Having grown up as a child of the seventies, I got to experience the magic of the record store (and music!) firsthand! With a healthy diet of HR Puffnstuff, Batman, Star Wars, Evel Knievel and Saturday morning cartoons… the seventies was the absolute best decade to be a kid and a junior about to discover Rock And Roll!
I was ten years old when I bought my first record. It was a time in my life where music was all around me but whilst my friends at school all gravitated to the likes of the Bay City Rollers and Abba… I found myself pulled towards the other end of the spectrum.
It was at this time I first discovered KISS and four decades later… nothing much has changed!
Walking to and from school each day, I would walk past a record store located almost on the corner of Glenferrie Road and High Street called Pet Sounds Records.
It was a tiny little store before they relocated a little further down the street. Every day on my way home after school I would step inside and have a look. I just loved being around all those records! All that music!
One day in 1976, the windows of Pet Sounds were adorned with the cover of an album called Destroyer by KISS. I was transfixed!
Picture the scene. A young 10 year old boy with his school bag full of Spiderman and Batman comic books staring at the cover of KISS Destroyer. This is a band? This is what music looks like?
So after many stops into this record store each day after school, I noticed they were having a massive sale. As a ten year old, funds were limited and the proceeds of my weekly paper route were about to be spent on something other than action figures or comic books.
I wanted music. My own music so with memories of the KISS Destroyer album in my mind, I wanted a KISS record. In the bargain section I found a copy of the single Shout It Out Loud. From memory, it was about 50 cents. I bought it. It was the first record I ever owned.
It triggered off a chain of events that defined who I was to be for the rest of my life. It was a crossroads moment.
Now four decades later, music remains a defining ingredient of who I am as a person. It is all around me each and every day. I photograph live bands and live music and have been doing so for over a decade.
Pictured above is the very first record I bought. I thought it was long gone and lost and the stuff of (personal) legend, but when I was going through a lot of my collection which is still in storage, I found it tucked inside an old copy of Destroyer. I was floored. I could not believe that it was still around as I had not held it in my hands for so many, many years.
And here we are. In the throes of beginning my own record store.
I have worked in the creative industry since 1995. Creating and designing has been my lifeblood for so many years. I have made a fantastic living doing so and worked for some incredible people and companies. But I am tired of it. I don’t want to keep having to nurture design and creations for others on a whim anymore. The well has run dry. I am entering a period of my life where I want to try something different and ride the middle aged crisis wave down a new path. Beyond the shadow of any doubt, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. (Oh, and photography too, don’t think that is taking a back seat in all this I can assure you.
So what’s this Rue Morgue Records all about hey? And where the hell did the name come from? Good questions! The name came to me quite by accident. I didn’t want to spend time thinking up of a name so whilst kicking back listening to Iron Maiden’s Killers album, the song Murders In The Rue Morgue kicked in. Bing! Done! Rue Morgue Records it is. Within thirty minutes I had purchased the domains ruemorguerecords.com and ruemorguerecords.com.au and it was all systems go. No turning back now!
The Rue Morgue Records Devil was spawned out of my love for pop culture occult (Anton LaVey and co) and is the perfect little brand for this operation.
Rue Morgue Records is starting off small. Very, very small.
I guess we are doing things in reverse. First, the website was built and in due course it will be populated by more and more content and stock. The reason for this is two-fold for me. For one, I have a lot to learn about the industry and the business of selling records. I come into this as a rookie and a newbie. Consider this dipping the toes in the water. Secondly, there is less risk initially. I cannot commit a lifetime of savings into something that will fail. When the online sector of this business is in a healthy position, it will be time to take this to the next level. And that is my ultimate goal in all this… a real bricks and mortar record store. Located, hopefully in St Kilda and/or its surrounding areas. Is that a year away? Is it two years away? Well, we’re certainly going to find out.
So yeah, here’s your chance to join me on this journey. Through the store’s various social media outlets – you can keep in touch as this thing grows. There’s various social media icons throughout this site, hit them and follow them and you can become a part of the Rue Morgue Records inner sanctum. We’re on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Hope to see you there.
In the meantime, there are so many amazing record stores in Melbourne and beyond. You’ll regularly find me trawling through the crates of stores such as Greville Records, Vicious Sloth, Heartland, Dutch Vinyl, Goldmine, Rare Records and Utopia is always the first point of call when I am in Sydney. I have no qualms at all about linking them here. These are stores that I aspire Rue Morgue Records to become. We’ve got a ways to go, but as stated, it all begins somewhere and right now… it begins here!