Northeast Ohio Vinyl Club Helps Record Collectors Find Their Groove
Step aside, aux cord. There's no phone plug-ins here.
He lowers the needle. Chris Greer’s 1979 guitar-heavy “Rock City U.S.A.” reverberates throughout Goldhorn Brewery. For a second, Koch’s eyes close in delight.
“Not a lot of people know this even exists,” adds the DJ specializing in international music.
Koch is the bespectacled emcee of the Northeast Ohio Vinyl Club’s Open Turntable Tuesday, an open-turntable night where LP geeks rep personal playlists, analog style. “No iPhone plug-ins allowed,” Koch says, smiling.
Since March, the East 55th Street brewpub has been the 1,300-member group’s primary locale for outreach.
Founded in 2012 by Jason Burchaski, a KeyBank manager and record collector, the vinyl club has grown into the largest group of its kind in the region, organizing events such as the Open Turntable Tuesday and quarterly vinyl swap meets (the next one will be Oct. 8 at Mahall’s 20 Lanes). On Facebook, members post about hot finds from vintage Stooges to Pretty in Pink collectibles.
“We’re all nerds at heart,” Burchaski says. “But that’s why I started this: I’m sick of going around and seeing the same Beatles album at trades. We need to be doing something different.”
Mike Quartarano, a former Manhattan record merchandiser who regularly attends the Tuesday events, says they revived something in him.
“I got rid of my collection for a while,” Quartarano says, holding an LP called The Legends of Surf Guitar. “But now with this? I’ve got to work getting it back up.”
For Koch, the experience of sharing and displaying is priceless. “We play music from all over,” he says. “One time, I played a song from India, and there was this guy in the audience who said, ‘I know this! That is from my country!’ He was so thrilled.”
Koch smiles. “I know that, that record made his day.”
