Before coming to Providence, I figured there would be a market here for vintage shops of all sorts. We’re Gen Z college students, after all—we get a yen for that sort of thing. At least I know I do. 

Sure enough, I realized a few weeks into the fall semester that I would need some new records to get me through the chilly days ahead. I began looking for shops to scratch that distinct itch for a cozy, warm nook in which I could browse through records and forget that I had access to each of them in my pocket—consider me yenned.

I was soon surprised to find two shops on Wickenden Street, only a few blocks apart. As I read through Yelp reviews and threads on Reddit, my surprise turned into shock. While one store, Olympic Records, seemed to be charming and widely appreciated, the other store, Round Again Records, had one consistent and overwhelming complaint: the owner. The vast majority of Yelp reviews mentioned something about his “breathtakingly rude” comments or his “irritated and cold” manner. I had to meet the guy for myself and see just how different these neighboring shops actually were.

So, on an extremely windy Friday afternoon, I passed many a Brown-Harvard goer and made my way down to Wickenden Street, on a quest both for autumn records and a story or two to go along with them.

A combination of fear and closing times led me to turn left on Wickenden and head towards Olympic Records, owned by Kevin Morosini, who Yelpers describe as the polar opposite of the Round Again Records owner: “He is very friendly, chatty, and knowledgeable, and one of the coolest shopkeepers I’ve met in Providence.”

When I entered the store at 580 Wickenden St., only one other customer was inside. She was young, with oversized jeans and a khaki fanny pack that’s sort of hard to describe; I wondered if she was a Brown or RISD student. She was asking the man dusting records in the back—the famous Kevin Morosini—if he had any house or techno jams because she was having some friends over that night. The man apologized and said he didn’t have any in at the moment. The customer smiled and said, “Alright, Prince will have to do.” The man responded, “I think he’ll do just fine.”

Olympic Records has an engaging and exciting vibe. The walls are full to the brim with records, posters, art, and vintage record store bags. I asked about the record store bags and the owner—the beloved Morosini—told me that “some of them are still around, but most of the places are gone. It's something that I've always liked, the printed bag. You know, I bust my ass like once a week, printing my own bag. It’s a little bit of work on my end of things, but I think that when somebody comes home, it’s nice to have something like this to look at.” Morosini’s darn right—an Olympic Records bag now hangs on my wall.

He continues, pointing at a few 45s on the wall, “the decor of the store is kind of a mix of that old record store stuff, like a beat-up single with ‘Shelley plus Butcher’ written on it. Mississippi Queen was their song—this was a thing couples did in the sixties.”

Olympic Records’s selection, excluding house and techno, was pretty expansive. The right wall where I started browsing was dedicated pretty much exclusively to rock, with everything from newer indie/punk to The Beatles. As I made my way to the left side of the store, I came across a section labeled, “Misc. Weird. Sounds. Everything else…”

I quickly moved past that, flipped through the hip-hop section, and found a few bins with a four-for-ten deal. I was thrilled to find that there were some records I was quite excited about, though their condition wasn’t exactly pristine. Still, I snagged four keepers: two Donovan records (Open Road and Fairy Tale), James Taylor’s Greatest Hits, and The Yardbirds’ Little Games. 

The CD section was pretty solid too, though a bit less organized (in a charming way). Looking through the selection, the next disc was a surprise every time. Inspired by the earlier customer to host a little upbeat gathering, I grabbed OutKast’s Stankonia.

The whole place felt deeply genuine, like I was looking through someone’s personal collection and getting a peek at their true music taste, no larping involved. It was a fun experience that left me extremely curious about Morosini’s story and why he, a relatively young guy, chose to open the store in 2011. His answer was a solid precursor to our long chat about the modern passion for vinyl: “I’ve loved records since I was a kid. The story is not amazing; it’s not like I’ve had this lifelong aspiration to own a record store. It was one of those things where everything kind of just came together. I was working a lot and not really happy with my situation and I said, ‘You know what? I think I can open a record store.’ I found this space, knock on wood, and everything sort of lined up. I didn’t really realize that it was what I wanted to do, but record stores obviously always appealed to me.” Go figure.

Morosini told me that for the first four or five years, he sold a lot of new records because, at the time, “there wasn’t really a store on the east side of Providence that was selling new records, current music, and stuff like that.” I couldn’t help but wonder what Round About Records was up to during this time. 

