MONACA ― They’ve needed to rent storage space, and a moving truck that nearly bit the dust, but an acquisition of 50,000 records has infused new energy and purpose to InnerGroove Records in the borough.
“You don’t realize how big of a collection 50,000 records is until you see it,” InnerGroove employee Ian Sallese said.
Word of mouth is spreading about the collection, originally amassed by a Florida man drawing from many musical genres.
The Smiths, Iron Maiden, The Ramones, Bell Biv DeVoe and David Bowie.
Yngwie Malmsteen, The Plasmatics, Prince and Parliament Funkadelic.
From Don Henley to LL Cool J, and lots of soundtracks, ranging from classic movies (“Sixteen Candles”) to cult favorites (“The Lost Boys” “Fright Night”) to breakthroughs (Spike Lee’s “School Daze”) to forgettable flops (“Buster” starring Phil Collins).
There’s definitely a bonanza of ’80s music, especially metal, ranging from giants of the genre like Ozzy Osbourne and Dio-era Black Sabbath, to overlooked bands like Gravestone and Saxon.
Flipping through a crate of long-play vinyl albums in the InnerGroove breakroom/storage area on Oct. 10, owner Michael Pavlinch heard from an employee manning the cash register that a potential customer in the store wanted to know if they carried “Restless & Wild,” a 1982 Accept album that had preceded that German band’s lone hit, “Balls to The Wall.” Pavlinch flipped through the crate, and seconds later, sure enough, found a vinyl copy of “Restless & Wild” that looked in mint condition. Minutes later, that album was in a bag under the arm of the customer headed to his car.
Those ’80s metal fans, predominantly guys, can get fussy about the conditions of any albums they purchase – they want it pristine,” Sallese said – though they’re also among the loyalist of customers for any record store.
InnerGroove quickly sold $400 to $500 worth of metal records from the newly acquired collection.
It’s greatly welcomed cash, as sales had started to stagnate at the three-year-old store before the infusion of new stock arrived. There were instances when devout collectors showed up at InnerGroove, looking for specific albums InnerGroove didn’t carry, though Pavlinch believes there’s a great chance they’ll now find exactly what they wanted, or at least something else too tempting to resist.
“I’m so happy that happened,” Pavlinch said. “Not only did it save the store, but it was an experience.”
Indeed, those records weren’t easy to wrangle.
The experience
People often call InnerGroove looking to sell record collections, but Pavlinch never heard an offer as substantial as the one he got three months ago.
A guy from the Connellsville area wanted to sell 50,000 records once proudly owned by his recently deceased brother – a Florida man who had kept to himself, eschewing a social life. When finished working the night shift at 11 p.m., the avid collector would go straight home and listen to the latest vinyl finds he purchased the weekend before.
“He wasn’t biased at all. He’d buy anything,” Pavlinch said. “When he bought brand-new records, he’d open them up, play them one time and set them aside, and not play them again because he had so much. There was no reason to listen again. And that’s something you don’t see in collections of like 500 records, because if you have 500 records, you play them a bunch of times, especially if they’re from 1986.”
The Florida collector was in his late 60s or early 70s when he took ill. Heeding his brother’s advice, he moved to western Pennsylvania, renting a house just to store his records, which took over the basement. The brothers paid $6,000 in professional shipping to move the collection north.
Even when failing health forced him into hospice care, the avid collector urged his brother to take care of the records. After he died, the Connellsville sibling began searching for a good home for those records, reaching out to a few Allegheny County record stores that passed on the $25,000 purchase price.
When contacted initially, Pavlinch passed, too, thinking the price was too high. He recommended the seller try Music to My Ear, a record store in Ross Township. Three weeks later, Music to My Ear’s Chris Kardasz called his friend Pavlinch and suggested they team up to buy the collection. Pavlinch agreed.
