Booth transfer at Absolute Vinyl

Long-time owner Doug Gaddy tags out, Aaron Ladley keeps the records spinning

If you’ve spent any time in a record store, you know it isn’t just a retail establishment. It’s a culture, a history, and a sanctuary for the misfits, an unofficial community center for people who speak in liner notes, and a living museum of pristinely preserved art and dusty basement finds. Those of us who feel like we’ll never quite fit in find comfort in the tactile sensation of flipping through the stacks and in the predictable, soothing logic of alphabetized bins. We don’t have to talk to anyone, but we’re still surrounded by voices and stories, participating in a culture without feeling pressured to perform.

A record store is also a crucial ingredient in a thriving music scene like Longmont’s. In an era where streaming algorithms can keep us locked into the artists and tunes we already know, serving us increasingly homogeneous pabulum, a local record shop brings humanity and serendipity back into our musical lives. It’s a place where local releases rub up against national acts, where music is the native language, and where real human beings show you what’s worth listening to.

For 18 years, Doug Gaddy and his shop, Absolute Vinyl, have been a critical part of Boulder County’s music community. But recently, in a transition that feels less like a business transaction and more like a DJ changeover, Gaddy is stepping back, handing the keys to Aaron Ladley, a veteran DJ, producer, and crate-digger for whom records have always been a life raft. We spoke to Gaddy and Ladley to understand what this means for a local music scene that’s still finding its legs.

Doug’s boutique

To understand what this handoff means for our local music community, you have to go back to 2008, when Gaddy opened Absolute Vinyl in North Boulder. The location was a leaky, asbestos-laden spot, so hazardous that the city fire inspectors visited almost as regularly as the mailman.

By that time, Gaddy was already a veteran of the vinyl hustle. He’d been flipping wax at Mid-Atlantic record fairs since 1985, hauling crates out of the Silver Spring Armory and making late-night runs to New York City’s bustling record conventions. He arrived in Colorado in 1997 with a metric ton of LPs and quietly observed as Boulder’s 16 record stores gradually guttered out.

Opening a shop as the Great Recession of 2008 commenced—in a building with a leaky roof and exposed electrical wires—might’ve looked like madness to outsiders, but to Gaddy, it was a calculated gamble. After all, underground culture is often nurtured in cheap, undesirable real estate.  “If I can make it in the pit of a recession, it’ll be nothing but up,” he thought.

Against the odds, Absolute Vinyl survived, moved to a decidedly upmarket location on East Arapahoe, and established itself as an indispensable anchor for local music heads and collectors, scouring the bins for forgotten jazz and classic rock. To connect with the local music community and attract more customers, Gaddy hosted a diverse of array of live performances among the stacks throughout the years, a tradition he continued when he moved the store to Longmont in 2018.

People’s instinctive travels and the paths of rhythm

Along the way, Gaddy met Aaron Ladley, who spent his early childhood in the East Bay—soaking up the vibrant hip-hop culture that was blossoming. While he was still a young child, Ladley’s family relocated to Colorado, where his mom’s side of the family can trace its San Luis Valley roots back hundreds of years.

Ladley’s childhood wasn't easy. Anxious, awkward, and struggling in traditional school, he dropped out after ninth grade, suffering from anxiety and panic attacks he couldn’t name.

As cliché as it sounds, music saved him—specifically, the tactile, physical machinery of music. While his parents busied themselves with their own lives, Ladley was combing through alleyways, picking up discarded amplifiers, broken turntables, and cast-off instruments, and bringing them back to life.

One day when Ladley was just 14, his mom took him to the doctor for debilitating abdominal pain. The doctor found the anxious teen already had a dozen stomach ulcers. After that appointment, the young Ladley asked for the one thing he knew would bring him comfort: a trip to Boulder’s iconic Bart’s Records.

By the time Gaddy opened Absolute Vinyl in 2008, Ladley was a working DJ with an extraordinary ear and an appetite for physical media. Walking into Gaddy’s North Boulder shop for the first time, he admired the extensive selection of jazz and rock records, but couldn’t help approaching Gaddy at the front counter and asking, “Where’s the hip-hop?”

