewed interest in records, Foster cites sound quality as a possibility.

“People say it sounds better — it sounds warmer,” Foster said. “I’m a big CD guy myself, but that’s what they say.”

While Taliaferro, Berndt and Fortune each name Waterloo Records in Austin as one of their favorite record shops, they also recognize the record stores in Denton for having their own unique flair.

“It just feels like a hometown thing, and I really like that,” Taliaferro said. “With all these old records and stuff, you can see how things used to be before we had CDs or Spotify. It just feels like old Denton — like before UNT was huge, before Texas Woman’s was huge.”

While the number of record stores that are still standing might be limited, music lovers can rejoice in knowing how special they are to the culture in Denton. 

“They only have a couple around here, so I guess the fact that there’s very little in general makes it kind of special,” Fortune said.

Featured Image: Denton residents browse trough vinyl at Black Dog Records on Record Store Day 2018. Will Baldwin