The psychedelic “summer of love” poster in the window Family Affair Music in Old Town Monrovia is your first clue this isn’t your average record store. In business for 50 years in the same location is something you don’t see much every day. The current owner has had the shop since 1972 and says “I’m still here as people know if I don’t have it in stock, I will know where to order it for you.”
Today’s venture in was my first. I was pretty amazed at the collection of used albums he had in stock. More than I could even attempt to dig in depth with the time I had available today.
What I really appreciated is that he had a lot of the classic albums from the past also available as digitally re-mastered CDs. He scored a sale with me…Stray Cats debut , The Police Sychronicity and The B52’s debut all on CD to replace my well worn cassettes or vinyl.
Also in the store was hordes of chotchkies and memorabilia from the 1960’s forward for sale. A lot of great memories seeing the posters and comics as well. This is definitely a place I ‘ll spend some serious time digging next time I let the kids run loose at the Friday Family Festival in Old Town.
Family Affair Music, 510 S Myrtle Ave, Monrovia CA 91016 626-358-2280
This is great. I love record stores. I love locally owned businesses. I especially love record stores run by the same guy for nearly 40 years. You may not have had time to go through all of the stacks, but I’ll bet if you asked for something specific/obscure he could tell you if he had it, and exactly where it was. I bet it smelled great in there, too. Like the smell of an old bookstore, old record stores have a smell all their own.
Yup, it has that aroma of old wonderfulness.