Nobody beats the biz

That encounter sparked an immediate symbiotic alliance. Gaddy admitted he didn't know the hip-hop terrain—the culture was foreign to him and evolving at breakneck speed. On top of that, the records were still too new to enter the secondary market in full force.

Ladley had recently gained unfettered access to a dank storage unit stuffed with thousands of uncatalogued records (including a mint 1997 Wu Tang promo), and within weeks, he was supplying Absolute Vinyl with an infusion of beats and rhymes. Gaddy got a crash course in hip-hop music and culture, and Ladley got a legitimate outlet for his hustle. Despite their age difference, the two bonded over their love of the grind, their reverence for mechanical musical objects, and maybe a little bit of childhood trauma.

“We recognized each other,” Gaddy says. “We were both back-of-the-class anomalies trying to do things our own way.”

Ladley’s love of music led him to a career as one of Colorado’s most sought-after hip-hop and open-format DJs, playing 200 shows a year and selling out venues as DJ A-L. Meanwhile, he also founded Retro Respect Records, an independent label that has shipped over 10,000 vinyl releases worldwide.

When Ladley was later recruited by Denver’s nonprofit Youth on Record to teach turntablism and beat-making to kids, the voices in his head convinced him he couldn’t do it. They told him he was stupid, slow, a high-school dropout. But the program director believed in him more than he believed himself. He gave Ladley a copy of the notoriously prickly Ableton music production software and told him he had two weeks to learn it. “I know you can do it,” he told the incredulous vinyl DJ who wasn’t yet familiar with digital composition. And he was right. Today, through his connection to Denver’s B-Boy Factory, Ladley still helps kids connect with the magic of DJing.

And the beat goes on

In a town like Longmont—where live music is steadily expanding beyond acoustic and bluegrass sets in breweries into a diverse tapestry of hip-hop, electronic, indie, noise, metal, and punk—having a physical record store run by a seasoned community practitioner isn't a convenience; it’s necessary infrastructure.

A local record shop acts as an incubator, a meeting place, and yes, a sanctuary. It’s where a disaffected teenager looking for the latest release stumbles upon a dusty record that catches their eye and opens their ears. It’s where local artists can stock their self-released vinyl and reach new audiences. It’s a 360-degree musical experience curated by the unassuming-but-expert clerk behind the counter instead of being calculated by a server in Silicon Valley.

Watch the throne

As Gaddy cedes his Record King throne to Ladley to spin Absolute Vinyl into its next chapter, the transition just works. The shop isn't being sold off to a corporate chain or liquidated into an eBay warehouse; it’s remaining in the hands of someone who understands its soul—someone who knows what it feels like to dig through the trash to find a rare groove because music is the only torch that can chase away the darkness.

For Longmont’s emergent music community, Absolute Vinyl’s new life is something to celebrate. Eighteen years ago, Gaddy dropped a record on the turntable, and now Ladley is stepping into the booth to keep the party going. He hopes to turn the shop into a true “third space” where people of all ages, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds can feel at home. “I don’t want to be a babysitter to six-year-olds or a therapist to 60-year-olds, but I want the space itself to do the work,” Ladley says. While he could bring in world-class DJs and sell expensive collectors’ items, that’s not the vibe Ladley wants to cultivate. He’s not interested in trading on his DJ star power, but instead, he’s adjusting to his new identity as a humble record store clerk.

“I feel more comfortable with kids and immigrants and poor people,” the former party-rocker admits. “I want a kid to be able to walk in with seven dollars and walk out with two used CDs and an old VHS.” He's even considering offering turntable lessons to kids in the back of the store after he gets his feet under him.

It’s already clear from a refreshed store layout, new inventory, and a palpably different vibe that Ladley will be putting his own spin on Absolute Vinyl. The important thing is that Longmont still has this cultural sanctuary, even as it evolves. The needle is locked into the groove and the beat goes on.