Make like a Pet Shop Boy and go west this Record Store Day to discover the vinyl treasure trove at Relove Oxley in Brisbane.
With the tagline ‘Reinventing Nostalgia’, Relove Oxley are bringing awesomeness to the western suburbs of Brisbane, and have added an extensive selection of records to their emporium of retro and vintage wares. “We have our upstairs area, which we call Relove Vinyl – Brisbane’s newest vinyl destination,” Relove co-owner Jason says.
Housing somewhere between seven and eight thousand records, Relove Vinyl are once again participating in the celebrations for Record Store Day after getting in on the fun for the first time last year. “We had Record Store Day last year, that was a bit of a sniff for us. So this is like Record Store Day part two for us and we’re hoping to have it bigger and better. It should be quite an interesting day for us,” Jason says.
“We’ve got maybe about 180 titles or thereabouts coming in for Record Store Day out of the available couple of hundred that are out there. We had people waiting to come in last year because we open at 7:30am to get the jump on other record stores in Brisbane in particular. People are always coming in looking for that something a bit interesting.”
Of course there’s no way to know what will be available in your particular record store on the day, with distribution of the releases being luck-of-the-draw. Nevertheless, Jason says there are some obvious gems he’d love to see sitting in Relove Vinyl’s racks on 13 April. “We’ve had a lot of interest in Weezer, also the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ picture disc from Queen that’s being released,” he says.
“There’s also a seven-inch from Queen coming out [‘Bohemian Rhapsody/I’m In Love With My Car’]. There’s a ‘Twin Peaks’ part-two soundtrack, there’s a 'South Park' soundtrack, which is a limited edition that hopefully we’ll be able to get, and there are a couple of Iggy Pops as well that are perennial favourites.”
To celebrate in-store on the day, Relove are offering giveaways such as $100 and $10 store vouchers, free coffee vouchers, a vinyl prize wall and other so-called ‘dodgy’ prizes. “We’re having a bit of a clean-up at the moment,” Jason laughs, “so we might have a little brass ashtray or something and we’ll wrap them up into little prizes, so you might get a little egg cup, or you might get yourself a brass ashtray or a wooden elephant statue.”
Located on Blunder Road in Oxley, Relove Oxley provides a convenient service to suburban customers who want to avoid a costly trip to the city and the bustle of crowded shopping centres. “We’re bringing awesomeness to the western suburbs and that’s something we pitch to a lot of our record collectors that come through, and our customers that didn’t realise we are out this way and don’t have to go into the city,” Jason says.
“We have customers who come in every Saturday morning – they don’t want to go to the big shopping centres, so they come out and see what we’ve got, pick up a gem that’s come in during the week, they’re happy and off they go.”