“Chris decided to do this because he’s looking for about 400 records to fill the gaps in his Billboard Top-100 records of each year since 1955,” Pavlinch said. “He looks at them first and pulls what he needs for his collection. The remaining albums stay with the store. After we recover Chris’s $12,500, he has agreed to let me have what is left.”
When first inspecting the condition of the records, Pavlinch randomly pulled stacked boxes to examine. He still hasn’t found the time to go through much of the collection.
Getting those records to Beaver County was difficult.
Pavlinch rented a 26-foot moving truck, the largest he could find. He, Sallese and three helpers spent four-and-a-half hours packing the truck front-to-back, floor-to-ceiling, with cardboard shipping boxes and wooden cubes.
“After we loaded up the truck, we had just enough room to close the door,” Pavlinch said.
The InnerGroove gang noticed the truck’s tires looked low, so they stopped at a Ford dealership for an industrial-sized tire compressor to add air. One of the doubled-up rear driver’s side tires had a bent valve stem that made adding air impossible.
They forged on and made it down Interstate 376 near where Robinson and Moon townships meet before hearing a loud pop. Looking out the driver’s side window, Pavlinch spotted lug nuts rolling down the highway.
The low-air tire blew a flat, soon followed by a second flat.
“Seven seconds after the first pop, I hear a second pop and, bam, it was the back bumper hitting the road.”
That may have saved them from spinning out of control, as Pavlinch was able to pull off the road.
A state trooper stopped at the scene and speculated those 50,000 records had pushed to the limit of the truck’s weight load capacity.
The InnerGroove team waited a few hours along the side of the road until a large enough tow truck – one normally used to tow semi-trucks –arrived.
“It took the tow truck driver about 40 minutes to hook it up where he felt comfortable to pull away,” Pavlinch said.
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Because of the length and angle of the two trucks and their turning circumference, the tow truck had to travel the opposite direction of traffic, with a police escort, up the hill toward the Robinson exit to reach its Campbells Run Road destination.
With the initial rental truck out of commission, The InnerGroove team picked up a second rental truck a few days later, transferring the collection to that fresh truck, but this time taking two separate loads to two prearranged storage units in Center Township.
“They just barely fit in there,” Pavlinch said.
He’s gradually transporting them to InnerGroove’s downtown Monaca storefront.
It’s been a lot of work and stress, but worth the effort.
“It was getting pretty rough there for a while – it was a bad summer – and it was a godsend, because this was exactly what I needed,” Pavlinch said. “When you don’t get records in, and people come in twice or three times and not see anything new, that’s not good.”
Now there’s a huge addition of records ready for the InnerGroove shelves.
“And now we get to reap the benefits,” Pavlinch said, “and show our customers, and they’ve already shown they’re happy with the stuff we’re putting out.”
Vinyl stores value
For 17 consecutive years, vinyl album sales have grown in the U.S.
In 2022, 43 million vinyl albums were sold, up 4.2 percent from 2021. Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” reigned as last year’s top vinyl seller, with 945,000 units sold.
New and young vinyl collectors keep emerging, discovering a format widely believed to have a warmer, crisper sound than digitally streamed songs or CDs.
Though the major force behind vinyl’s resurgence has been Gen X-ers and baby boomers eager to re-embrace the music format of their youth.
“I’m always looking for the ’80s metal records for my collection,” Jim Strauss, drummer for New Brighton’s blackened thrash metal band Sathanas, and a regular InnerGroove customer, said. “I like finding a record from back then that I’ve never seen or heard before. The hunt never stops.”
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“I find it still fun to actually go to a record store and look through their inventory and stumble upon new music that I might have missed years ago,” Strauss said. “Shopping on the internet, to me, doesn’t give me that satisfaction.
“InnerGroove is doing a great job with great selections and good prices,” Strauss said. “Now that vinyl is in high demand, it is crucial that these indie record stores are available to us collectors.”
Scott Tady is entertainment editor at The Times and easy to reach at [email protected].
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