I find it extremely hard to control myself around large amounts of vinyl records. It’s something about the moment of seeing a record I love, knowing it could be mine to take home and listen to on loudspeakers in the clearest quality possible, to stare at and read and play and replay, to scan for little differences from the version I may know from streaming (happens more than you’d think)…it’s impossible to pass up. As you can imagine, I was thrilled to hear that WESU 88.1 FM, the University’s radio station, would be hosting its annual Fall Record Fair in Fayerweather Hall on Saturday, Oct. 5.

WESU Community Volunteer Liaison Chaim O’Brien-Blumenthal explained the process of publicizing the event to get the largest possible turnout from both students and the Middletown community.

“Thanks to the fabulous work of the entire board, we’ve had a calculated push to spread the news about the Record Fair, with our events coordinator, McKenna Blackshire, and public relations director, Liz Pace, in particular helping to get the word out by flyering on campus, getting ads in the Argus and advertising around downtown Middletown,” O’Brien-Blumenthal wrote in an email to The Argus. “Because of the hard work, we were able to attract one of our largest attendances at a WESU Record Fair! It was great to see so many students and community members volunteering their time to help out at the Fair, and it was equally wonderful to see a diverse mix of students and locals digging through the crates and having conversations!”

O’Brien-Blumenthal was both a vendor and a DJ at the event. In his capacity as a WESU radio host, his show “Anything Goes” airs from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Fridays, featuring not only records but live music and conversation.

The fair was even more expansive than last year’s events. I recognized many of the same vendors, and the selection was great, but this time, it came with a slew of bands playing outside and DJs spinning records in the hall. Even Mamoun’s food truck was stationed outside for the better part of five hours. There was more of everything—except for Anthony Fantano, who to my knowledge did not make an appearance.

I knew I needed to arrive there early to get a view of the widest selection possible; even so, the hall was absolutely packed. Customers young and old were engaging vendors in debates over price, quality, and rarity—that special language that only record lovers speak to one another. Is this record a VG or a VG+? Could it really be if I see a hairline right here? You get the idea. It gets daunting, and one tends to get a quick impression of whether or not haggling is a reasonable proposition to a given vendor. My advice: the less organized the display is and the more willing to make extremely lengthy conversation the vendor is, the more likely you are to be able to get a great deal.

I did relatively well. An extremely kind soul was willing to let me have the five-dollar Sade record he had been eyeing, and I was able to get a couple dollars off of The Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle—I honestly think I could have haggled more, but the guy had me on the ropes knowing there was very little chance I wasn’t going to buy one of the greatest records of all time. My weirdest find was a vinyl pressing of David Foster Wallace giving the oft-quoted “This Is Water” commencement speech. I asked myself who in the world could possibly want that on vinyl, before realizing that I sort of did. Maintain room in your life for novelty.

After deciding I had reached my limit, I walked around the room asking others about their experience. First, I saw Tickle Monster lead singer Griffin Abdo ’27 and Julia Chadwick ’28 and asked them about their purchases. The latter shared that she got a book, a collection of essays called “Girls: An Anthology.”

“It has Sandra Cisneros, Maya Angelou,” Chadwick said. “And also two fathers’ perspectives are included on their relationships with their daughters, which I think is cool…. I also got these beer cap earrings.”

Abdo explained the importance of his record selections.

“First, we got one of the unsung darlings in rock history in Todd Rundgren, not only as an artist but as a producer,” Abdo said. “One of the greats…and he’s still going. And [Something/Anything] is like his best album. It contains one of the greatest songs ever in ‘Hello, It’s Me.’ And then we got another very important moment in rock and roll history, the Rolling Stones’s 1980 album Emotional Rescue, as featured in ‘A Bigger Splash.’”

For reference, “A Bigger Splash” has one of the single funniest scenes of musical exaltation and perhaps the greatest use of The Rolling Stones in a movie not directed by Martin Scorsese.

I then had the pleasure of talking with Isaiah Longstreth ’28, who had performed outside the event with Montana Gura ’27 and the Scarves, getting a bit of an inside look of how the concerts came together.

“[Gura] posted a flier the first or second week of school with her number on it asking for guitarists and other instrumentalists for her band,” Longstreth said. “The vibes were great, people came out to watch. It was pretty hot, I wore too-thick clothes for the performance, with a scarf [since] I was [playing] for the Scarves. So I was sweating a little bit, but it was very relaxed. I had a great time playing with them, I feel like we really locked in.”

I finally had the pleasure of talking to Meredith Marciano, one of the event’s vendors whose business goes by the name of Sleepy Jean Records Unlimited, a play on the Monkees classic, “Daydream Believer.” From all she told me, nothing could bring her more joy than doing record shows like these.

“Oh, well it’s the best!” Marciano said. “I mean, it’s heavy…but there’s nothing like getting a new record, sitting on your bed, holding the record cover, reading the liner notes, reading the words to the songs…and then doing it with a friend the next day, saying ‘Come over, you’ve gotta hear this new Joni Mitchell record.’ Both of you sitting on your bed, reading the liner notes. There’s really nothing like that. If you’re young and doing that, it’s the ideal way to get into music.”

Truer words were never spoken.

Louis Chiasson can be reached at lchiasson@wesleyan.edu.