Back in November, Paragon Sight and Sound (Ann Arbor, MI) hosted Analog Night, which included a visit by Analog Planet/Stereophile vinyl journalist Michael Fremer, who I may have mentioned here in the recent past. Unfortunately I didn’t hear about it in time, but those who attended mentioned that it was an informative get-together.

Apparently Fremer had some time to visit another popular area attraction: Encore Records. Cool Cleveland caught up with him at the store, and he gave a few pointers on how he shops for used records. Turns out it’s nothing really too different than what those of us vinyl addicts do. I do many of the same things myself when I first set foot into an unfamiliar shop, which is similar to how my other vinyl hunting pals approach the task. I’m sure many of my fellow forum members do the same as well. We each have our own ways of doing it, but the basics remain. We scope out the shop to see how deep their selection is, we check titles we are familiar with to gauge prices, and we examine records closely for condition. A store with 40 ratty copies of Eagles Greatest Hits at $10 each is certainly not one I’ll remain at for long!

Here’s a glimpse of Fremer’s visit to Encore:

This is a store you can get lost in for a couple of hours. And I found it amusing that he located one of the bazillion copies of the Miles Davis You’re Under Arrest LPs that most record stores seem to be stuck with.