Tucked away at the end of a Parramatta arcade is a record store that survived three decades of change, from the rise of digital music platforms to Sydney’s second CBD being created around it.<\/p>\n
Digging through the archives, Beatdisc Records owner Peter Curnovic reflected on his time at the store as a dedicated teenage music fan.<\/p>\n
“I used to come and spend most lunchbreaks here trawling through the racks,” Mr Curnovic said.<\/p>\n
“I was a high school kid, you know, trying to frantically collect all the punk CDs that I could find.”<\/p>\n
Mr Curnovic started working at the record store as a full-time employee in 2001. (Supplied: Beatdisc Records)<\/p>\n
Previous owner Victor Aird said Mr Curnovic “pleaded” for a job at the store.<\/p>\n
“When he was 16, he used to come in here \u2026 from [working at] the local hamburger joint on the corner, smelling of oil with green hair,” Mr Aird said.<\/p>\n
He worked at the shop for around a decade before he bought the store from Mr Aird, in 2008.<\/p>\n
Mr Aird (right) said when Mr Curnovic (left) was a teenager he “pleaded” for a job at the store. \/ Supplied \/ ABC News: Liam PatrickSurvival through ‘tough times’<\/p>\n
When Mr Curnovic started a full-time job at the record store after high school, he said it was “like every teenager’s dream”, but running a small business came with its challenges.<\/p>\n
“In the mid-2000s, when digitising everything came in, that was a tough time,” Mr Curnovic said.<\/p>\n
“I bought the business in the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 \u2026 can’t believe I did that at age 25, anyway, we’re still here,” he laughed.<\/p>\n
“I’m a bit handy and I built everything in here,” Mr Curnovic said, referring to the shelves throughout the shop.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mr Aird (left) says the store has changed over the past three decades. (ABC News: Nandini Dhir)<\/p>\n
Mr Aird said when he opened the shop in the mid ’90s, he used a tray as a cash register.<\/p>\n
“I did it on the cheap \u2026 had an old wine bar as a counter,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Not many businesses can survive for 30 years and the fact that it’s still going \u2014 hats off to Pete.”<\/p>\n
Tom (right) has been working with Mr Curnovic (left) at the store for nearly 20 years. \/ Supplied \/ ABC News: Nandini Dhir<\/p>\n
Mr Curnovic credited his long-running employees, some who have worked with him for close to 20 years.<\/p>\n
“People you can trust; that’s very important in small business,” Mr Curnovic said.Change over the decades<\/p>\n
Local and mainstream artists have their music sold at the store. (ABC News: Nandini Dhir)<\/p>\n
The record shop opened at the end of an alleyway on Church Street, Parramatta, in 1995.<\/p>\n
At the time, Mr Aird said “the arcade had a really good vibe”, with a second-hand clothing shop and a guitar store as neighbours.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The local record shop operates at the end of a quiet alley just off the bustling Parramatta Square.\u00a0 (ABC News: Liam Patrick)<\/p>\n
Today, the shop operates next to stores like reformer Pilates, model trains, hairdressers and key cutters, just off the bustling Parramatta Square.<\/p>\n
Mr Curnovic said the customer base “has definitely changed over the years, but it’s kind of come full circle”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mr Curnovic says school students used to visit the store after school regularly. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
Students would often visit the store after school, but after the digital phase in the early 2000s, Mr Curnovic said the younger demographics “weren’t interested.”<\/p>\n
“In the last 10 years or so, we’ve seen them come back,” he said.<\/p>\n
“You can hug an album, you can smell an album, and you can love an album.<\/p>\n
“It’s your copy and you can really connect with an artist, and I think they’re discovering it again and it’s just beautiful.”<\/p>\n
More than just a music store<\/p>\n
Ms Gago Schieb says she has visited the Parramatta record store since she was 16. (ABC News: Marcus Stimson)<\/p>\n
Carmen Mercedes Gago Schieb had frequented the local record shop since she was 16, having grown up in nearby Guilford, she recalled attending instore gigs.<\/p>\n
“I was under the impression at that time that there was no space for heavy music in Western Sydney,” Ms Gago Schieb said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The record store has been hosting instore gigs since 2006. (Supplied: ZK Photo)<\/p>\n
Dan Whiting has been a regular customer since the store first opened.<\/p>\n
He said before the store opened, he would travel from home, in Chester Hill, to the city to buy music.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mr Whiting has been a regular customer since 1995. (ABC News: Marcus Stimson)<\/p>\n
He described the shop as having a “really inner-city vibe, very early on in the western suburbs”.<\/p>\n
Over the years, Mr Whiting sold some of his own music at the store, including an EP he released more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n
“Walking in there at one stage and seeing one of my CDs next to a second-hand CD of Mr Bungle\u2026 it excited the 18-year-old in me,” he said.<\/p>\n
The store will this year feature at the Parramatta Lanes festival, for which the team has curated four nights of live music acts alongside archival footage of instore gigs.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The record store is hosting its own section of live music at Parramatta Lanes. (Supplied: Ken Leanfore)<\/p>\n
The annual festival, being held from Wednesday through to Saturday night, turns the small lanes of the Parramatta CBD into pockets of art, food, music, and culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tucked away at the end of a Parramatta arcade is a record store that survived three decades of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,139131,139135,39389,134,136,139133,139130,139132,139134,22677],"class_list":["post-230805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-beatdisc-lane-parramatta","tag-beatdisc-records","tag-cds","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-parra-lanes","tag-parramatta-lanes","tag-parramatta-lanes-music","tag-peter-curnovic","tag-vinyl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}