Berlin has no shortage of vinyl records. LP’s can be found for purchase everywhere from weekend markets to coffee shops. They’re carried still by small independent record stores all the way up to, once again, large franchise chains. In some districts you can even zig-zag across a certain street and hit three shops in no time. One year ago, Funhouse Records opened its doors in Prenzlauer Berg. To celebrate their September 13th anniversary, this Saturday the shop will host musical acts Fearless Bob and Berlin-based four piece, The Fizzis, amongst a nice stock of wax 45’s and LP’s.

I spoke with the owners about their first year of being up and running.

Has Prenzlauer Berg taken to Funhouse Records over the past year?

We’re pretty happy how FH was received during our first year. Not only customers from our fleamarket stall at Mauerpark which we used to run for a couple of years have found the way to the Funhouse, but we could welcome even more new and rather young customers (that is below 35 yrs, let’s say) who found the way to us via flyer promotion, our facebook site, online record shop directories and such. Plus, with our shop lying neatly in a pretty popular quarter of town with lots of cafes, bars and not least important children’s playgrounds we benefit even more than we initially thought from people simply walking by our store front.

What do you specialize in?

What we had to learn during our early fleamarket days is that you’ll have a hard time running a stall or store by trying to stick to just one single genre of music. So we had to broaden our stock, and I hope we succeeded in simultaneously deepening it. You can find 60’s mainstream rock and beat as well as pretty obscure 60’s garage and psychedelic, the same goes for Rock’n’Roll, Hillbilly, Indie/Alternative, New Wave and what have you. We try to offer a wide range, but can’t help caring especially for our respective shticks – Martin is into Garage, Psychedelic and Punk while Stefan is nuts about Rock’n’Roll and Rhythm’n’Blues.

We’re especially proud of our huge hand-selected 45s stock, with extra-sections for Chess-Checker, Atlantic-Stax, King-Federal, Motown, Specialty and the likes on the one hand, and for Bobby Fuller Four, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Them, Animals, Shocking Blue etc. on the other. And we have a small but growing fine selection of posters, promo photos and books, all more or less music-related, of course.

How do you see the shop compared to others in Berlin?

I think apart from the street your shop is located, there are two things to let your shop shine: the records you offer and the environment you offer them in. As I said before, we’re trying to have a broad and deep variety of records for sale. As for environment we were lucky to find a bright room for our shop which we try not to cram too much and hopefully our customers service matches that brightness. We’ve seen a lot of the “older” record shops, especially in the western part of town which are not too tidy and so crammed full with records you have a hard time pulling one out of a shelve without hurting your fingernails or without getting screamed at by the owner (male, scruffy, in a bad mood). That kind of shopping experience we try to avoid here. Let the customer decide if we succeed in that.

Funhouse will open Saturday the 13^th at Noon with the bands playing roughly between 3 and 6 PM.

Berlin Funhouse Records
Schallplatten An- & Verkauf

Stargarder Str. 29
10437 Berlin

Mo-Fr 13:00-19:30 Uhr
Sa 12:00-19:00 Uhr