Andrew EdwardsHidden treasure has to be found...

Andrew Edwards

Hidden treasure has to be found somewhere.

Costa Mesa resident Jeff Hassett just might find his in a

cardboard box.

“It’s definitely a hobby, bordering on obsession, but hobby sounds

nice,” Hassett said as he leafed through a box stuffed with vinyl

records.

“I’ve got several thousand [records], I haven’t counted them for a

while,” the 27-year-old said. “A big shelf, several boxes on the

floor.”

Vinyl records, unlike floppy discs and VHS tapes, are an outdated

medium that refuses to die. Though CDs and, lately, digital downloads

are the most visible formats for new music, yesteryear’s big black

discs are still around, if you know where to find them.

In Newport-Mesa, that search proves to be across a changing

landscape as stores have come and gone. The latest to leave is DJ

Culture, which was on the Eastside.

DJ Culture’s focus is new dance and hip-hop records that are made

to be mixed and scratched as well as listened to.

“I love deejaying, but I think one of the main reasons I opened

this store was so I could venture and dabble in different kinds of

music,” DJ Culture owner Jeff Adachi said.

Adachi, who spins under the name Simply Jeff, said his store sells

between 500 to 600 new records a week, though he often runs into

people outside the disc jockey world who think vinyl is long gone.

“It’s a trip when I go to the airport and they check my bags and

they say, ‘They still make these things?’” Adachi said.

DJ Culture customer Jose Tobar said deejays must continuously

update their collections.

“I have to constantly buy records,” Tobar said. “You gotta keep it

fresh. You can’t play the same stuff two weeks in a row.”

Along with records, DJ Culture sells deejay equipment. The gear

for sale includes a CD player that acts like a deejay’s turntable,

making it possible for deejays to play with a CD track like a vinyl

track, though Adachi and others prefer old-school scratching.

“A lot of people still like playing on vinyl. It’s the whole

showmanship thing. It looks kind of boring pushing a button,” Adachi

said.

Tobar, a 26-year-old Tustin resident, also prefers vinyl, but in

the digital age, he doubts deejays will always play records.

“I will spin on vinyl as long as I can, until I go to a club, and

there’s just two CD turntables,” Tobar said.

Adachi closed his store Thursday to move to Huntington Beach. By

leaving the city, he followed Dr. Freecloud, another deejay store

where Adachi was a partner before opening DJ Culture. Dr. Freecloud,

formerly at the Lab on Bristol Street, is now in Fountain Valley.

Other vinyl stores have vanished.

“There used to be one by Tower [Records], there used to be one

over by the corner of Fairview and Baker,” said Goat Hill Records

owner Tom Harris.

A ‘DIE-HARD SUBGROUP’

One owner who’s stayed is Dave James. James, who owns Noise Noise

Noise in Mesa Verde, started his own vinyl store after the record

shop he worked at went out of business.

“I knew how to do the record store stuff, but I didn’t know how to

run a business, per se,” James said.

Though he started without business training, James has managed to

stay in business for 14 years as of Saturday, he said.

The inside of Noise Noise Noise fits the store’s chaotic sounding

name. Customers have to squeeze between rows of records, and more

rock-related merchandise hangs from the ceiling and walls. Attached

to a wall near the back of the store is a seven-inch released by the

band Supernova titled “Costa Mesa Hates Me.”

“We’ve got all sorts of stuff coming through here, the whole

melting pot,” James said.

Though their stores may disappear, vinyl collectors remain “a

total die-hard subgroup,” observed Vincent Munn, owner of Pier

Records on the Balboa Peninsula. “They think the sound’s better,

everything’s better. [They’re] more of a traditional type of people

who have time to clean the record every time, more of a patient human

being.”

“If there was a fire, the first thing they would save is their

records,” Munn added.

Pier Records, which doubles as an art gallery, looks like a shrine

to popular and underground music. The store is filled with two-tone

paintings of music icons such as the Beatles and Robert Plant, and

the walls are plastered with stickers and posters advertising punk

rock bands, whose fans Munn credits with keeping vinyl alive.

“They’re a total subculture that won’t give up,” Munn said, noting

that underground record labels continue to release new music on the

old format.

A MATTER OF TASTE

Not all vinyl fans sport spiky haircuts, though. Practicing and

aspiring deejays need records to practice their mixes, and some fans

simply prefer records.

Newport-Mesa’s record stores aren’t alike, either. Pier Records’

atmosphere of pop art and hardcore music are a contrast to the

orderly and relaxed environment at Goat Hill Records in Costa Mesa,

and both stores are a far cry from DJ Culture.

“I get ‘em from 8 to 80, literally,” Goat Hill Records owner

Harris said, describing his customers.

Goat Hill Records only carries used music, Harris said. Most of

the albums in the store were released between the 1950s and the

1970s.

“Quite frankly, I don’t follow the new releases,” Harris said.

Classical music fan Ruben Salgado said he was looking for “great

records,” while scouring the stacks at Goat Hill. Salgado, 49, of

Newport Beach, shops for music at least once a week, whether on CD or

on somewhat rarer vinyl recordings.

“Not all of the vinyl have been transferred to CD, and some sound

better on vinyl than CD,” Salgado said. Joaquin Rodrigo’s guitar

work, “Concerto de Aranjuez” and RCA’s release of Sergei

Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto are two recordings that work

better on vinyl than CD, Salgado said.

“Why?” he asked, “I don’t know, but it does.”

KEEPING THEIR OWN STOCK

Scratch a record store owner and you’ll find a vinyl collector. At

Pier Records, Munn keeps his personal collection hidden under a black

cloth.

“This is all the stuff no one gets to see,” Munn said, after

unveiling a collection that includes Weezer, the Cult and the

soundtrack to “Breakin’: The Movie.”

A newer store, Third Eye Records in Costa Mesa, has been open for

about four months, and co-owner Gary Farley acknowledged he’s been

bitten by the vinyl bug and has his own large collection.

“It’s big. It’s big enough where I have to have storage or my wife

would kick me out,” Farley said.

Popular items sought by collectors include colored pressings and

picture discs, store owners said. Another coveted item is the

Beatles’ notorious “Yesterday and Today” release. Known as the

“Butcher Album,” the release’s cover art portrayed the Fab Four in

butcher outfits posed with chopped up doll parts.

James used to own that album, until a thief took it.

“My house got robbed and all they took was my Beatles collection,”

he said.

Harris is also an avid collector, though he’s more interested in

finding good tunes than hard-to-find foreign pressings.

“I only collect records that I want to listen to,” Harris said. “I

don’t collect them if they’re valuable and expensive.”

Farley, whose Third Eye Records is hidden away in the back of a

Newport Boulevard building, said he chose the location largely to

save on his rent payments but wants to stay small anyway.

“That’s another thing about being small and manageable, we get to

know our customers, what they’re looking for,” Farley said.

People wandering into a vinyl record store may be tempted to think

of “High Fidelity,” a John Cusack movie set among the antics of an

independent record store staffed by intense music fans.

Is a real store like the film?

“There’s a lot of stereotypes,” Farley joked. “Watching that

movie, you know some of the stereotypes.”

* ANDREW EDWARDS covers business and the environment. He can be

reached at (714) 966-4624 or by e-mail at andrew.edwards@

latimes.com.