It may not be very good but if you're hanging in there, the people who are still looking for records are coming to you. Once we get our website up we'll be able to see that. We see it on our eBay store definitely. Our eBay has blown up. We do really well on eBay. Hector, Andy, and Tracey have really done a lot of stuff to make it work.

You see it's turning almost how it was 30 or 40 years ago. Only mom and pop records stores are opening up because now you do it because it is what you want to do. And you know you're not doing it to make tons of money. It's like it used to be back in the day.

Almost all the records coming out now - at least 90% - are from independent labels. They are not coming from major labels. Major labels send out downloads to their constituents. You're able to buy their stuff on Traxsource or what ever. There are only a few like Defected, which is a sub-major label. Its not like Columbia, but it is fairly major. They are one of the few who is still doing vinyl constantly. Most of the stuff now is coming from small labels or guys who want to have their stuff on vinyl. They do it because they love it, not because they're going to sell 5,000 copies.

That's why someone will pay $150 for Capricorn I Need Love. When he was doing it, it wasn't because he was looking to sell 5 million copies. It probably didn't even sell 50,000. So now with records like that - the ones people are looking for that are so rare - they want to pay a lot of money for something like that. Now you get people doing runs of 500 or 1000 and you'll be lucky if you ever see it again after that. You need a demand to do a second pressing and a lot of times you don't have it.

The economy hurts too. The fact that the price of oil is so major hurts. People are also trying to be eco-friendly so they say, "Don't buy vinyl because it's made from oil." Plus the dollar is down and all the pressings are done overseas so you are paying overseas' prices for records while the dollar is at its lowest. So all those things are against the domestic market. If you go overseas to England, France or Japan you'll find that their vinyl sales are doing okay. There was an article in Billboard and an article in Wired magazine that said vinyl is on a comeback. That is probably because out there, it is costing them a lot less than it is costing us.

As far as DJing - where are you trying to take it? What are your goals?

I feel that I have already reached one of my goals, which is to play at and be a part of one of the biggest and longest running nights in the city. But taking over the store has put a little side thing on that. I don't push as much with the DJing because of all the stuff I have to do now.

I'm hoping with Gramaphone and a couple good nights that I play that I can help get the scene back to being a descent House scene. I want to reach out to more people and a younger generation. As much as I love my House community, I get sick of seeing the same people at every venue. I mean I love them all and love to talk to them, but I kind of wish there were a little more people going out like back in the day. Back then you could go anywhere and hear House. Now there aren't a lot of places playing it. Most of these places that book a House DJ tell them they have to play some hip hop too. It seems the regular shmoe doesn't understand House Music and doesn't really care either.

So what would you propose? If everyone would listen to Michael Serafini what would you propose?

[Laughs] Stop playing hip-hop in nightclubs. That would be my proposal. Only play hip-hop for the last 15 minutes of the night. That's how we used to do it back in the day. They did that at Shelter and Crobar. You'd have House music all night then when it was time to go home at the end of the night you'd throw a couple hot hip hop records and then drop a James Brown record or something. Everybody loved it and went nuts. Now when you hear hip hop all night it s just too sexual and too aggressive.

One thing - if I could do it and I would do it and I probably wouldn't make any money from it - is start throwing underage parties like they used to do back in the day. That is one of the reasons why the house scene was so good is because all the young kids could go and hear this different music - different than what they heard on the radio and they loved it. It is just like with how you now see a lot of the old rave kids out when you go to clubs now. Something like Medusa's or Prime and Tender.