Record Breaker

I've worked for, patronized, and adored tiny vinyl outlet Johnny's over the last decade. It's been around for five.

In Darien, Connecticut this past weekend, Johnny’s Records went gold. At 45 Tokeneke Road, there has been a little record shop, in a little town…for five decades. Yes, against the odds, John Konrad’s hole in the wall has persevered. Since 1975, if you’ve been an audio aficionado around Fairfield County, Johnny’s has served you well.

In those fifty years, Konrad has amassed serious street cred. In some ways, he did so in a literal sense — Johnny’s logo, a black-and-white Volkswagen Beetle, depicts the checkerboard car he used to drive to work. Some heavyweights of the music world have stopped by the place, including Ronnie James Dio and members of Kiss. In the ‘90s and 2000s, Johnny’s braved the rise in compact discs and file-sharing that brought the vinyl market to its knees.

Konrad leaning on his Beetle, with the store bearing his name in the background

A claim to fame that a lot of people (fine, me too) like to bring up is multi-platinum artist Moby’s impressive endorsement of the store: he had his first “real job” at Johnny’s.

So did I.

I worked there for one summer around a decade ago, just before I became old enough for legal employment. For this reason, in lieu of a check, I got paid in CDs.¹ Be it working the register, unpacking new stock, organizing, or taking out the trash, each “shift” at Johnny’s took on a glow, a certain shimmer. Writing about those days, ten years later or thereabouts, I still light up. How many people get to work at indie record stores? I cherished the chance to do so.

With Konrad at the 50th celebration

I begged and pleaded to work there again over the following years. The trouble is, Johnny’s is a glowing ember, flicked away from the bonfire of musical passion. You may question its half-century of survival when you step inside and realize that you can stretch your arms out to touch each wall. The store can justify two, maybe three employees; as you might imagine, I was the “maybe third,” or even “maybe fourth.”

Cool people will always come to Johnny’s, as long as the shop defies logic and remains. Almost everyone who comes through the door is my kind of person. Once, I took a girl I knew, who went on to serve in the Navy, to flip through the place. Aware of her Led Zeppelin affinity, I underscored a particular Zep poster with a price of, if memory serves, $2,300. Or another time, standing in line for Record Store Day, I struck up a conversation with my buddy Grady, about legendary “I sit alone at lunch” rockers Primus. Grady went on to gain widespread notoriety as the singer of the band he had going at the time, Anxious.

Although Johnny’s is as small as a scale record store you’d buy for a train set, occasional events are held inside. In 2015, Dennis Dunaway, the sorely-overlooked original bass player of Alice Cooper (just listen to the billion-dollar bass work on “Billion Dollar Babies”), came in to do a book signing for his then-new book Snakes! Guillotines! Electric Chairs!, since he lived in the area. Meeting the man proved to be a delight, and I still have my copy, which he signed with (of course) “School’s Out Forever!”

Some leaves from my family tree have alighted on the storefront, too. You could say five leaves — I have Brett, my uncle, to thank for getting me into Nick Drake. Where did he buy Five Leaves Left, Drake’s debut, back in the day? Johnny’s.

Johnny checking me out (I bought the 40th anniversary of King Crimson’s Beat)

Going to Johnny’s on its 50th birthday reaffirmed my love for the joint. No, I never got into those Grateful Dead bastards, and their stoner clientele seems to be the shop’s bread and butter. That doesn’t matter; there’s something for everyone in this little treasure chest, and you always get a warm feeling when you have your latest purchase written down on a slip of paper — perhaps by Johnny Konrad himself.

I wish I could smoke nostalgia, because just about everything I write for this Substack runs on some form of in-depth, rear-facing love. The magic of Johnny’s, if you ask me, is its ability to generate nostalgia in any decade, the pure stuff you can get high on with a look back.

1. Yes, I prefer them to vinyl. You can play ‘em louder, they’re cheaper, and you still get something to hold.