Play De Record was ground zero for Toronto vinyl lovers

In the 1990s, the Yonge Street strip between Gould and Elm was Record Store Central.

There were the two multi-storey retailers that everyone knew about — Sam the Record Man and A&A — that sat practically next door to each other, while Cheapies and Sunrise Records were located within spitting distance across the street. If you wanted the latest popular hits from the major record labels, they were the places to go.

But if you were a club or radio DJ tastemaker with a hankering for something beyond the mainstream, there was only one destination to get the latest in hip hop, drum and bass, house, techno, funk, Latin, electronic, jazz, soul and other underground dance music offerings: Play De Record at 357A Yonge St.

Eugene Tam, the Trinidad-born shop owner who established the business in 1990, took great pains to ensure that when it came to obtaining the latest in dance music, Play De Record was the de facto ground zero for vinyl lovers, catering to — and eventually usurping — a crowd being serviced at the time by record retailers Starsound and Carnival.

“We had the stuff nobody else had,” said Tam in the new two-hour documentary “Drop the Needle,” which premieres at a sold-out screening Saturday at the Hot Docs Cinema, with a second screening Nov. 6.

Helmed by first-time director Rob Freeman and conceived by freelance sportswriter Neil Acharya, the film provides a fascinating look at the evolution of the underground urban music scene that was all but ignored by the vanilla Canadian music industry, and Tam’s role as a catalyst in its development through Play De Record.

Operating out of the back of a convenience store next to the notorious Zanzibar Tavern, Tam first stocked mainly calypso, soca and reggae records until a local DJ, Jason “Deko” Steele, hooked him up with a Montreal connection and convinced him to carry more obscure titles.

Tam quickly recruited other DJs who specialized in specific niches to work in the store — Jason Palma, Peter Primiani, Aki Abe and Shams Tharani — and word spread quickly amongst the underground music community to the point that influential turntablists and broadcasters ranging from CFNY hosts Chris Sheppard and “Deadly” Hedley Jones, Paul “Mastermind” Parhar and future DJ-turned-comedian Russell Peters would gather every Thursday for the latest vinyl gems.

The mindset was friendly but competitive, said David “Click” Cox, who had music shipped from Play De Record to his University of Edmonton radio show before he relocated to Toronto in 1994.

“It’s part of the culture, especially hip hop: I always wanted to play fresh, new music that nobody had ever heard. I wanted to be the guy they heard it from, me first.”

To place the era in context, there were virtually no Toronto radio outlets supporting hip hop, save for Ron Nelson’s “Fantastic Voyage” show heard on CKLN from 1983 to 1991. Mainstream alternative radio outlet CFNY eventually gave Saturday nights to the dance crowd with live broadcasts with Sheppard and MuchMusic chimed in with a pair of shows, “RapCity” and “X-Tendamix,” which helped give some of this music — and seminal Canadian hip-hop artists like Maestro Fresh Wes, Ghetto Concept, Kardinal Offishall and Saukrates — a national platform.

“One thing that surprised me was the real lack of support that underground music, especially Canadian hip hop, received during that time period,” director Freeman said in an interview. “South of the border, there was great music coming out in that genre on a weekly basis and we in Canada absolutely had the talent.

“We had promoters. We had artists … And the fact that all these talented individuals didn’t get the recognition that they deserved, I hope that the movie helps with that.”

Over the years, Tam did his best to grow and support the community: being the first to introduce mixtapes; offering the latest in DJ sound equipment; even building a studio to host the first recordings of artist like Saukrates; and later, starting up a DJ school when he relocated to Spadina Avenue due to excessive property taxes.

Before hip hop enjoyed the popularity it does today, concert promoters like Ron Nelson would bring acts like Public Enemy, Ice Cube and Queen Latifah to town and sell tickets at Play De Record.

“I also was a concert promoter and I used the place as a meeting ground for so many people,” Cox recalled. “Drum and bass or rave or hip hop: people wouldn’t be going to Ticketmaster to buy those tickets. They’d go to the record shops, especially in the ’90s. That’s a huge part of the culture and the story.”

Of course, life goes on and things change. As documented in the film, the internet, free access to music and software programs slowly eliminated the demand for Tam’s numerous services and, although Play De Record still exists 32 years later at 411 Spadina Ave., he is its lone sentinel, still pushing the vinyl that he loves so dearly.

With close to 60 people interviewed for the doc, “Drop The Needle” is not only a Toronto music story that needs to be told, but a testament to Eugene Tam’s legacy: one in which resilience, perseverance and innovation exemplify this previously unsung hero of the underground music scene.

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