​Every record collector has one that got away.

Maybe you sold it, gave it away, lost it during a move, or held it in your hands at a record store and decided you'd come back another day.

Sometimes it isn't even particularly rare or valuable. It just means something to you.

Steve didn't lose one record. He gave up his entire collection in the 1980s.

Decades later, he started buying it back.

That decision would eventually lead to a flea market, a small room in the back of a thrift shop, a dinosaur with a story stretching back to 1925, and The Vinyl Dinosaur, an independent record store in Bayville, New Jersey.
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But none of that was the plan.

Every major music city has places around it where culture grows quietly, just outside the noise, just beyond the spotlight.

New York has Jersey City.

Manchester has Bolton.

Toronto has Oakville.

And in Oakville, that place became PCV Records.

It didn’t start with confidence or a grand plan. It started with trepidation: a small shop called Pop Culture Vulture opening its doors without knowing if anyone would care.
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John, the owner, puts it plainly:

​Joshua, better known to many as Breezy, has a somewhat unusual double life.

He’s a school principal in Phoenix. He works with students, families and teachers. He leads a community.
And he also runs Tracks In Wax, a Phoenix record store that has been part of the city’s music culture since 1982.

On the surface, the two worlds might seem completely unrelated.

Breezy sees it differently.

“Both are really about people, relationships, and community.”
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That idea sits at the heart of how he approaches Tracks In Wax — not as something he simply owns, but as something he has been entrusted to carry forward.

McMaster. Laurier. Guelph. Western. Brock. Queen’s. Trent. Different campuses. Different traditions. Different rhythms.

Yet this fall, they’ll all share something unexpected.

As the new academic year begins, another tradition quietly returns. It doesn’t appear on orientation schedules or campus maps, but for thousands of students across Ontario, it has become one of the first moments where campus life feels truly alive.

Before lectures begin, students gather around folding tables stacked with hundreds of vinyl records.

Coffee in one hand, backpack slipping off the other shoulder, they flip through Fleetwood Mac, Bob Dylan, The Smiths, Nirvana, The Stone Roses, Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift, and jazz classics.

Someone laughs after finding an album their dad won’t stop talking about. Someone else holds up a record and says, “You have to hear this.” A first‑year student buys their very first LP. A seasoned collector finds a pressing they didn’t expect to see on campus.

Suddenly, the conversation isn’t about classes or exams. It’s about music — and memories.

Over the past several months, I’ve been connecting with record store owners, independent artists, and vinyl collectors as I’ve been building Vinyl Vibes​, sharing their stories and celebrating the culture that keeps vinyl alive.

Somewhere along that journey, I came across an incredible book called The Record Keepers by Josh Greenberg, a project built around digging into the stories behind Canada’s record stores and the people who keep them going.

I spent the past few weeks with Josh’s book — a bit strategically, honestly. I’d pair chapters with listening sessions, spinning albums like David Bowie’s Scary Monsters or Echo & the Bunnymen’s Songs to Learn and Sing. I started with the Ontario chapter and eventually journeyed coast to coast, discovering stories that made it feel like I was standing inside the shops myself.

That’s what made The Record Keepers such an enjoyable read for me. It isn’t simply a book about record stores. It’s about the people behind the counter, the customers walking through the door, the records they discover and the communities that form around them.

Walk into Kops Records today and you will still find what has made the store special for decades: walls of records, deep catalogue, and people who love music. But you will also notice something else — a new generation helping carry that history forward.

Founded in 1976, Kops has survived every major shift in how people discover music, from vinyl’s decline to CDs, downloads, streaming, and now the renewed excitement around physical records.

But record stores have never survived simply because of what is on the shelves. They survive because of the people who create the experience.
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Among those people is Taylar, a musician from Wellington, New Zealand, whose journey at Kops began behind the scenes and grew into a role helping connect the store with a new generation of listeners

Long before Elevated Music became a record store, it was a way for Bill to bring together everything music had given him.

Growing up just outside Vancouver, he started playing drums at ten years old and spent his teenage years chasing records with the same enthusiasm he brought to making music. While most people his age were buying the latest releases, Bill was already building a collection that stretched into the thousands.

​That obsession never really changed. It simply evolved.

By his mid-twenties, he was doing whatever he could to make music pay the bills. He recorded local artists, produced beats, played session drums, organized live events and sold records on the side. None of those jobs alone offered much security, but together they allowed him to keep building a life around music.

In 2011, at 25, he created Elevated Music—not as a record shop, but as the name for all of his creative work.

