In honor of Record Store day (April 21st), we reached out to Chicago producer, vinyl collector, and label owner,  Meaty Ogre, and asked him to provide us with his favorite places in Chicago to dig for vinyl.  Digging is not a hobby, it’s more like an art, an obsession, and for some, it’s a job.  That’s where Ogre (Andrew Brearley) comes in, bringing with him serious props from the digging community and knowledge on Chicago’s strong legacy in the vinyl trade game.  Ogre has employed his ability of finding rare and classic records to create several releases via Galapagos4, Heardrums, Memphix and Bully.  Meaty Ogre’s most recent release was an instrumental album, Sword, which dropped via Fieldwerk.  Currently, he’s running Cherries Records, a new R&B label that he started with his fiance, DJ Shred One.  The label will be releasing modern funk and soul 45′s, starting with Cermakk & Doug Shorts, launching in June.

Now that you know the resume, here’s what he had to say…

So, I basically dig for a living, and have been since I got laid off from my last “real” job when September 11, 2001 hit and the company I was working for went under because of it.   I was already buying and selling records and collecting heavily, and already had my side hustle moving pretty well, so it was a somewhat easy decision to do it for a living.

In the late 90′s and early 2000′s, Chicago was a much more fun place to dig.  I feel lucky I got to experience a time before Ebay became the “scene” and there was still a feeling of this being a special thing to be into.    There were way more record shops, way less people doing part time record dealing, and the vibe in general was less of a frenzy.   I may sound like a grumpy old man, but compared to 10+ years ago, Chicago SUCKS for digging now.   You can find the records, but they are either way overpriced, or you have to spend $40 bucks a day on gas just to try and beat 50 other dudes to the same beat up copy of Don Gardner’s “My Baby Likes to Boogaloo” and We The People’s “Making My Daydream Real”.

But I digress.  This city has always been good to me as far as vinyl, and there is really no other place I’d rather be doing it.  Ive been all over the world looking for vinyl, and there is a reason most American and European record collectors and dealers make special trips here just to look for records for months at a time.   There are folks here from overseas who are being paid a full time salary just to have them buy records all year long and ship them back.  We were a big hub for vinyl, and there are a lot of ghosts of record past still here.  Anyways, here is a list of my favorite Chicago spots, past and present.

1.   Out of the Past  (West Side, Chicago)
I went here for the first time in 1998 as a skinny dorky skater white-guy hip hop fan looking for samples and funk 45s.  Before then, I had been in big record stores with 100,000+ records… but never anything like OOTP.   Grimy 45s and LPs crawling out of every nook and cranny, hand drawn Top 50 R&B sign above the counter, bootleg steppers CDs and local rap CD-Rs, cats roaming freely through the racks, peeing and spraying where they please.   Unorganized, filthy and days and days worth of vinyl to look at.  This was the first place that really set my aggressive digger-dude in action, as it has done for probably every other producer and DJ and record dealer who ever first stepped foot in here.    I went here 3 days in a row when I was 19, and a week later, I contracted mono.  I’m not saying I got it from OOTP,  I’m just saying….

2.   Toad Hall (Rockford, IL)  
So it’s not in Chicago, but many a Chicagoan was coming to my little city and pillaging this place before I even realized what sampling entailed.  It’s a 3 building record shop, with an entire house full of LPs, an entire house full of 45′s, and a basement full of 78′s.   When DJ PNS told me he used to bring The Beatnuts and NO ID and other folks here, I got extremely defensive and made it a point to spend all day here every time I would go back home to make sure I was on top of what new stuff would come in.    I found a copy of Manzel’s “Midnight Theme” here around 1999, and got some really good money for it, probably four times what I was used to making at my shitty restaurant jobs in a month.    When I was 16 I remember trying to steal a copy of Bill Cosby’s Hooray for the Salvation Army Band LP with the drum break on it.  I was trying to be slick and brought it out to my car and set it down on the ground by my tire, and one of the employees came out and caught me and they berated me and told me I was banned from the store.   I think it was like a $15 record, which was a lot to me at the time, and that somehow justified it to me haha.  I gathered up the courage a year later to come back and apologize, and brought them some headphones and some free records, They forgave me and I started going back once a week to listen to big ass stacks of records and only buy 3…

3.   Maxwell St. Market (Downtown, Chicago)     
I wasn’t around for the glory days of the actual Maxwell St. market, but I used to wake up no later than 5AM every weekend to hit this market every Sunday when it was still on Canal St.    More than just going for records, it was always fun for the vibes.   There was always a few guys who would set up with tons of records, Record Sam being my favorite.   It actually used to be fun here to just sit down and watch people go into a gripper frenzy running from stall to stall looking for stuff, sweating and panting after eating polish sausages and carne asada tacos.   There are a lot of guys in their late 50′s and 60′s that have actively been around buying records in Chicago forever, and those are the guys with the best record related stories.

4.  Barney’s One Stop (West Side, Chicago) 
If you look at phone books from the 80′s in Chicago, there were like 6 pages of record shop listings.   Most of these record shops could purchase directly from one of a few local one-stop distributors like Barney’s, who sold wholesale quantities of current releases, instead of having to mail order what you needed.   There were some pretty major one-stop distros in Chicago until the 90s, Barney’s being one of the last to stick around.   Needless to say, for a guy who is looking for old records in perfect condition, finding old one-stop distributor stock from places that have closed or retired, is what every record dude has had moist dreams about.  Even up until a few years ago, you could still call and set up a time to look at what was left of the records at Barney’s.   I bought so many obscure Chicago rap tapes and CDs here.  There was a lot of good vinyl, some of which were worthless back when I was there, and are super in demand and expensive now.   I failed to mention that Barney’s was started by Ray Barney , who is basically the godfather of juke music.   He ran Dance Mania, Chicago Underground, G-Strings, and Warehouse Records out of this location.    The first floor is now a healthy food restaurant, and is definitely worth stopping in, if for nothing else,  just to catch a vibe.

5.  Swap O Rama (South Side, Chicago)   
I feel at home at a swap meet or a flea market, and this is one of the only places left in the city even close to this experience.   I feel like there is no better way to connect to your culture than going to the open market, where everything is not corporate strip mall, chain store mall, big box bullshit, where you can still haggle, where you can hear dudes cussing about the cost of a used power drill in Polish and Spanish and Chinese equally.     I usually don’t even find any records I’m interested in here, but I try to go anyways and usually buy some fruit or toiletries or some shit.    I got lucky one summer after going for months and months not finding anything, and I got a sealed copy of the Rabbits and Carrots LP on Musart.    Flea Market record buying takes patience, dedication, masochism,  and not going out on Friday nights late and getting fucked up.