Witthaus keeps 'record store' experience alive

PRIME January 2013 By Debbie Gardner debbieg@thereminder.com The slogan on the window of Platterpus Records, located at 28 Cottage St. in Easthampton, Mass., tells potential customers they're about to experience "the way a record store used to be." Step inside and you'll see neat rows of rock 'n' roll, blues and jazz albums – real vinyl ones in old-fashioned photo or art-festooned cardboard sleeves – lining the walls and center cases. There's a corner covered with posters from the heyday of rock 'n' roll, another where huge frames show similar prints for sale. Vintage T-shirts hang along one wall, right next to handmade jewelry. Behind the cash register, stickers echo popular culture slogans and symbols. To the right of that same register sits a big glass jar filled with buttons promoting an assortment of concerts and bands. There are still some CDs for sale at Platterpus – with a few rows labeled as promoting new material from local bands – but the section is small, a nod, owner Dave Witthaus said, to a music form that seems to be going the way of the eight-track tape. It's not quite a time machine, but Platterpus is a place where customers of a certain age can probably find a copy of that once-treasured Rolling Stones or Jethro Tull album they left at a party back when they were in college – or their mom threw out. It's also a place where Witthaus said a whole new – and growing – audience is rediscovering the vinyl album experience. At the Easthampton Platterpus – the third reinvention of his "record" store in 30 years – Witthaus said he's now selling albums to 25 to 35 year-olds who cut their teeth on CDs, and shoppers younger than 25 whose only experience buying music is a download from some Internet site. "In all honesty, I would have been out of business five or six years ago if it wasn't for the resurgence of vinyl," Witthaus said matter-of-factly. Though he'd always carried traditional vinyl records in his inventory – they were, after all, his stock in trade when Witthaus opened the first Platterpus in the Westgate Plaza in Westfield, Mass., back in 1982 – it was in early 2000, when a CD-selling Platterpus was located in downtown Westfield, that he said more and more customers started coming in because they'd heard he stocked vinyl. He soon had a growing clientele shopping the albums he kept in a back storage room. That demand continued during Platterpus' 2007 to 2009 relocation to a spot at Hampshire Mall in Hadkey, Mass.. At the Easthampton reincarnation of his business, opened in the summer 2010, Witthaus chose to make vinyl his niche. "[Vinyl] was always underground, it never really went away," Witthaus noted. Today he said he stocks his store with used copies of albums from "The Beatles, The [Rolling] Stones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Clash, The Ramones, REM" and other classic rock 'n' roll artists, as well as small collections of Blues, Jazz and Country artists Witthaus' take on musical tastes seems to be on the cutting edge of a trend. A Nov. 21 online article on vinyl's resurgence posed on the music website Dubspot (http://blog.dubspot.com/the-resurgence-of-vinyl-continues-in-2012-record-stores-making-a-comeback/) notes that "for the fourth consecutive year, [data collected by] Nielsen notes that more vinyl LPs were purchased than any other year since they began tracking sales in 1991." Reporting an estimated 2.8 million vinyl albums were purchased in 2011, the piece observes, "In terms of the evolution of musical formats, from vinyl to eight-track to cassette to CD to iPod, this embracing of older technology is akin to favoring a horse-drawn buggy over a Ferrari. But it's happening from the Bay Area to Brooklyn, and mere nostalgia cannot explain why." Witthaus has his own answers as to why vinyl is enjoying a resurgence. He said for the 25 to 35year-old customers, music lovers who grew up with the little lyric booklets that came with CDs, the appeal of vinyl is often the extras – such as the pop-up cutout in one of Jethro Tull's original releases – as much as it is the songs. "When they open [the album] up, they're just blown away," Witthaus said. For those younger than 25 who have been looking at artist head shots or just song titles on the screens of their MP3 devices, he said it's the album's cover as much as the music on the record that close the sale. "I get customers who buy albums and generic white sleeves. They store the records in the sleeves and frame the covers [like art]," he said. Witthaus is quick to point out that though his focus is on vintage vinyl, there are many music companies out