A twenty-foot-wide record juts out of the outer wall of Rasputin Music, a local record store. From the outside, the building looks intimidating.

Walking through the parking lot, customers are greeted by a statue of Russian historical figure Grigori Rasputin shredding on a guitar on the street corner of Bascom Avenue, where the store has had a location since 1997.

The chain of record stores was originally opened in Berkeley in 1971  by entrepreneur Ken Sarachan, and has gone on to open 12 more locations in the Bay Area.

In an age where music is readily available for purchase online, Rasputin sells not only new and used CDs and DVDs, but also has a large vinyl section. Customers often shop at the stores and other record stores like it when they could easily download music instead because of the environment that the store provides.

The atmosphere is welcoming, the store looking much more inviting on the inside than it does on the outside. In the main room, there are shelves upon shelves of practically every CD or DVD imaginable. To the left there is a more private room where vinyl discs and LPs are stored.

The store has a wide variety of music artists, ranging from the newest Taylor Swift record to shelves of indie bands.

Rasputin is moderately priced, with most new CD’s ranging from $10-$15 and vinyl from $18-$25. Used CD’s can be found for anywhere from $0.50 to $13.95 and used vinyl for $0.25 to 15.95. The store has a vast selection, and I was amazed to find vinyl of The Beatles’ Abbey Road a mere five feet from Katy Perry’s Prism.
But since people can buy digital and don’t have to worry about scratching a favorite CD, it must be harder for the chain to stay above water financially.

One way they’ve done this is by branching out to include DVDs as well as music records. While digital music is convenient, its hard to find all of the special features one would find on a DVD in the iTunes version of a film.

Rasputin is keeping physical copies of records easily accessible to young people in the Bay Area. Personally, I’ve never been able to find something that matches the sound of my favorite CD playing on the stereo, even more so on vinyl, and I’m glad Rasputin can help others experience that.

Customer Resa Garza said she prefers vinyl “for collection purposes. They look nice and I like having physical copies of the music of artists I care about. For CDs, they have booklets on the inside cover that you can’t get if you buy online.”

Rasputin’s chain of stores seems like something out of a different era entirely to kids who’ve grown up in the age of MP3s and so many other forms of digital entertainment.  Whether it be iTunes or Google Play, on the surface, there appears to be no reason to go to a record store anymore when music can be at your fingertips in a second.

But the idea of holding something tangible – of taking the CD or vinyl of your favorite artist and admiring the cover art with detail that even the highest resolution screen can’t quite capture – has kept Rasputin in business through the digital age, and we are luckier for it.

If you’d like to visit

Rasputin Music
1820 S. Bascom Ave. Campbell, CA, 95008

(408) 558-0781