Recordland

Lots of selection. The quantity of vinyl is almost overwhelming. I’ve been in the store a few times and have always thought if I was looking for music this is the place that I would start.
I spent almost an hour in this store today. I found several albums that I wanted to buy… only to discover that they had big scratches on them. That’s a shame because the price was right.
I probably would have found these albums quicker if it wasn’t jammed packed on a Saturday and the store wasn’t as narrow as a submarine engine room. Also thought the whole store smelled like a bottle depot.
Ended up buying one used record and one new record. Won’t be the first place I’ll go to next time.

Love shopping here. Best to chat it up with the staff. They can find some great music for you.

Wall to wall, floor to ceiling. Every square inch of Recordland is coated in tasty black vinyl! Yum! (Tasty for your ears, not you mouth. Stop salivating.)
It’s decently large shop that feels in credibly tiny. How? Everything is records! There’s barely any room to walk. If someone needs to get past you in an isle, don’t be surprised if you both need to walk out to an intersection so you can squeeze past each other. If you’re on the tall end of things, it’s actually somewhat difficult to bend over to look at the lowest shelves, there’s just not enough room for your body! To get the full Recordland experience, I recommend taking some Yoga lessons.
While the packed to the brim humongous and monsterous (Humong-​sterous?) selection is the coolest thing on earth, it’s also their detriment. If there’s a record you need, there’s no doubt they’ll have it — but whether or not you can FIND it at Recordland is an entirely different story. The jaw dropping amount of inventory is the very reason I bring everyone to Recordland — It’s unlike anything else you actually get to see their jaw drop. But at the same time, it’s the same reason I’ve left a store with no less than 34,380,467,598 records EMPTY HANDED! Right?! I guess I could have asked the staff for help finding something, but I was little afraid of the infamous record store elitest judgement I would face.
4-​Stars because this place is one of a kind in Calgary. If you like recorded music, you will LOVE a trip to Recordland.

Selection = excellent!
Prices = a bit too $
Staff = not that great
Worth checking out if you haven’t been. But be prepared to spend a couple of hours in there.

This wasn’t my first visit to Recordland. I walked through the door, went straight to the records and started digging. Found some awesome gems with the help of the staff. After about 2 hours, one of the guys there took me to the back room where they had more records than what’s on display, probably 5 or 6 times more! I spent another hour in the back and I felt like a kid at a toy store.
If you love music and you happen to be in Calgary, this place is a must!

Pros — The guys working here may seem grumpy, but they’re actually nice if you’re not trying to sell them overpriced garbage. There is an insane amount of product, and the prices are reasonable.
Cons — There’s a lot of dreck to filter through. They should get rid of their cassettes, VHS tapes, and non-​retail CDs. They don’t carry much new stuff (last 10 years)
Overall — Worth a look, worth the experience, but no guarantees.

Pretty much has everything you might want, but don’t expect any great deals. But $ 10 is a fair price for some of the hard-​to-​find music, the problem is there’s so much stuff there that you’ve been looking for elsewhere.
Except very tight corridors stacked to the roof with amazing and mundane stuff.

I haven’t been here in years until a few days ago and I’d forgotten what an overwhelming cast-​off storage facility this is. You’re almost better off going in knowing what you’re looking for or you could lose a significant amount of time in your day. I was here with friends to browse and thankfully I found a section that truly appealed to me. I scored a Def Leppard DVD (call me a loser, I don’t care) which I was pretty excited about and should I ever inherit my dad’s record player, I’ll be back to clean the place out.
I’m not thrilled with the fact that it’s very cramped inside and stock is piled to the ceiling, making for a lot of items I cannot see. It’s so crowded that I wouldn’t even bother to make an attempt to get help. Also, the front counter situation is not ideal. There’s barely room to do business. Good luck shopping here when it’s busy or if you’re a large person. A lot of items seem high-​priced.
Overall, Recordland makes for an interesting and nostalgic adventure.

Do you have a record player? Then this is a five star situation. Do you not have a record player? Get one.
Trust me, you will want to go to here…

They’ll probably have what you’re looking for.
Store management isn’t OVERLY friendly, but that’s ok because you’re not there to speed date. You’re there to find that obscure CD or record that has been evading capture for far too long now. This isn’t a great place to «stop in» to. You either need to (a) have some time to browse, or (b) be there for a purpose.
I do wonder if this place is going to start taking more than it’s selling, but we’ll see how that goes.
The owner let us do some wedding pictures in there too (see photos for one of them).

This is a great place for avid collectors. There are all sorts of vinyl records (to the right when you come in the door), cassette tapes, and CDs. I think there is even an area, just before the record room, where they sell movies. However, a warning: It is a very narrow store, with very small aisles. Not reccommended for bringing your kids, and don’t bother bringing a large bag or backpack.
One of the best parts: If you look up while you’re there, you’ll see the owner has the ceiling decorated with some pretty far-​out vinyls :)

Over-​priced vinyl sold by a grumpy old man.
Sure, the selection is fantastic!
… if you don’t mind shelling out coin and being harassed.
I made the mistake of asking if he had any extra crates for sale. He told me $ 10 each (which, let’s be honest, is ridiculous). I said, «Oh, no, that’s okay,» and I never heard the end of it.
His son (?) seemed nice though!

