Everyone loves a resident pooch. Visitors to the recently open Goldmine Records in North Fitzroy may be greeted by their newest team member and head of customer service, Noodle – an affectionate, six-month-old Dalmatian/Bull Arab cross who hasn’t quite grown into her enormous paws yet. She joined the family earlier this month, and her bed sits just behind the counter.
“She gets very excited,” says Noodle’s and Goldmine Records owner Ben Hill, who has been occupying this new space on St Georges Road for around five weeks, in addition to his Carlton North shopfront, which is now in its 23rd year of operation.
After experiencing such success, in particularly the last two years with the flourishing vinyl revival, opening a second location seemed like the right thing to do. Like most passionate vinyl-lovers, he’d also accumulated so much stock to fit in one shop. He secured the new site (conveniently and deliciously across the road from the famous Danny’s Burgers) after a thankfully brief property search. Seemingly perfectly located, it’s just far enough away from other record stores, and just close enough to their existing store. While they both hold the Goldmine Records title, Hill is determined to create and maintain a differential between them. Since announcing the opening in March, over 1,000 new and different titles have been added to Goldmine’s total assortment of LPs.
“Our aim is to give both shops their own identity and keep the stock pretty different and really utilise that close proximity between the two,” he says. “We’ve always kept our range pretty general and across the board in terms of genres and the new shop has allowed us to really explore more genres in greater depth.” Genre-wise, they don’t discriminate, and pride themselves in generalising, rather than specialising.
“The Carlton shop has specific sections for jazz/blues, soul/funk/R&B, with a general selection of all other genres, rock, pop, indie, etc from the ‘50s onward… Since opening the Fitzroy shop, we’ve stocked over 1500 new vinyl titles and we now have sections for reggae/dub, punk, metal, industrial, electronica, classical, world, folk/country and pop, plus expanded sections for local artists, soundtracks and hip hop,” says Ben. “We’ve also expanded our range of turntables, stereo equipment and vinyl accessories, such as styli, cartridges and cleaning products.”
Goldmine Records looks new, the polished concrete floor giving the place a professional feel, the records are displayed neatly on the wall and in fresh timber shelves. There’s absolutely nothing slapdash about the layout of Goldmine; everything is organised and everything has its place, and with the addition of the new shop, they’ve been able to expand their selection exponentially.
To celebrate Record Store Day on Saturday April 18 and the opening of their new store, Goldmine Records will be throwing a huge afternoon shindig in North Fitzroy and both stores will be open earlier than usual. “We’re really looking forward to RSD this year,” enthuses Hill. “Last year was pretty crazy and we’re hoping this year will be completely insane. We have loads of exclusive RSD releases [at both stores] plus two local bands playing in-store at the Fitzroy shop.”
Hill and the team will be pushing back the crates and shelves to make way for politically-driven, post-punk/Goth rockers Masses, and TØL. As is generally the way in the Melbourne music scene there are good, personal connections to both outfits. “Tessa from the Fitzroy shop plays bass in [Masses],” he says, “and she knows TØL… [There] might even be some giveaways on the day and free licks from Noodle.
“Our philosophy is that everyone should have music in their life, whether it’s in a love of vinyl, CDs, tapes or MP3, and whatever genre, we don’t care,” says Hill. “We’re just happy to help everyone find that special tune to make their day just a bit better.” Amen to that.
