The needle is about to hit the dead wax on the Alliance Vinyl Club.
After a run of nearly five years, Rodman Public Library’s Byrun Reed will spin the final tunes inside the Main Auditorium on Wednesday, December 4, starting at 6:30 p.m.
“I have enjoyed running the program, but something tells me that it is time for it to come to an end,” said Reed, who conceived and initiated the program in 2019, ran it virtually through the COVID pandemic, and fostered it back to life when in-person meetings resumed in the fall of 2021.
“I really enjoyed bringing people back together to listen to music and talk again after we had all been shut in for so long,” said Reed. “The club really helped the people who came to get back to feeling normal again and I was happy to be a part of that.”
Alliance Vinyl Club started out to be a program about how to catalog a collection and take care of vinyl records and turntable equipment, but Reed found out quickly that people enjoyed listening to the music and talking with one another more than learning how to organize and maintain the discs.
He wanted to be more than a disc jockey, so he encouraged those attending to bring in their favorite records to share a selection or two with the other members of the club that normally averaged 4 to 10 attendees each month.
And although it was called a club, it never had any formal membership. Music enthusiasts of all genres and of all ages were welcome.
“I found it fun when others brought in their records and I didn’t play DJ all night,” said Reed. ““It was especially gratifying when somebody brought something in that was completely out of left field.”
For instance, some of the records themselves were pressings that were collector’s editions and looked more like works of art rather than the usual black, grooved discs.
Another time, a Vinyl Club visitor brought in a record of Johnny Cash singing in German.
And once, a rare record of an artist named Elliott Murphy was brought in that nearly every person in the room said they enjoyed.
“It was a record that I had never heard,” said Reed. “But within minutes of hearing it, I was on my phone, seeing if I could find a copy for sale.”
The person who brought that record in happened to be one of the special guests Reed had invited – Bob Ethington, a retired librarian and working musician who was in some well-known bands in the Akron and Kent area in the 1970s and 1980s.
Other guests included music journalist John Petkovic as well as musicians J.J. Vicars, a local blues guitarist; Harvey Gold, another Akron-based musician of the 1980s new-wave era and television producer; and Chris Butler, who is best known for his work with new-wave band The Waitresses.
“I tried to bring in at least one special guest speaker a year who was involved in the music industry in one way or another,” said Reed. “I liked bringing in someone who could provide a different perspective on the music and the music industry.”
However, it’s become more difficult to find those local musical insiders who are willing to come in and speak, said Reed. And when one of the core members, a woman who had attended nearly every Alliance Vinyl Club meeting, died during the summer in a car accident, he knew it was time to end the program.
“I sort of took that as a sign that it was time,” said Reed.
However, the RPL turntable is not going away. Reed, who also facilitates the ultra-popular Rodman Chess Club each third Wednesday of the month, spins jazz and classical records as patrons play the ancient game of strategy.
“Vinyl is such a warm medium,” said Reed. “Digital music can sometimes sound like you’re listening in a trash can. Those pops and those skips that come from a vinyl record are comforting and it just seems to pair really well with chess.”
And who knows, special sessions of Vinyl Club may return in the future. But for the time being, the monthly program is officially retired after this month.
So what will be the final selection played at Vinyl Club?
“I don’t know,” said Reed. “I haven’t given it much thought. I’ll probably get all wrapped up in the night, look at the clock and grab one final record of what hits me at that moment. So I guess if you want to know, you should show up on December 4 and find out.”