Windsor Star

AND THE BEAT GOES ON

Liam O’Donnell, owner and operator of Dr. Disc, shows off some of his vast collection of vinyl records, compact discs and tapes at his Ouellette Avenue music store.

- ANNE JARVIS ajarvis@postmedia.com Twitter.com/winstarjar­vis

Multiple recessions, the constricte­d border, the mall and its big chain stores. All the downtown’s troubles, even the advent of iTunes and Spotify, Dr. Disc has survived it all on Ouellette Avenue.

“We’re like cockroache­s,” said owner Liam O’Donnell. “No, I’m kidding!”

O’Donnell is very funny. He’s also insightful.

Amid the core’s many struggles, he’s managed to make his independen­t record store a destinatio­n.

O’Donnell was 18 when he began working at Dr. Disc in London. It was a high school co-op job at what was then the main store in a small chain in Southweste­rn Ontario, including Windsor. O’Donnell lived for music. His dad bought him a drum set when he was in Grade 6. He played in bands. He skipped school on Tuesdays, when new releases came out.

A chance to work in a music store — “Oh my God, it was amazing!” he remembered.

The store was down the street from a club. Some of the bands used to come in during the day. O’Donnell immediatel­y quit his old job at Wendy’s.

Five years later, in 2001, the chain closed its store here, in the 600 block of Ouellette. For 15 years, since 1986, it had been where collectors and fans of the alternativ­e and obscure went for an infinite variety of music. Sales had slipped. The building was dilapidate­d. Seven full- and parttime jobs were lost. O’Donnell was 23. It was time to do something. Should he go back to school?

Instead, he and his brother Sean bought the Dr. Disc here. Eight months after it closed, they reopened it.

The former owner’s son helped them with a business plan. A relative got them in the door of a bank to ask for a loan. The stock had been cleared out, so O’Donnell prowled pawn shops for new stock. He added most of his own collection.

“It was painful,” he said, ruefully. “I sold crates of stuff, pretty much everything.”

All the while, he lived on a couch in the back until he could rent an apartment across the street.

“I was young,” he laughed. But the store had no heat or air conditioni­ng. Customers complained. O’Donnell got space heaters and wore gloves. Another tenant in the building smoked marijuana, and the smell wafted through the store. It was a dump, and the block was dying. A clothing store and a restaurant had closed. No one walked by.

“It was awful,” he said.

So he moved one block north, to 471 Ouellette, in 2010.

He never considered leaving downtown.

“I think record stores should be downtown,” he said simply. “You need music downtown. It’s just a thing I grew up with — you go downtown to the record store.” Today, Dr. Disc still sells just about every kind of music — metal, rock, indie. It managed to get the rare, original Rolling Stones album Sticky Fingers, the Andy Warhol-conceived one with a real zipper on the fly of a man’s jeans. Unzip it, and there’s a picture of a man’s underwear.

It sold a 45 rpm by The Dry Heaves, a punk rock band in Windsor in the ’80s, to a collector in New York for $600. “Crazy money,” said O’Donnell.

He sells mostly LPs and CDs but even cassette tapes, Blu-ray, VHS, turntables, record sleeves, posters. He also buys used records and CDs. Several years ago a customer sold him a collection of thousands of Rolling Stones albums, different pressings of every album from every country.

His customers range from judges to junkies, from ages 10 to 80. They line up on Record Store Day. The regulars, like Superior Court Justice George King, come in every week for the new releases, even every day. Some just like to hang out there, browsing the bins, talking about music. O’Donnell has made a lot of friends that way. If they want something O’Donnell doesn’t have, he finds it. King is waiting for a boxed set of Liverpool indie music from the ’ ‘70s and ’80s called Revolution­ary Spirit from the iconic British label Cherry Red. If customers have a question about an artist, a song, a record, O’Donnell answers it. People love that. O’Donnell, now a youthful 40 with a funky haircut, still plays the drums in an indie rock band called The Spooky But Nice. He still loves “the esthetic of holding a record, putting it on.” And he still loves working in a music store. “I don’t know what else I’d do,” he says.

He loves how two strangers, one who doesn’t have a job and another who makes $200,000 a year, can meet over Muddy Waters. “It doesn’t matter what you do,” he said. “You’re looking through records. You love music. I know it sounds corny, but it’s beautiful, really.”

All this explains Dr. Disc’s longevity. O’Donnell’s not greedy; he has kept the store small. But mostly, said King, “he shares your interest. He understand­s what it’s like to be passionate about music.”

So do his staff. One has a Dr. Disc tattoo. Another does art for bands. Another has worked there since he was a teenager.

All this has made Dr. Disc a destinatio­n — regardless of the fortunes of downtown.

“Like anything,” said King, “if you’ve got a good place, you’re offering something people want, that’s really what it comes down to.”

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DAN JANISSE
 ?? DAN JANISSE ?? Liam O’Donnell, owner and operator of Dr. Disc, says he loves how two strangers, one who doesn’t have a job and another who makes $200,000 a year, can meet over Muddy Waters. “I know it sounds corny, but it’s beautiful, really.”
DAN JANISSE Liam O’Donnell, owner and operator of Dr. Disc, says he loves how two strangers, one who doesn’t have a job and another who makes $200,000 a year, can meet over Muddy Waters. “I know it sounds corny, but it’s beautiful, really.”
 ?? DAN JANISSE ?? Signs and posters on the walls of the Dr. Disc music store reflect the variety of genres it sells.
DAN JANISSE Signs and posters on the walls of the Dr. Disc music store reflect the variety of genres it sells.
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