there cashing in on this resurgence by pressing new records. He's happy to order, say, the newest Stones anniversary album for a customer – something he can get in for them "in a couple of days," he said – but because these newer records are "incredibly expensive," for consumers, he's reluctant to keep them in stock. "This is an everyman's record store. We don't specialize in collectables. You can come in and find albums for $6 to $8," Witthaus said proudly. "Kids who don't have a lot of disposable income [and] come in here with $30 can walk out with five albums." For those who don't have a turntable to spin their new platters, Witthaus tries to keep a few used ones on hand, also affordably priced around $35. Like so many small, independent businesses, this Platterpus, which is open Monday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m., is part livelihood, part labor of love. For example, to replenish his store's stock of vintage vinyl, T-shirts and turntables, Witthaus regularly mines a variety of sources – tag sales, estate sales, and trips to scope out old records and album collections that people want to sell. Sometimes, he added, the stock comes to him through consignments, trade-ins, and word-of-mouth. "I'm going to see a woman in Westfield tonight who's got 30 to 40 albums she wants to sell," he told PRIME on the day we visited. The hardest thing about that part of the business he added, is telling someone with "a pristine collection of Johnny Mathis albums that what they have is worthless." Nonetheless, shepherding this phoenix-like reincarnation of his original record store is clearly something the 54-year-old Witthaus relishes. "After I closed [the Hampshire Mall Platterpus] in May of 2009, I took a couple of months off," Witthaus said. "I live in Easthampton and during those months off I spent a lot of time walking around [the town]. "Two things hit me," he continued. "I really missed retail, and as I started to look at Easthampton, I thought 'this is a great place to have a record store.'" About that time an old friend and former Platterpus manager, Mark Schwaber, owner of the town's then-existing record store, Night Owl Records, called to tell him he was closing up to go on tour with singer Lloyd Cole. "[Schwaber] was a very good musician, and got an offer to tour the world," Witthaus said, adding he immediately saw an opportunity to get back into the business he loved, and jumped in with both feet. "I never really had a plan," Witthaus admitted. "I never sat here and planned out [this version of Platterpus]. I would have never opened in Easthampton if Night Owl was still here." After nearly two years in Easthampton, Witthaus said he still considers the vintage vinyl version of Platterpus "a new business. In Westfield I knew the new releases, and who would come in. Here, I have no clue." It's still a good gig, though, for a guy who lied about his age to get his first job – in a Hartsdale, N.Y., record store called Records On the Roof. "I loved to go to record stores and browse even though I couldn't buy," Witthaus remembered. "I was in the store at 5 p.m. on a Friday night and the guy was kicking me out. When I asked why, he said he 'had nobody to work Friday nights.' "I was 15, but I lied and told him I was 16 because you couldn't work without papers [at 15]," he added. From that point on, Witthaus said his life seemed to be intertwined with the record business. He worked at that record store through high school. "I wasn't popular, but I got invited to a lot of parties," he recalled, returning to it when a brief stint studying sociology in college didn't work out. From there he moved to working first for Trans World, then Bee Gee record distributors and, while on the road for Bee Gee visiting stores in Western Massachusetts in 1982, spotted the college-town potential of Westfield and decided to open his own record store. Except for a second job as a program director for radio station WRNX in the 1990s, he's been in the record store business his entire working life. "I honestly can say I don't feel I've had to work a day in my life," Witthaus said. "I could have stayed in radio, or gone up the food chain in a record company and made 10 times what I make here, but here, every day is something new, and I think of how many people I've gotten to know over the years. "I think that's what kept me going all these years . that [Jimmy] Hendrix guy who'd come in and I'd tell him I've got something new and he'd either say 'I've already got that' or 'That's awesome.' "[Platterpus'] slogan is 'like a record store used to be' and that includes the guy behind the counter," he added.