New generation on LI keeps vinyl spinning

Throngs of people crowded into record stores Saturday in a vinyl lovefest that drew surprisingly few old fogies.

Representing a new generation of LP lovers, Johnathan Capuano, 21, hunched over a cardboard box at Long Island Vinyl Exchange in East Northport. The local resident flipped past the likes of The Temptations and Carole King.

"Dude, get that one!" yelled his friend, Jordan Peacock, 25, when a '70s-vintage Emerson Lake & Palmer album popped up. "I love ELP."

Saturday was the fourth annual Record Store Day, an event aimed at promoting independent record stores nationwide. Stores have been struggling for years, as consumers turn to the Internet for music downloads.

Against the odds, vinyl is making something of a comeback. In January, Billboard reported that vinyl record sales rose 14 percent, to 2.8 million albums in 2010. That's a tiny fraction of the market, but for many Saturday, it was reason to celebrate.

Participating stores offered promotions, such as the bins of free records set outside the Vinyl Exchange. Major acts including the Foo Fighters released special LPs for the day.

Hundreds of customers were lined up outside when stores like the Vinyl Exchange or Looney Tunes in West Babylon opened in the morning. Most were young.

Capuano, who walked away with a stack of classic rock albums, called them "a virtual time machine."

Arielle Santos, 19, of East Northport said she bought a couple of Grateful Dead albums a year ago because she liked the covers. She came back a week later to buy a record player, which Vinyl Exchange owners John and Jessica DeSimone taught her how to operate.

She'd seen records before, she said. Her grandfather used to play them.

"It's just so much more tangible," she said of playing a record.

Her mother is the one now listening to Lady Gaga on an iPod.

"There's only one record player in the house and it's in my room playing the Grateful Dead and Phish," said Santos, who has taken her passion further: She now works at the record store.

John DeSimone, a pied piper of the vinyl renaissance, sells basic record players for around $30 and offers discounts to those wishing to trade up.

He's sold about 230 record players in the past two years -- a hopeful sign for beleaguered stores like his.

The resurgence of records, he said, "is the only reason we're still around."