35 Years Of Rare Records

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RARE RECORDS PRESENTS
35 & Still Alive - Halloween @ 170 Russell
Mammal, Sydonia, .Hinge, Bushido, Tyson & Forbes (Rook / The Khyber Belt)
Celebrating 35 Years of Rare Records & 25 Years of the Rare Records Label

Thirty five years is a long time to keep anything alive in the music business.
A record store? That's bordering on miraculous.

Long before streaming, social media and algorithms decided what music you should listen to, record stores were where music fans went looking for something new. The really good ones became something more than just a place full of CDs and T-shirts. They were meeting places, hang outs and information exchanges. It was where people who liked music beyond the mainstream could find each other.

Rare Records was one of those places.

Doug Bear started Rare Records in Melbourne in 1991 as a mail-order business run from home, which quickly moved to a regular weekend market stall in Cheltenham. On February 2, 1996, Rare became a physical record store for the first time when the doors opened in Hughesdale. But it was during Rare's years in St Kilda that something truly special happened.

From the early to late 2000's, Melbourne’s collective of independent heavy, progressive and experimental bands was at its all time high and Rare Records didn't just sell their music, it gave them somewhere to belong. At one point the store carried more than 1000 different independent and local releases. There wasn't an elaborate selection process or someone deciding whether a band…