You can easily spend a lot of time in Recordland and run out your parking meter and get a parking ticket. I usually wait for a month or two between visits and build up a list of albums or CDs to find because if you go in to browse, you are going to seriously lose track of time. Just on my last visit back in December, I bought the following albums:
Underworld, Dubnobasswithmyheadman
PJ Harvey, To Bring You My Love
Prodigy, Music For the Jilted Generation
Pulp, His ‘n Hers
Catherine Wheel, Adam and Eve
The Field, From Here We Go Sublime
Boards of Canada, In A Beautiful Place Out in the Country
The Orb, Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
If that is not in my top three single-​purchases of all time, then nothing is! The CDs and vinyl are stacked ceiling-​high, and if the prices are sometimes less than generous, this is still the best place to seek out a rare album. Ask for Serge Gainsbourg, and the owner might let you into the secret cellar-​like room behind the electronic CDs that are nearly as extensive, stuffed with a multitude of foreign vinyl. Where he finds this stuff is a mystery.
ps. Flippant comments about the guy being a jerk are beside the point. Sure, he is probably as cuddly as a cactus, but think about the streams of endless Inglewood window shoppers who clog up his already non-​existent browsing space. If you go in there and walk out with an armful of stuff, he is definitely going to at least be friendly if not quite crack a smile.

Selection is way beyond amazing… I consider it more of a museum than shop… as the prices are… pretty darn high… Cool place to go see — and perhaps find something you have been searching for

Pretty solid selection of used vinyl. More a quantity thing than a quality but I certainly have found some gems.
Homeboy can be pretty hard to relate to or to strike up a conversation with, and generally unfriendly…
I suggest talking to him about how Eumir Deodato is your favorite artist and let the conversation blossom from there.

It is a cold or rainy day outside and all you want to do is stay inside and listen to some great music. Well then you should definitely head to Recordland.
Like Spencer said in an earlier review, you can could totally spend the whole day here. Whether you are looking for a specific CD (they’ll have it) or you are looking for a major junior-​high school flashback (check out the thousands of cassette tapes), it is impossible to not find something that you want at Recordland. In fact the only thing I couldn’t find there was laser discs, but this place is a twisty-​turvy maze of music and movies, so it is quite possible I just got lost and missed them.
While many of Inglewood’s shops have most in thanks to the resurgence of the neighborhood, Recordland has always been there and it shows its battle scars with its dimly lit aisles and just friendly enough staff.
Going to Recordland is a fun experience and it is so great to see that in the day of digital music, this store is going to fight until its very last breath!

Recordland is a true Calgary gem and something totally unique to our city.
I bring all of my record nerd friends here whenever they’re in town and regardless of where they’re from (Vancouver/​TO/​Montréal/​NYC etc), their tiny minds are always blown by the size and selection.
Needless to say, that happens to me as well and I can go to Recordland anytime I choose.
Be prepared to spend an entire day here, and don’t make any immediate plans for later on.
Recordland is like a mueseum of vinyl (except you can touch and purchase anything) and the staff and ownership are glad to give you a hand or answer your questions.
Also, if you need any further reason to check this place out, every band that plays Calgary, from clubs to when Radiohead or whoever hits the Saddledome, shop here on their day off.

Recordland is a Disneyland of anything audio or video. The outside is deceiving, you think you have stumbled upon some sort of biker bar, but the windows soon predict propaganda of a used music and record outlet.
This is wall to wall, floor to ceiling merch folks, even the ceiling has records and album covers looming over you. Prices are okay $ 10 for used CDs, 4 for $ 30.
The thing that separates them from other music stores is that they have the most extensive music library. Every category known to mankind is here and if you get your rocks off from collecting records then look no more; you will be exhausted by the rows and rows of record titles in their huge back room.
Be prepared to come with an asthma inhaler however, (this ain’t no HMV) lots of spare time, and tons of cash cause your perusing will take all day and I can assure you that you will remind yourself while looking of that artist that you wouldn’t want to be without plus I am 95% sure you WILL find it here.
There is also an area for music biographies and songbooks, as well as DVD, VHS and cassette finds.
When I asked the owner/​worker how many selections he had here, he shrugged his shoulders smiling and said «A Lot».

My mom moved to Calgary when I was 18, lived there till recently, and for 7 years, no visit to Mom was complete without her getting seriously pissed off at me for spending too much time in Recordland.
If you’re planning a visit, make sure to take a list because the volume of records contained within this shop is completely overwhelming; all my wants seem to disappear while looking down library-​like aisles stuffed with records, alphabetized, spines out like books. You can’t flip through them, and reading spines will make you go crazy after awhile; the easiest tactic is to think of a band, find its section or letter, and cross your fingers.
There are some boxes of 7″ singles in a little alcove near the entrance, but for the really ambitious — and this is something I only discovered during my last visit — there is a well-​hidden ROOM at the back where unsorted singles are boxed up to the ceiling. Be prepared to aggravate your dust allergies and spend a long, long time climbing around, but hey, it’s gotta be done.
Recordland seems to be overpriced as a rule, and make sure to check on condition; I once took home a Donovan record that turned out to be cracked. But there are still some cheap gems to be found if you’re willing put in the time and the work required.