Brian's Record Option - A Classic Spin
Kingston boosters have lots of claims about the things that make this place unique.
Fort Henry was home to nineteenth century remittance men, dissolute toffs from upper crust families paid by their Victorian parents to stay away from home. It remains a 21st century tourist attraction. But other cities from Quebec City to Niagara-on-the-Lake boast forts.
Lately local anniversary retailers have been working themselves up into a lather about 2015, when John A. Macdonald would have turned 200. He lives on among those who subscribe to the Great Man theory of history. But the only significant landmark that smacks of The Old Chieftain is Bellevue House, where he lived for a few short years before becoming famous.
We can boast about City Hall, designed by pioneering architect George Brown. An imposing structure, it’s certainly worth a gander. Inside hang portraits of Great Men of local significance, Kingston’s former mayors.
Indeed, if uniqueness is what it takes for Kingston to live up to what was once its official slogan – You’ll Be Amazed! – we have to look elsewhere. The prisons come to mind most immediately. This is Canada’s jail capital. We have a great prison museum. But for some reason few seem to be boasting about the penitentiaries.
In fact, if you’re looking for uniqueness – and many a tourist is doing just that – you have to wonder along Princess Street just below Division. There, nestled among the student drinking spots that are free of anything but corporate character, you’ll find a place that really is unique to Kingston. Downtown Kingston. Without the exclamation mark.
It’s a record shop. One that oozes character. An overflowing waste basket sits atop a dusty old turntable just inside the door. Both seem to be threatened by a teetering bookshelf jammed with a haphazard collection of biographies. The carpet has not had even a passing acquaintance with a vacuum cleaner.
The state of the place is not, however, what makes it unique. Although the proprietor surely stands alone among concept-conscious retailers by cultivating an image of grottiness. The fact is that I have never been in a store where you can learn so much, where there’s such a stunning array of stuff on offer.
I’m referring, of course, to Brian’s Record Option.
If, for some reason, you’re numbed by nostalgia for bubblegum rock, you will surely be able to find that elusive vinyl disc by The Archies. Stonewall Jackson and Charlie Pride are on offer along with Black Sabbath and the Bee Gees. There is a good classical section and a respectable collection of jazz. During the rigorous investigation that produced this article on a thick vinyl disc marked “Hi-Fi: Living Sound Fidelity,” a copy of a Berlin performance by Ella Fitzgerald from the early ‘60s. Brain’s is also the right spot should you want a poster advertising the Meatloaf classic Bat Out of Hell.
The store stocks over eighty thousand new and used vinyl discs, five thousand cassettes and ten thousand CDs. Students, a mainstay of this permanent jumble sale, love poring over the countless posters. “Awesome! Led Zeppelin.”
All of this, plus the musician biographies, poster books and a ready supply of used turntables, makes Brian’s a browser’s paradise. Despite the fact that the display of old 45s looks like it has been arranged by a snowblower.
A young teenager once came in and, looking up at a poster, remarked, “Hey! That’s Julian Lennon’s father.” The lad’s own father could only look sheepish, but the man with the Lennon-like wire rimmed spectacles who is always standing behind the counter let out one of the stentorian guffaws familiar to anyone who has ever passed more than a few moments in Brian’s.
If his Record Option is unique, so is Brian. If he knew a lot about music – particularly folk, blues, country and rock – before he first opened thirty years ago, he an encyclopedia now. I asked him about Lads, the store cat who was once a fixture in the store.
Lads dies awhile ago and Brian recalled how he would always sit on the counter display of the alphabetized cassette tapes, right over the Ms. This led to a discussion of early Van Morrison recordings. Apparently Astral Weeks was not the Belfast Cowboy’s first album, as I had always thought. There’s an early disc, a collector’s item on Bang Records. Brian even knew the name of that label’s owner.
“Every few years I ask myself if I’m making enough money to get by and if I’m still happy,” explains Brian. “If the answer is ‘Yes,’ then I renew the lease.”
Sounds like a fine business philosophy, not to mention a philosophy of working life.
Brian sports a long, unevenly trimmed beard and describes himself as a “weird guy” because he likes to work alone. He has never really had any employees, just the odd temporary person hired to sort the massive inventory. The sorting, however, obviously never got completed. Besides, Brian isn’t alone very often. People are always in the store, browsing.
Over the years Internet sales have grown. But the idea of ramping up the business to make more money has little appeal.
“Gradually the Internet stuff will take over the income, but I could never close the store because I’d never be able to talk to people from behind the counter.”
Sounds like a sensible view of arranging your life.
Originally from Montreal, Brian jokes that by the time he finished his university studies in sociology, psychology and criminology, he knew that he was prepared to run a record store. He did a survey of Ontario cities and decided on Kingston, “a very boring city at the time.”
But the location right between Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, the large student population and the growing tourist trade convinced him that this was the place to go into business. So he joined what he describes as “alternative” business like Phase 2, Tara Natural Foods and Chez Piggy that were emerging at the time.
Brian has an uncanny sense of his inventory, despite the clutter. He reports that there are “some real gems” in the basement.
A young customer who’s younger than Brian’s store asks if he has something by The Pariahs. Diving into the nether world that is the back of the shop, Brian soon returns with a copy of Home Is Where You Hang Yourself.
I summon up the nerve and pick my way to the back of the store, uncharted terrain for all but the most intrepid browsers. I’m finally deterred by a landslide of rolled-up posters.
“Some guy was going through my Christmas posters and made a real mess back there,” says Brian, with no apparent attempt at irony. “It hasn’t been the same since.”
What makes Brian’s Record Option unique is that there’s no other place like it anywhere. At least that I know of. If you’ve never visited, it’s worth exploring this Kingston institution.
You’ll be amazed.
A version of this article appeared several years ago in the PIC Press
Posted on July 4, 2010
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