New generation falling in love with vinyl records

HUNTINGTON -- When Avenged Sevenfold was announced as a headliner for this year's X-Fest, Now Hear This owner Vince Hebert said a young metal fan walked into his indie music store and ordered every Avenged album.

Yes, album, that's not a typo.

And in these strange music industry days, that's not so strange.

Hebert, who has owned and operated Now Hear This since January of 1996, is also experiencing the nationwide trend of an upward swing in vinyl sales.

While digital downloads continue to crash CD sales, the old throwback of vinyl is making a silent surge.

Almost 1 million vinyl records were sold in 2007, up from 858,000 in 2006, according to a recent article in Rolling Stone.

This year, projected sales could top 1.8 million, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

While pressing new vinyl never went away for DJs spinning 12-inch hip hop and electronica re-mixes, as well as edgier indie label punk rock acts, Hebert said the growing trend is for nearly any big act to now press at least some vinyl to make available for its hard-core fan-base.

New vinyl at Now Hear This includes a long, diverse list of acts such as hip-hop mix-tape king, and chart topper, Lil' Wayne, to newer rock bands such as Hold Steady, Fleet Foxes and My Morning Jacket, to re-releases of classics from U2, Led Zeppelin, KISS, Pink Floyd and Metallica.

That's good news for Hebert, who sells and can order any of the latest pressed vinyl and whose store features "The Vinyl Room," a back room whose shelves are packed with about 15,000 vintage LPs.

This fall, Hebert is renovating that space to make room for his growing collection of 45s, and he continues to get more bands such as FloBots offering up a slice of vinyl as a side promotion for buying a new CD or pressing a limited edition.

"Most of the big new bands, you can get their stuff on vinyl," Hebert said. "Pressing vinyl is a way to get people into the stores instead of downloading. Vinyl is definitely taking off."

Ironically these days, it is sometimes the latest popularity wave that has put teens going back to the future on a vinyl quest.

"Last week, we had a woman and her 14-year-old son who heard all this retro music on Grand Theft Auto," Hebert said. "He heard a bunch of retro bands like Jackson Browne and Lynyrd Sknyrd, and the kid just went nuts and is now collecting vinyl only. He came in and was in the back room looking for hours. We get kids like that now all of the time."

Although the bulk of Now Hear This' profits comes from the front room filled with the latest DVDs, CDs, hip-hop mix-tapes and other music-related merchandise such as posters and the like, the Vinyl Room has again become a hot spot for music fans.

With more than half a million new record players produced last year, real audiophiles are dusting off the record collections for a number of reasons from folks looking to re-sell on e-Bay to folks looking for those vintage artworks on the cover.

"We get collectors coming through and collecting to replace records of theirs that are scratched or old, or sometimes they're looking for cover art," Hebert said. "I think one thing is the cover art. Places like A.C. Moore and Michael's sell frames just for albums so you have a lot of music and art fans that will come in and get the record to decorate a music room or rec room in their house."

Past a hallway plastered in vintage LP covers that range from The Beatles to The Osborne Brothers, The Vinyl Room has been a part of the business since the store opened.

Hebert said the vinyl collection ballooned when Now Hear This bought out the stock from a couple of music stores that closed, WAVES Music and then Maggie's Farm, an LP-heavy store that was at the Proctorville Flea Market.

"We got tens of thousands of records from Maggie's Farm," Hebert said "There's still more that we have in storage that we are trying to get back out. Obviously, the bread and butter is the front room CDs and DVDs, but the vinyl is coming on. It's interesting, because of all the ways to listen to music from reel-to-reel, cassettes, eight-tracks, CDs, vinyl is the only medium that appreciates with time."

While indie record stores are becoming increasingly rare, Hebert said it's nice to get an unexpected boost, fittingly from a trend that's been kept alive by indie labels, artists and genres from punk to hip hop that never left vinyl.

"It was always the indies that kept it alive," Hebert said. "Back in the day when bands like Nirvana started out, it was on vinyl, so the punk and indie bands never lost the vinyl thing. I think now more than ever with the Napster and downloadable age a lot of labels are making sure the national acts are available on vinyl as opposed to downloading. I think the truest sound you can ever get on a recorded sound is when that needle gets dropped into that groove."

Dave Lavender/The Herald-Dispatch

The Herald-Dispatch

Dave Lavender/The Herald-Dispatch