Millions of people travel to Ireland every year searching for something. For some, it's family history. For others, it's the landscapes, the pubs, the literature or the music. But most visitors are chasing something harder to define: a connection to a place that feels familiar even before they arrive.

It’s a feeling immigrants and their children know well. Ireland has a way of staying with you, even when life is built oceans away. Coming back isn’t just travel — it’s a return to something carried quietly for years.

I was born in Dublin but left as a child — too young to remember the city, yet old enough for it to stay with me. What did stay was the music. Irish music grew up with me, both trad and modern: the pulse of Fontaines D.C., the humour of The Mary Wallopers, the swagger of Thin Lizzy. And deeper still, the voices of The Dubliners, The Pogues, and The Chieftains.

When I came back to Ireland, visiting record shops mattered as much as seeing landmarks or connecting with people. I wasn’t just trying to see Dublin — I was trying to understand it.
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That search led me to Spindizzy Records, one of Dublin’s most iconic independent record shops.

​Ray didn't open Time & Again because he had a business plan. He opened it because one day, after 35 years in retail, he hit a wall, said "F— it," and built the record store he wished existed, not in Detroit or Milwaukee, but in Sturtevant, Wisconsin.

He'd already lived a whole life in music retail: raised on Beatles singles bought with paper-route money, working at Rose Records and Capitol Records, running a used record store alongside a young Al Jourgensen before Ministry was Ministry, and eventually writing two Beatles books.

Time & Again feels like the sum of all that experience.

On my last visit, I walked out with a DEBUT magazine-and-record combo featuring The Smiths, exactly the kind of piece Ray seems to save for the right person at the right moment.

So instead of telling his story for him, I asked Ray to tell it himself.
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Editor's Note: Time & Again celebrates nine years in business this July. The conversation below has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

​Every vinyl collector has a moment when a record store changes them — a moment when the world suddenly feels bigger, warmer, and full of possibility.
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For Doug Marsh, that moment happened in 1987. He wasn't trying to start a business. He was simply helping another shop track down an out-of-print Burton Cummings record. He walked into Dr. Disc in London, Ontario, and felt the same jolt every crate digger knows: this is where the magic happens.

​That spark became Record Works, a shop that has survived four decades, multiple format deaths, the rise of streaming, and the collapse of physical media.

But this isn't just a story about one store.
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It's a story about why record stores still matter.

You don’t ease into The Beat Goes On. You drop into it.

The first flip always feels like a test: a battered Roxy Music, a sun‑bleached Go-Go's sleeve, a Coltrane record that looks suspiciously like the one that sent you down a rabbit hole last year. You’re not even sure what you’re hunting for — only that if you hesitate, the person two crates over might get there first.

Used vinyl has stakes. Not dramatic ones — personal ones.

It’s the fear of missing something that feels like it was meant for you.
It’s the thrill of finding something you didn’t know you were ready for.
It’s the quiet electricity of touching objects that once lived in someone else’s home.
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This is the “bin moment.” And at The Beat Goes On, it’s the whole point.

That’s how one customer described Revolution Records — and honestly, it’s the perfect way to understand why this Ottawa Street North staple has become the heart of Hamilton’s vinyl community. If you’re exploring Hamilton’s record stores or looking for a place where music discovery still feels personal, this east‑end favourite has become a go‑to destination for collectors, music lovers, and anyone who believes in the magic of flipping through records in a welcoming space.
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Since opening in 2015, Revolution Records has grown into one of Hamilton’s most beloved independent record shops. Not because it competes with others, but because it contributes something uniquely its own: a friendly atmosphere, constantly rotating stock, and the kind of discoveries that make you stop mid‑flip and smile. It feels less like a retail store and more like a space built around the experience of caring about music.

Rob was one of the first readers to jump into the comments — not just to react, but to share a piece of his own history. He told me about the one record he’d never part with: a copy of End of the Century signed by the Ramones at Star Records in Hamilton back in May 1980.

Picture that for a second: Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, and Marky in a tiny local shop at King and Jame in downtown Hamilton, Sharpies in hand, signing a record that would outlive the store, the era, and maybe even the band itself.
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That’s the thing about vinyl. Sometimes you’re not just holding a record — you’re holding a piece of history, a moment that refuses to disappear, a story pressed into wax and memory.

And here’s the part that surprised me: I didn’t learn this from research. I learned it from the comments.

​Every story in this piece comes from readers — people who showed up to share their experiences, their memories, their passions, and the moments that shaped their relationship with music. This isn’t just an article. It’s a conversation. A community. A living archive.