LIFESTYLE

Record Archive throwing itself a birthday party

Jeff Spevak
@jeffspevak1

While virtually all aspects of the music-retail industry were struggling in 2008, Record Archive co-owners Dick Storms and Alayna Alderman made a nervy decision: They would expand.

Did it work? "We're still here," Storms says, as Record Archive kicks off its year-long 40th anniversary celebration this weekend.

"Here" is relative geography for Record Archive. From its humble beginnings at a flea market, the current location at 33 1/3 Rockwood St., off of East Avenue near the Interstate 490 and 590 interchange, is the sixth for the store.

The weekend celebration begins with a 6 to 9 p.m. Friday ticketed event in the party room that the Archive opened earlier this year, with music by The Bradley Brothers, food, drink and a clear-vinyl scavenger hunt. Tickets ($20) are available at the Archive and the event's sponsor, WLGZ-FM (102.7), by calling (585) 264-1027.

The next two days are free. Saturday's event runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with music by Friday in America at 11:15 a.m., Teressa Wilcox at 1 p.m. and Anonymous Willpower at 2:45 p.m., with food trucks in the parking lot.

The Sunday wrap-up is from 2 to 4 p.m., with music by Andy Babiuk's Fab Gear Rock 'n Roll Academy and performances by students from Fab Gear's It's Only Rock 'n Roll Summer Camp.

It's been a year of note for indie record stores in Rochester. The House of Guitars celebrated its 50th anniversary earlier this year when it was inducted into the Rochester Music Hall of Fame. Both stores built their counterculture-cool rep with the aid of locally legendary TV commercials, with the Archive's featuring Storms as the Dancing Record Man.

The Archive's latest home was actually a move of necessity, with the store's fifth location at 1880 East Ave. the odd-business out in a real-estate shuffle. While Storms and co-owner Alderman searched for a new home, it was clear that the music-retail market was downsizing with the recession.

"Chains were closing down, Tower Records was in the process of Chapter 11, all the major chains were pulling back," Storms says. "And they were competing against plenty of free music sites. Which was turning into a fad, actually."

Independent stores like Archive were struggling as well. Storms recalls one California indie store's customers taking home their purchases in bags printed with gravestones "marking all of his competitors that had fallen."

Yet Storms and Alderman ran off in the other direction, deciding to grow.

"My strategy was to put as much stuff on floor space as possible, and offer something for everyone," Storms says. "Capture every record buyer. What remained of them."

"We loved the neighborhood and wanted to stay there," Alderman says. "As soon as we saw that warehouse space, we knew it was for us."

The diversification of its inventory took the Archive beyond CDs and an extensive stock of vinyl records, just as vinyl was seeing an upswing in sales. The extent of the Archive's expansion isn't revealed to the shopper until he or she walks about 15 yards into the store, turns a corner and peers down onto a floor space nearly the size of a football field: a vast cornucopia of vintage clothing, furniture, toys, stereo equipment, knickknacks, fiberglass sharks, a gallery space for local artists and a stage for in-store performances.

"I wanted them to come around that corner," Alderman says, "and have that 'Wow' factor."

JSPEVAK@DemocratandChronicle.com

Twitter.com/JeffSpevak1