Vinyl Hero storeowner Paul Au

HK Magazine: When did you start selling vinyl records?
Paul Au: When I was only 15 or 16, I started listening to and collecting records. At that time I was so poor I couldn’t even afford to buy one record. I borrowed them from my friends to record the songs onto a cassette tape. Sometimes I could afford to buy some bootlegs. From that time on, I couldn’t stop: I haven’t had enough fun. I moved to Hong Kong from Vietnam in ‘83. Here, I discovered many unwanted records that were still in good condition, so I started collecting them. At that time they were really cheap, because retailers had to get rid of them to make room for CDs.

HK: What challenges have you encountered in these 30 years?
PA: For the first 20 years I was selling on the streets, which was not easy when it was raining. I was also constantly chased by policemen. I had thousands of records on the streets. There was just no place to store them. I had to sleep on the street to watch the records day and night!

HK: What do you love most about collecting records?
PA: Vinyl keeps me young. I’m still living in the 70s. I stay in this store 24/7. I sleep records, I breathe records, I eat records, I smell records. To me, everything is records. It’s a lifestyle. I just cannot stop. I have this dream—living free with music. Until the day I die, I’ll keep playing records. In my coffin I’m gonna have records, a motorbike and a leather jacket.

HK: With digital music being so accessible, why do you prefer vinyl?
PA: Vinyl records are not old-fashioned. Recently, vinyl has had a comeback. Even though there are space shuttles and high speed trains, people still ride bicycles, because it’s part of their lifestyle. Listening to vinyl records is a lifestyle. I have only five or six hours of sleep every day, and the rest of the time I’m just playing LPs and talking with customers. Years have passed by very quickly. The past 30 years were like 30 months. Metallica is still a new band to me.

HK: What are your thoughts on the music scene in Hong Kong?
PA: Hong Kong people like to follow trends. They listen to whatever is popular, so they throw away a lot of old things. In the 80s, they threw away all the things from the 60s. They cannot stick to one lifestyle for long and they also don’t give many genres a chance. Back in ‘83, when Metallica started getting famous, local record dealers imported only 50 copies of their first album. Only 50 copies for the whole fucking colony! What kind of a city is this?

HK: What would you like to say to people who may be interested in vinyl records?
PA: Every record is like a human being. Even if the artist is dead, his real sound was captured in the record. The needle is just like a microphone. When you play a record, you’re listening to a live concert. So it’s not hard to tell the difference between the sound quality of a record and digital music. If you want to listen to real sound, you should listen to vinyl.