Local landmark record store set to close its doors
Vortex Records hanging it up after almost 40 years of selling to Toronto’s vinyl vultures
Bert Myers has been slinging vinyl longer than he can remember.
“Recently my daughter reminded me she was 33 and that I launched the store before she was born. And I said, ‘Thanks for the marker, kid.’”
Vortex Records — a legend among Toronto’s vinyl vultures and an institution in its own right — first materialized in the early 1980s, and since then Myers has ridden the music industry turntable full circle. Now, having weathered analog’s wax and wane and in the midst of its undeniable resurgence, he’s bowing out.
“It’s renaissance time for records. It’s the new blood,” Myers says, his gaze resting on a worn copy of Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back by Frank Sinatra.
Indeed, record stores have been mushrooming across Toronto. At least six spots have sprouted up in the past four years. Newcomers like LP’s LPs, June Records, and the Tiny Record Shop in Roncesvalles, Little Italy and Leslieville, respectively, have emerged alongside old standbys like Sonic Boom and Kops Records.
“They stole the measure on me. I was sleeping,” says Myers, adjusting his translucent spectacle frames. “I missed some portion of this wave.”
Americans bought 9.2 million records in 2014, according to Nielsen Soundscan ratings. That’s more than any year since 1993, and a 100-per-cent spike from two years earlier.
Canadians have been trawling the stacks at a rapid pace too, purchasing 40 per cent more platters — 207,000 — in the first half of 2015 than in the same period last year. That follows a 135-per-cent uptick from 2012 to 2014 and marks nearly a decade of rising record sales, the bulk of them from independent shops.
Whither Mr. Myers? He admits that sometimes he put personal preference above contemporary trends: “With country I just kept buying it regardless of whether it sold or not; comedy too.”
The 63-year-old effectively opted not to plug into the music tastes of the younger, hipper set that’s fuelling re-vinyl-ization.
“There’s two other bands called the Weekend, and then there’s this new guy called the Weeknd. It took me a while to figure out what was happening, because I don’t read the rock press.”
Inside the greying Vortex — whose upstairs location Myers suspects deters older record sellers from off-loading there — it’s the people who give it colour. They browse communally through crates of vinyl, from Abba to Zappa, making casual introductions and shielded from the street by a strip of window film that warms the walls with amber-tinted light, reflected in a mirror hung slanted in the corner.
“One time, a customer alerted me to the fact that someone was walking out with my entire ‘Z’ collection of records,” recalls Myers, who keeps multiple anecdotes up his album sleeve.
He took those LPs back, but offered Buffy Sainte-Marie one of her own on the house when she strolled into Vortex’s second iteration on Dundas St. E. in the 1980s.
Several storefronts later, at his current digs on Yonge St. north of Eglinton Ave., Prince sauntered through the door searching out Santana LPs. “These racks are this tall (about one metre) and it was hard to see much more of Prince from my desk.”
As a Toronto icon — or for sheer sales volume — Vortex can’t compete with Sam the Record Man, which closed its doors on Yonge St. in 2007 after seven decades in the biz. But for a wide-reaching network of vinyl collectors young and old, the impending shutdown of Vortex leaves a black hole uptown.
“A big part of it is the community,” says 30-year customer Doug Brown, a Sylvia Tyson album at his elbow. “There’s going to be this void when it’s gone.”
A high school teacher and father of two, Brown now boasts a private collection of 5,500 LPs, 2,000 45-rpm records and 2,000 CDs, thanks largely to Myers. “If he recommends it, I buy it.”
“It’s also a great deal of pleasure to wed somebody to a piece of music that they come back and say, ‘That was great,’ you know.” BERT MYERS VORTEX RECORDS
Despite an offbeat mien and oblique sense of humour, Myers is known for his warmth and generosity, not to mention the low prices at what Now Magazine declared Toronto’s “best used record store” four years running in the ’90s.
“Bert was one of the first people I told about my wife being pregnant — just a couple months in — and he just paused, nodded, then went to the back and came back with Where the Wild Things Are,” Brown recalls.
Myers, who “cleared out to Alberta” at age 19 and started hanging around a Calgary record store — drawn in by “the sound and the smell” of LPs — later borrowed a few thousand dollars from his father to found Vortex. Making his curtain call after all that time vending vinyl, he says what he’ll miss most is discovering new albums — “gems.”
“It’s also a great deal of pleasure to wed somebody to a piece of music that they come back and say, ‘That was great,’ you know.
“The drudgery is cleaning them up and pricing them and sorting through mouldy albums,” he adds.
Retreating into a vinyl-clad, claustrophobic backroom, with Sly and the Family Stone’s “I Want to Take You Higher” blaring out, he contemplates his next step.
“I’m going to paint Bob Dylan’s masterpiece,” he says, a wry smile across his face. “I mean my own, my own . . . ”
Vortex’s closing sale, with increasing discounts weekly, continues through Christmas Eve, after which it’s slated to shut its doors for good.