If you're in Adelaide for Record Store Day (13 April) this year, pop into the city and say hello to the good folks at Rerun Records & Photography, home of the city's largest collection of retail retro vinyl records.
From their humble beginnings in the Orange Lane Market, Norwood, to their current shopfront in Renaissance Arcade in Rundle Mall, Rerun has become a local fixture and is proudly maintained by 'the two Johns', John and Johnny.
“It's a specialty outlet for vinyl and you can go in there and find something from hip hop to sitar music, so it covers many diverse genres from jazz to soundtracks to pop, comedy, metal,” Rerun staff member Carmela Lillo says.
“It's quite retro and the majority of it is second-hand. They also have some new, factory-sealed offers as well. The other thing they've also got is unusual things like picture disc, coloured vinyl or shaped discs, or quadrophonic. Anything vinyl, they've got it.”
Step inside your own vinyl oasis at Rerun Records - image supplied
As Adelaide's largest collection of retro vinyl records, Carmela says it's worth taking your time to peruse the many sections. “Everything is on display, so it can be a little bit overwhelming the first time you visit there,” she says.
“Sometimes people look at just certain genres in the shop... it's quite a diverse and different mix of products and genres.”
Rerun also houses a substantial archive of historic Adelaide photographs along with a collection of vintage, pre-digital cameras and photographic equipment.
Carmela says the fact Rerun deal strictly in vinyl and no other format – vintage or otherwise – distinguishes the store from others in the local area and makes them a popular haunt for record collectors from Adelaide and beyond.
“We only deal in vinyl – a lot of other record shops have second-hand vinyl as well as CDs; we don't do CDs, so it's quite niche,” she states.
“Then we have a range of price points, so we cater from under $10. Most of the records are around $20-25 and then there are some collectables that go up over $50.
“We attract a very wide variety of customers and by that I mean we get people from out of town, we get people who are tourists or global customers who go around the world digging. We have people come in that do that in their spare time. We also have the young people under 25 who are getting into new vinyl.”
Rerun Records - image supplied
This Record Store Day sees Rerun Records & Photography get in on the fun of the world's biggest music event with a day of digging and deals, like giving away five-packs of LPs every hour and further discounts off second-hand vinyl records.
In her time working at Rerun, Carmela has been on the frontline of the resurgence of popularity in vinyl records and says much of it has to do with better sound quality. “We've seen quite an increase over the past three or four years, and I think part of it is that there's more stock coming out, more new releases coming out on vinyl,” she says.
“Plus you've got classic bands like Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, The Beatles – a lot of those artists are releasing remastered heavyweight vinyl in a 180-gram record that are special production runs where they've gone back and gotten the master tapes, so it's the analogue rather than digital recordings.”