Olympic Records moved away from this niche for a particular reason that led to the more expansive collection I saw: “The labels really started to focus on selling directly to the customer where, for a long time, the labels would sell to all the record stores and then the customers would come into the record stores to buy the records. Well, it seemed to me that at that time period, probably having a lot to do with social media and Facebook, they really realized, ‘Well, wait a second. Instead of wholesaling the records to this place, let’s just sell them to you and you can pretty easily pre-order an album from whatever record label.’ They were actually really pretty good about getting this stuff into your hands the same day that you would be getting it if you just walked over here and bought it. So that certainly put a damper on what was already a very tough thing to make a profit off of. When I started to notice that was happening, I sort of phased out and just started to buy more used stuff. And my taste kind of changed right around that same time period too.”

It was clear to me that Morosini has a passion for physical media. When kids come in, he doesn’t see them as posers, but as people who should be allowed to know what it feels like to hold your favorite record in your hands. When I asked about records that younger audiences gravitate towards, he said, “I feel it’s important, even if I’m not making much money on some of this stuff, to have it on the shelves. I’ll get a high school kid or a twelve-year-old kid that just got a record player and is like, ‘Oh, cool, I'm gonna buy a Nirvana record.’ It’s important to have that for them when they do come in, so they’ll feel included in the whole thing. I get Lana Del Rey records and stuff like that too.”

After checking out, I wanted to keep chatting with the guy, but time wasn’t getting any slower and I had another shop with another owner to get to. So, I shoved the four records and CD in my backpack and headed down Wickenden to Round Again Records in search of some more records and the infamous man behind the desk.

I grew nervous on the walk over, and even before I reached the jammed-shut door at 278 Wickenden St., I had already been overcome with an, albeit peripheral, feeling of dread. I didn’t want to be mocked or made fun of as so many Redditors and Yelp reviewers had. I imagined this feeling is common for customers who read the reviews. Whatever solace that provided, though, was soon obliterated by the mortifying thing that happened next.

The front door was shut pretty tightly, in my defense. After a few tries, I figured I needed to change my approach. I turned perpendicular to the door, bent my knees into the sort of “ready position” tennis players use, and slammed my shoulder into the door with far more force than I’d intended. Of course, the door flew open and made a raucous noise as I stumbled in, Kramer-like. I looked up and a relatively old man with white-gray hair and glasses turned his head, mouth agape. We made horrified eye contact like two beings from different planets and I realized who this was: the man himself, the disreputable owner of Round Again Records, Steve Kolter. I quickly looked away and pretended to start browsing. 

Luckily, Kolter was in conversation with a friend who didn’t seem to notice my fiasco at the doorway, so it wasn’t too long before I felt the man’s eyes lift off of my back and I could relax. 

The two men, maybe in their late sixties or early seventies, were talking about New York and times long ago when Kolter says he was living a “different life.” He used to manage a comedy club in the city and explained to his buddy that he “could have been a contender instead of what [he] is: a bum.” 

Overhearing this conversation was far more interesting than the records in front of me. I knew I had to talk to Kolter myself, but I needed to psych myself up before I could approach the desk. I also wanted to wait for his friend, who seemed comparatively quite boring, to give me an opportunity to hop in. 

I began flipping through the vinyls in front of me. The left wall, where I was, held mostly older soul music and R&B. This was probably the largest selection. Further down, towards the back, was the jazz and classical selection, which notably lacked contemporary projects. Also in the back was a bin of $1 records in shockingly good condition. The deeper I dug, the more I realized how much care Kolter put into the place. Everything seemed to be well taken care of and organized so as to flow smoothly from one section to the next. 

I was over the moon when I found Stephen Bishop’s Careless for just one dollar. I thought it had to be a mistake, but Kolter later told me he had too many copies—still seems wild to me. I’m no expert, but the pricing of several items seemed a little wonky to me. One angry Yelp reviewer noted something similar: 

“He had one record priced $30 that I'm guessing he put that price on twenty years ago and it’s been sitting there ever since. I looked it up online and it was $10 in mint condition, so I was going to see if I could offer him $15. I asked very politely if he was open to any kind of negotiation around prices and his response was, I’m paraphrasing, ‘I priced things what I think they're worth. Why would I accept less than what I think they're worth?’ So I didn't get that record. I did however buy a Madonna CD for $7.99 which is actually a 24k gold Japanese import release with a rough estimated value of $250, so karma's a bitch.”

