Behind the wax

Internet reality show 4486 Coloniale
documents the life and fast times of
underground record store Sound Central

CAPTURING INDIE COMMERCE:
Nelson Roberge (L) and Shawn Ellingham

by TRACEY LINDEMAN

It’s a blisteringly hot summer day and business at Sound Central, a (mostly) metal/punk/hardcore music store at 4486 Coloniale, just south of Mont-Royal, is understandably a little slow. A few customers linger around the vinyl section; a girl visiting from New York wanders in to use the bathroom and someone buys a collector’s box set that’s been sitting on the shelf for the past four years.

“[Owning an independent record shop] is like selling ice cream in the winter,” says Sound Central proprietor Shawn Ellingham. So he’s hoping 4486 Coloniale, a new Internet reality show centred around the store, helps change that.

The show chronicles the goings-on of an independent record shop and, by extension to a certain degree, the Montreal underground music scene. New five- to seven-minute episodes are uploaded to 4486coloniale.com every Wednesday (or two). Ellingham, who grew up in Montreal, sees the shop and the scene as kissing cousins, with guests invited onto the show to chitchat about the music biz, the last album they bought, whatever.

“This [show] could be happening at any record store,” Ellingham says. He’d been mulling over the idea for six months or so, but a lack of resources kept him from pursuing it until a fateful chat with loyal patron Leonardo Calcagno about how to beat the record shop blues. Calcagno, the co-owner of local music newspaper Bang Bang, already has Web TV experience, with a platform set up on Bang Bang’s Web site. An hour after leaving the store, Calcagno called Ellingham telling him the show was a go.

“We wanted to help Shawn; we see him struggle a lot,” Calcagno says. “The show is not just a guy selling music—he believes in what he’s doing.”

Vinyl saves

Le Nouveau Sound Central, as it’s officially called on paper, originally opened on Ste-Catherine E. in 2001 but was forced out when UQÀM bought the building. After a move to St-Denis and Ontario, the shop has settled into the location on Coloniale with roughly one-third to half of its original stock.

It’s no secret the music industry, at least the traditional model of it, is on its deathbed—everyone from the bigwigs at major labels to people like Ellingham are feeling the pinch as more and more music goes online. To survive, he knows added value is needed.

As a purveyor of music, Ellingham sees the potential value in sticking it out in the long run, even if things aren’t so rosy now. He says vinyl is making a comeback among music lovers as the sound of digital audio formats becomes increasingly compressed and worse for wear. And it at least appears to be true—during the couple of hours I’m in the shop, most customers gravitate towards the vinyl, ignoring the CDs. Ellingham sees several phenomena happening now—a more conscious support of local business and a growing appreciation for underground music—that make him hopeful for the future.

“If we stick it out long enough, we’ll be there to pick up the pieces,” he says. But in the meantime, diversifying his shop is the priority. Big chains like HMV have moved beyond the music business by pushing more DVDs and video games, but Ellingham would rather host in-store performances, parties, interviews and cameramen for 4486 Coloniale.

Life online and off

Like Miami Ink and other reality shows, the show’s first two episodes feel a bit contrived, but Ellingham says the creative minds behind the show—himself, Calcagno, Bang Bang artistic director Nelson Roberge and a couple of others—didn’t want to blow their load early and then have nowhere to go. Keeping the show’s content fresh is crucial to maintaining and building the online audience, and would be a positive factor in the eventual push for syndication. For now, though, Ellingham and Calcagno are pleased with the response to date. Ellingham says customers have already been to the shop asking for some of the music featured on the show, “whereas any other day, I’d be pushing it and it’d fall on deaf ears.”

“I’m curious what the show will do because this is a new frontier,” he says. “This has nothing to do with music other than music is involved—this is definitely more visual arts. Yeah, it touches music, but how it’s going to affect the record store is what I’m curious about. Is it going to bring in more sales? Is it going to bring more attention? Or is it just going to mean more people online, like usual?”