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Business & Tech

A Vinyl Replay in Seal Beach

Left of the Dial puts a retro spin on the traditional--and vanishing--record store.

Small businesses are a labor of love by their very nature. Opening a record store in 2010 requires an even bigger measure of passion–if not sanity –than the average start-up.

Geoff Leamon, owner of Left of the Dial Records in Seal Beach does not suffer a lack of enthusiasm for his venture. The newly opened store on Pacific Coast Highway is the only traditional record store in Seal Beach and one of just a handful around the county.

"I don't want to be a museum," says Leamon. "I want people to be able to come in and feel like they can buy something, not look at something up on the wall that's too pricey."

Left of the Dial's buyer and vinyl expert Lance Mountain, sees the store as a social counterweight to the isolated process of downloading music. "It's a place where you can come in and learn and talk. That's what the youth need instead of just clicking something on iTunes. They can ask, 'How is this record?' " said Mountain. "Music is a great outlet–it saved me."

If Mountain's name sounds familiar, it may be because his father is pro skater Robert Lance Mountain. "That's where I was exposed to great music," says Mountain. "Because he was traveling the world getting great music."

Leamon and Mountain put their money where their mouths are. Most days they can be found side-by-side behind the store's counter. With obscure power pop and dub reggae playing overhead, the soft-spoken, bespectacled Leamon enthusiastically discusses the Replacements and Rolling Stones, and the black haired Mountain animatedly talks about the Clash and Prince Far I.

"I grew up in the Bay Area,"says Leamon. "A lot of the record stores in San Francisco--the Haight-Ashbury shops--they had a real eclectic mix. They weren't huge stores, but it felt that everything they had was something I had to have. That's what we're trying to go after."

It's the sort of environment that fostered in Leamon and Mountain a love of music and its most celebrated physical form--the vinyl record. "I'm old fashioned. I still prefer having the liner notes and everything," says Leamon. "Kids are starting to realize that--that they can have something to look at, and it's art."

Digital distribution upped the convenience of acquiring music, but something was left behind. "An MP3 can be randomly anywhere in the air, at any given time," says Mountain. "You can't hold it. You can't read it. You can't sit down by the fire and look at the invisible album cover. That's what's great about a record."

That's something that Leamon feels Seal Beach needed: The way that the record stores of his youth are equally tied to a place and time. "I like the vibe in Seal Beach," he says. "It seems like a really cool town that needed something like this."

If Leamon and Mountain are trying to recreate the classic small record store that largely vanished over the last decade, there are some things about the original mix that they want to leave to the past. "We don't want to be that snobby record store cliché like Jack Black's character from High Fidelity," says Leamon. "We'd never make it. And maybe we can educate people about music they've never heard before."

At the store's November grand opening, shoppers responded to the store's uncommon selection. "It's just mind-blowing to come in here and see a 13th Floor Elevators' record," Long Beach resident Garth Pyeatt, said of the early psychedelic rock band. "So many people are going back to vinyl. Just the feeling you get from hearing the pops and hisses. You can feel the sound in ways you don't get from a CD."

Though vinyl is often seen as a cultural artifact from the pre-1980s, Leamon and Mountain envision young music lovers as part of their shopping base. "There's a kid who comes into the store. He's probably nine. His favorite band is [British Invasion band] the Zombies," says Leamon. "You don't find too many nine year olds into the Zombies. I'm a huge Zombies fan. If I found a Zombies record I would give him the option of buying it first, because that's pretty amazing to me--that there are kids out there who are listening to the Zombies."

"He's into really good music," adds Mountain, "for a nine year old."

The store's inventory is roughly 80 percent vinyl, 10 percent CD and cassette,  and 10 percent accessories. Currently the store is divided into sections for punk, blues, jazz, reggae, vinyl singles and 45s, vinyl re-issues, surf music and used vinyl. "We're trying to cater to surf music and always trying to add to it based on where we are," says Leamon.

And for anyone wondering about the store's name--it's the title of a song by the Replacements. "That [left side of the radio dial] is where all the best college radio stations were, and that's where I got my influence," he said. "It all seemed to fit."

Since opening last month, Leamon gets asked the same question daily. '"How do you plan on making it selling records,"' parrots Leamon."It's to our advantage that the big-name chain stores are getting away from music. It's sad that it's happening, but it works to our advantage ... I look at it as the glass half full."

"In my case," adds Mountain, "the glass has been tipped over."

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