On the other side of the store was rock and pop. At one point, I was walking about with Prince’s Around The World In A Day under my arm, but I decided to get Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks’s Buckingham Nicks instead. The record was just re-released about a year ago, and it’s an incredible relic from the years before the pair joined Fleetwood Mac. “Long Distance Winner” and “Stephanie” are my favorite tracks. The album cover—young, nude, and gorgeous—put me in a sort of trance which was broken only when I overheard Kolter and his pal saying their goodbyes. My time was near.

I took a few nervous laps around the store, looking at nothing in particular, thinking about what my first question should be, and landing on the thing that I was most interested in: his story. So I went up to the front desk, introduced myself, and asked if he could tell me a bit about himself and what brought him to Providence. His response?

“Let’s talk about the store.”

Could’ve been worse—I’ll take it.

I instead asked about the store’s location, assuming he’d say it had something to do with proximity to Brown and college students. I was wrong again: “The reason I opened on Wickenden Street was because, off 195, there were Wickenden Street exits. There were signs that said ‘Wickenden Street,’ so I knew that it would be easy to find the place. Secondly, this was a low-income immigrant neighborhood where I could rent a storefront for very little money. This wasn't a college neighborhood then. It was a Portuguese-Azorian, Cape Verdean neighborhood. This neighborhood was always, until the last twenty years, an immigrant neighborhood.”

Kolter told me that the changes in the neighborhood didn’t affect his business all that much though, because his customer base has never simply consisted of residents: “It's always been a store for record collectors, and record collectors find record stores.” True that.

The man’s got a very passive attitude, both personally and when it comes to his business model. What’s more, he’s hyper-aware of this and seems to think it works well: “I don't advertise. I’ve never advertised ‘one-dollar records.’ You gotta find me. If you can’t find me, that’s okay—I don't care.” 

At one point in our conversation, another customer came up to check out. He was middle-aged, with long hair and a leather jacket. After a smooth checkout, no insults or quips involved, an interesting exchange ensued. It was one which made me think the customer had seen a few reviews:

Customer: “Well, keep doing what you’re doing. This is a cool thing.” 

Kolter: “Well, I’m gonna do it for a while longer. I’ve got nothing better to do.” 

Customer: “Hey, you’re bringing curiosity in here [gesturing to me]. You’ve got a good selection. I live on the West Coast and, everywhere I go, I look for record stores. That’s what record collectors do. You got a good shop, man. You’re right: You don’t need to fucking pay anybody, Yelp or Google or anybody, any money. People are gonna find it, people are gonna come in.” 

Kolter: “Yep. It’s worked for forty-seven years, so I'm not gonna change anything. If it ain't broke…”

Customer: “Keep rambling.” 

Kolter: “Why not?”

When I asked Kolter about his own music taste, he smirked, and I prepared for a lecture about how music today isn’t what it used to be. But then he said, “When I leave the store, I don't listen to any music at all, neither in my car nor at home at all, as in zero. I don’t want to listen to music when I leave the store. Just the idea of putting a record on a turntable is like work.” In fact, Kolter has never had a record collection. After I asked about how he started a record store with no records, he said, “Before I opened the store, I spent about six months going to yard sales and hustling, nickel and dime hustling.”

By this point in our conversation, I felt like he was becoming more engaged, so I decided to try and prompt a little personal life out of him again. It worked better than last time: “I did work in a motorcycle shop outside of Boston and I did run a nightclub in Manhattan and I did bang nails in southern Louisiana, but as far as having a retail store, this is the first one I’ve ever owned.” 

I still wasn’t sure, though, why he chose to open a record store in the first place, with no previous passion for records. I asked a few times during our conversation, and the best answer I got didn’t leave me all that satisfied. He said, “Because I lost my last job, and I had to find something to do when I didn’t want to go to work for anybody. So I opened my own store.” I don’t think I’ll ever really understand why he opened the shop. It was in a different time, under different circumstances than my own, with a more lived-in and probably less naive outlook than mine. Nonetheless, I’m glad he opened the shop, glad I got to learn a bit about him. Something tells me I’ll be back again.

Stepping through the door into the gusty wind, I heard him singing the lyrics to Fred Neil’s The Dolphin:

“This old world may never change...”