“I was at a friend’s house in 7th grade. It was the first time he had invited me over because he had recently won a contest on KROQ and Grouplove was coming over to play at his house.”
“While we waited for the band to show up I was introducing myself to his house and particularly his room. As I walked around I began to shrink, getting smaller and smaller as I walked. Everything in the room was foreign and unspeakably cool to me. Posters of bands I didn’t know, instruments I’d never seen, and a giant record collection. I had never seen a vinyl record before, but I knew what they were. I couldn’t believe how cool this kid was that he had gone out himself and bought these records—it was a level of commitment to a band and music that meant a lot to me for some reason. (He went on to form Slow Hollows.)
By the time the band had arrived and began to play, I was still in his room sifting through all of these records. I was so infatuated by them that I begged him to let me take one home with me. I persuaded him to give me a Youth Brigade LP even though I didn’t have any way of playing it.
After that, buying records became an obsession. I was also skating everywhere at this time and the two obsessions had a marital effect, skating all day then going to the record store (Freakbeat) and straight to the dollar bin to buy the first name I recognized or the first album cover that peaked my interests. Some of the first in my collection were John Lennon’s Mind Games Devo’s Q: Are We Not Men… and a single pressing of the Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love” and an eBay purchase of Blink 182’s Dude Ranch.
This was still a year or two before every band under the sun started reissuing their records on 180 gram vinyl, so there wasn’t that much to find. It was all based on intuition and whatever the guy behind the counter had in stock that he thought I might like. Freakbeat Records is the only record store left on Ventura Blvd. in the valley. (Second Spin was cool too but that is gone now.) Being a valley boy myself and not wanting to make the bus trek to Amoeba in Hollywood, it was huge for me. I owe most of my taste to that record store and the guys that have come in and out of there. It became a thing that I looked forward to after school and on the weekends.
Keep in mind that I had bought about a hundred records until I had even saved up enough money to buy a turntable and receiver. Looking back it’s crazy to me to think that just owning the records themselves and looking at them was enough to keep going back and buying more, but it was. My first set up wasn’t that great but it gave me the chance to see if all the money spent was worth it since this was still a year before Spotify totally took over and I never really used iTunes. So I really had no idea if what I had bought was any good, but I was lucky enough to have some matching taste influencing my purchasing.
I now have thousands of records as do the other members in my band, and I’m not going to end this with the bullshit hipster commandment that “I love them because they just sound better,” because I also am a subscriber to most streaming services. But it has become part of my core identity just because of some yet to be explained fascination from a young age. And I’m grateful for the time I’ve spent searching for what I’ve found, the good and bad.”
—Charlie Anastasis
“I Can Fool Anybody In This Town,” the new EP from Liily, is in stores now—on vinyl.
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TOUR DATES:
Sep 7 – Lawrence, KS – The Granada Theater ^
Sep 8 – St. Louis, MO – The Ready Room ^
Sep 10 – Indianapolis, IN – Deluxe at Old National Centre ^
Sep 11 – Pittsburgh, PA – Mr. Smalls Theatre ^
Sep 13 – Cincinnati, OH – 20th Century Theater ^
Sep 14 – Louisville, KY – Headliners Music Hall ^
Sep 17 – Cleveland, OH – House of Blues ^
Sep 18 – Buffalo, NY – Town Ballroom ^
Sep 20 – Albany, NY – Lucky Strike Social ^
Sep 21 – Montreal, CA – Le Ministere ^
Sep 22 – Portland, ME – Port City Music Hall ^
Sep 24 – Baltimore, MD – Rams Head Live ^
Sep 26 – Asheville, NC – The Orange Peel ^
Sep 27 – Richmond, VA – The National ^
Sep 28 – Charleston, SC – Music Farm ^
Oct 1 – Ponte Vedra Beach, FL – Ponte Vedra Concert Hall ^
Oct 2 – Orlando, FL – The Beacham ^
Oct 4 – Birmingham, AL – WorkPlay Soundstage ^
Oct 5 – Little Rock, AR – Revolution Music Room ^
Oct 6 – Tulsa, OK – Cain’s Ballroom ^
Oct 8 – San Antonio, TX – Paper Tiger ^
Oct 9 – El Paso, TX – The Lowbrow Palace ^
Oct 11 – Phoenix, AZ – The Van Buren ^
Oct 12 – Pomona, CA – The Glass House ^
Oct 25-27 – New Orleans, LA – Voodoo
^ supporting Bad Suns
