Vinyl score Minimalist dream subsumed by newfound infatuation with LP records By: David Sanderson Posted: 1:00 PM CST Friday, Jan. 26, 2024

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/01/2024 (770 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Peter Dul was among the scores of music lovers who spun by the late, great Sound Exchange in November, to attend a clearance sale being staged at the one-time vinyl mecca.

The Portage Avenue shop, which closed following the death of owner Jeff Bishop a few years ago, boasted close to 200,000 titles during its heyday in the 1970s and ’80s, when Bishop’s dad Tom, Sound Exchange’s founder, was in charge.

Dul, the owner of Duly Records, a used-record store conspicuously situated inside an Ellice Avenue flea market, arrived there like everybody else, hoping to score a few hidden gems.

The 55-year-old’s mindset began to change, however, when the parties responsible for the sale recognized him, and let him know that besides what could be seen on the main floor, there were tens of thousands more records and assorted treasures in the basement.

“I’ll tell you what,” Dul announced after taking a closer look. “You guys finish what you’re doing up here and when the sale’s through, I’ll buy everything that’s left, including what’s downstairs.”

Not only did the two sides strike a deal, Dul is hosting a pop-up sale of his own at that same location, 557 Portage Ave., this weekend, from 1-8 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

“I’ve literally been there 10 hours a day, six days a week, since the start of December, cleaning, sorting and categorizing,” says Dul, leaning back against a counter in his vendor space at Thirsty’s Flea Market, 1111 Ellice Ave., where he’s rocking a dark Wilco T-shirt and jeans.

The plan is to hold a monthly sale there until the end of April, when the building’s new owners are slated to take possession, he adds, pointing out the 1,000 or so titles he’s already transferred over to Thirsty’s represent a fraction of what remains.

“This is by far the biggest project I’ve ever been involved with, and even though people have said it would have been easier to buy the place, to me, it will forever be regarded as the Sound Exchange, and I’m still busy trying to brand myself.”

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London Calling, the 1979 masterpiece by English rockers the Clash, was the first record Dul recalls buying with his own money. The “good North End boy” continued purchasing albums now and again, but it wasn’t until the advent of compact discs in the late ’80s that he got more serious about music as a hobby.

He became what some might term a CD nerd, by building a fairly extensive collection focused primarily on jazz and big-band music, he says, speaking loudly enough to be heard over a Yes album playing in the background.

Six years ago, Dul was at his home on Scotia Street when he started to feel overwhelmed by the vast amount of “stuff” filling every room of the one-and-a-half storey abode; not just records and CDs, but sports cards, furniture, kitchen gadgetry… you name it. Enough was enough, he decided; he would sell the house along with its contents and move into a bachelor suite, where he would proceed to live as a minimalist.

He did precisely that, keeping a single recliner, as well as a cube shelving unit for his stereo, his primary source of entertainment.

As for the latter, he’d need something to listen to, of course, so he made a second promise to himself: he would fill one shelf, and one shelf only, with a carefully curated selection of ’80s new wave by favoured groups such as the Fixx, Tears For Fears and Level 42, then call it quits.

Things were going along swimmingly until the afternoon he stopped by a garage sale in the Maples run by a woman whose late husband once owned a downtown record store. So much for his personal pledge; he bought every last album available, to the tune of 20,000, give or take an ABBA.

The same scenario played out months later, when he scooped up a comparable amount of wax at a private sale in Fort Rouge. In order to recoup some of what he’d spent, along with the fact he was now renting a house to store the lot, he began peddling some of his platters via a business model best described as “have vinyl, will travel.”

Dul, a Creative Communications grad from Red River College Polytechnic, placed ads on Facebook and Kijiji, offering to come to private workplaces with his Toyota Prius stuffed to the gills with records. Interested parties would venture outside on their coffee or lunch break, to sift through crates stashed in the rear hatch.

Through those interactions, he made connections with “this incredible cast of characters” — vinyl dealers and fellow collectors, mostly — which caused him to consider a more permanent setup.

This spring will mark five years since Dul started renting a solitary booth at Thirsty’s. His footprint there has increased five-fold since his first day on the job, and presently measures close to 1,400 square feet, about what you’ll find at many of the city’s stand-alone record shops.

“When people ask, I call this an independent record store that just so happens to be in a flea market,” he says, noting he’s generally open Friday through Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., as well as major holidays that fall on a Monday.

The majority of his regular clientele, which he jokingly refers to as “all the 19-year-old gals and all the 60-year-old men,” don’t view his operation as a vendor space, he says, but rather as their preferred record depot.

As for what’s up for grabs, Dul stocks every genre under the sun, from classic rock and punk to funk and disco to classical and jazz. He can never have too many copies of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours or Pink Floyd’s The Wall, or “absolutely anything” by the likes of the Beatles, Prince and a certain queen of country.

“If you’d told me five years ago that Dolly Parton would be one of my biggest sellers, I’d have said you were out of your mind, yet here we are,” he says, running a hand through his grey-speckled, shoulder-length hair.

Although Dul figures he’ll eventually have to get a bricks-and-mortar location of his own, mainly owing to the fact a large percentage of his inventory, which includes stereo equipment, VHS concert tapes, audio cassettes and the odd Walkman, is kept in an off-site storage locker, there are definitely advantages to his current situation.

For starters, there’s little overhead and ample parking. Secondly, he’s been able to purchase sizable record collections as far west as Grenville, Sask., and as far east as Thunder Bay, wholly thanks to his surroundings.

“There’s a ton of people from small towns who wouldn’t dream of going to a record store when they come to Winnipeg, but who love poking around flea markets,” he says.

“They’ll notice me and mention that either they or somebody in their family has boxes of records in the basement. The next thing I know, I get a call from Ste. Anne or The Pas, which never would have occurred if I wasn’t here.”

(About those treks; Dul has a steel-trap memory, and enjoys letting potential customers know where he unearthed a record that has caught their fancy, whether it was when he was crawling over motorcycle parts in a Lockport garage, or kneeling in a crawl space in Neepawa.)

“The entire plan when I started Duly Records was to hopefully get myself in the conversation of being one of the city’s premier vintage-vinyl dealers, along with Greg (Tonn, Into the Music), Ray (Giguere, Argy’s Records) and Cavin (Borody, Winnipeg Record & Tape Co.),” he says, mentioning nothing warms his heart more than when a person lets him know Duly Records, Duly being his school nickname, is where they garnered their first album.

“The Sound Exchange purchase puts me up around 100,000 items, so yeah, I like to think I’m getting close to achieving that goal.”

For more information on this weekend’s sale and on future events, go to Instagram.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca