Defiantly Local

Fred’s Records
198 Duckworth Street
St. John’s, Newfoundland
www.freds.nf.ca

Downtown St. John’s is a landscape dotted with color.  Every color, in fact.  Duckworth Street, a main drag just a sturdy block up from St. John’s harbour, is pretty much all two or three-story, woodlap-sided frame buildings.  It’s the kind of main street that city planners dream about with thriving retail stores on the ground floor and apartments or low-foot-traffic businesses above.  The buildings are painted every color of the rainbow, and a few are painted colors that nature never intended.  The street is busy nearly every hour of the day and maintains a fair amount of traffic after the shops close, the pub crawlers making their way up to the restaurants for late night silly food.

In a vibrant purple building with gold lettering reading “For the Record, It’s Fred’s,” houses Fred’s Records.  Not only is this place a St. John’s tradition for finding just the right music, it exudes the kind of local cool lost nearly everywhere in the States.  As one who tearfully said goodbye to entire afternoons spent in Tower Records on Sunset, finding this unpretentious haven of both popular and rare CDs was heaven on earth. 

Independent record stores are rare these days as they try to compete with megastores with mega-discounts and iTunes.  Yet stepping inside Fred’s is like stepping into a record store of a decade ago, a place seemingly unaffected by malls, Best Buy, and download capabilities.  Passing the door onto hardwood floors, shoppers are greeted by both unbelievable numbers of wood bins lining the walls and floors and a staff that knows when to let them alone and when to offer suggestions.  Colorful posters for both albums released and concert past adorn the walls and even some windows.  T-shirts hang in the rear corner, and vinyl albums rest under the bins for both those who love the scratch and the music that was never released on compact disc.

Just inside the front door is the standard rack of top selling albums.  In this case, CDs by Great Big Sea, the Navigators, Ron Hynes, and Buddy Wasisname (all worth checking out, by the way) were joined by copies of the Gerald S. Doyle songbook from 1966, another rare item of Newfoundland tradition.  In exploring the racks, all of the usual U.S. and Canadian acts are represented, though Fred’s carries maybe four copies of their CDs instead of the thirty found in the megastores, and with good reason.  They have to make room in the racks for all of the great musical finds.  This is the one-stop-shop that carries not only the greatest hits, but the albums cut by the bands heard in the pubs on George Street.  Fred’s supports local artists, many of whom could stay in the CD player for days on end.

My maiden voyage to St. John’s was this summer and Fred’s was a lovely surprise.  Though, clearly, the American woman on a solo mission scouring the racks was going to need some guidance.  An employee named Steve wandered over to help.  I already had a handful of music and two copies of the Gerald S. Doyle songbook when he reached me. He asked what I was looking for and my response was a basic, “Pretty much anything.  What do you have?”

He introduced me to a couple of things on the listening station, told me about some national Canadian acts I was missing, and guided me to the Navigators CD I was looking for in the local section.  We talked about blues, the States, and a little about St. John’s, but mostly about the new music I was about to be ripping to my hard drive in very short order.  Then, he let me wander for awhile longer, ask random questions, and then changed the music on the store stereo to an artist he thought I should hear.

My final selections made, I set the stack of CDs on the counter, assuring myself that the conversion rate would be kind to me and I wasn’t actually spending as much as I thought I was.  As he was ringing up the CDs, Steve held up several selections and his notes of “excellent choice” and “you’re smart to grab these Doyle books, that’s all we have,” actually meant something.  Fred’s has a staff that knows quality and tries to steer customers in the right direction.  It’s a kind of customer service that’s mostly lost these days. 

Next time you’re in the market for CDs, especially by Canadian artists, check out Fred’s.  You don’t have to go to St. John’s.  They’re on-line and ship everywhere, and I bet if you called them and told them what you’re looking for, they’d have three more suggestions of things you’ll like.  The Amazon.com or .ca databases assume that customers will like certain items by what they’ve purchased, but it occasionally steers customers very wrong.  At Fred’s, a human gauges customers’ reactions to items and knows the product backward and forward. 

In defiance of the download and discount store trend, Fred’s Records is a tradition.  Check them out and let Steve know what you’re thinking - he won’t steer you wrong.