Record keeper

Paul Doege has owned Recycled Records since 1980. His store participates in Record Store Day, an annual international event for independently owned record stores. This year’s event takes place on April 21. Customers who bring a canned item to be donated to the Food Bank of Northern Nevada can chose a free item from the Recycled Records dollar rack. To learn more, visit https://goo.gl/QxJdJi.

Record Store Day started in 2007. When did you first participate?

I was late to the party. I want to say it was probably around 2011. I didn’t know anything about it because … we never did new stuff back in the day. There were other record stores that could do that. … You came in here and, say, you were looking for a Jimi Hendrix album—if we didn’t have that album, it wasn’t our job to order one for you. We would send you to Mirabelli’s, to Tower [Records]. Once all of those record stores went out, that’s when we started ordering. … But we never knew about record store day, and then we started talking to a couple of people who go, “You guys do record store day?” And we were going, “What are you talking about?” … Now, we have jumped into it with both feet. And we do it big.

I’ve read that Record Store Day can make a real sales difference.

To support it, the record companies issue, for lack of a better term, special pieces that are only available to small, independent record stores on Record Store Day. … We get our list. We order our stuff—what we hope to get. This year they sent me about three quarters of what I ordered. And I won’t even know what I got and what I didn’t get until I open the boxes. It’s kind of a cool surprise.

I read that in some places they had albums in a Russian style called Roantgenizdat, meaning, “music on ribs” or “music on bones,” and they’re pressed on x-ray film.

Really? They do all sorts of stuff. One year, Jack White, who has Third Man Records in Nashville—he had a record that was backwards tracking. Instead of putting the needle on the end of the record and have it go in towards the center, you put it in the center, and it works its way out the end. One of them was double-tracked, where they have, literally, two tracks running next to each other. … There’s a Monty Python album that does that.

You’ll be putting out some fresh used stock, too?

That is our big gun, because—especially in the recent years since the big resurgence in vinyl—we find ourselves out of a lot of stuff on a regular basis. … You know, there are some things that have always moved. We’ve always moved The Beatles, and Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. Now there’s a whole second wave of things we never have anymore. We never have Fleetwood Mac in anymore. We never have Rush, Queen. We run out of Boston records. I thought they gave you a Boston record when you were born. How the hell could we ever run out? … We add 1,500 pieces to our used stock the night before. … All of those sections that are normally empty are nice and full.

And live music, too, huh?

We’ll have live music all day. At this point in time, I’ve got eight different bands playing that day.

Want to drop some names on me?

We’ve got the Legendary Train Wrecks, Grimedog, Aurora, Erin Drive, Basement Tapes and then a couple of rappers—including Chapter 13. … We give them an opportunity to pitch what they’re doing and sell their swag and sell their stuff, too. … Mimosas in the morning and beer in the afternoon.