Streaming music can be great.
There’s nothing like being able to open Spotify or Apple Music and having millions of songs at your fingertips.
But as Marc Faletti puts it, there’s two big things that music lovers are missing out on each time they open a music app: ownership and exploration.
“There’s two big things at play,” said Faletti, the owner of Latchkey Records on East Passyunk Avenue. “We have a lot less control in ownership over streaming than we thought – even three or four years ago – and I enjoy being able to give people the ability to take back the control over the music and movies that they love. And I would also say we’ve been fed more by algorithms, and one of the things I find so exciting from the people that come to the shop is they are looking for recommendations from human beings to escape that. Physical media still has a lot to offer over the streaming environment.”
Perhaps no one knows this better than Faletti. In 2009, he was packing up his things in Austin in preparation to move to New York to begin working at a nonprofit. He decided that in order to lighten the load, he would give away most of his physical media.
“I gave away all my CDs and gave away all my DVDs,” he admitted. “I cleaned house to start fresh. By 2012, I was very upset that I had made that decision and I started to get back into records, which is what my partner was into. She was already on the record train so I started going in that direction in 2012. I was one of the people who underestimated how much all that stuff meant and does mean to me and thought I could do without it.”
Faletti will turn 50 this year. He’s part of a generation that spends its disposable income on buying back the childhood toys that their parents threw out. While Gen Xers everywhere hope to reunite with their lost Transformers and G.I. Joe action figures, Faletti managed to restock his shelves with vinyl records. And in 2022, he opened a record store at 1502 E. Passyunk Ave. and named it after a slang term of his generation, known as “latchkey kids.”
Known as self-sufficient from the crib, latchkey kids often took bold risks based on the lack of supervision in their households.
“I was coming home from school alone from the age of 6,” he said. “I ran around and as long as I was home by dinner time or bed time I had the freedom that people kind of wax nostalgic for. But I also think it allowed me and the people I hung around with to learn a lot about ourselves. Taking risks is a big part of life and we can only put it off for so long.”
Faletti’s biggest risk came in the form of opening a store during the pandemic while still working a full-time job.
“I kept my job all the way up until October of last year because it’s very hard to pay yourself in a small business,” he said. “It’s taken some time, and I’m almost there. I was close enough to take the leap and go full-time here.”
Latchkey took over the mixed-use building that previously served as the former headquarters for the Passyunk Iron and Steel Company through the 1950s.
It’s walking distance for Faletti, who said he moved to South Philly in 2018 and doesn’t own a car.
“Passyunk was where we spent our time before I opened the shop,” he said. “I was really hoping to be a part of it and I just waited for a spot that felt like one I could grow into a bit. I’m very lucky that the businesses in the area have embraced us.”
What’s not to like?
Latchkey offers music lovers not only a great variety of vinyl, CDs, DVDs and even VHS tapes, but a friendly conversation and great musical recommendations. If you’re not greeted by Faletti, you’ll probably be well-received by Ben Mazzochetti, who has been working tirelessly at the shop for more than three years. Mazzochetti is a musician by trade (Check out his new project “Headfumes”) and brings a good portion of the vibe to the store including old-school wrestling videos on the TV wall and shelves of colorful 1980s and 90s horror VHS tapes.
Mazzochetti said he left the carpentry union to get deeper into the arts. He aced a job interview at Latchkey and has been happily filing records and talking music ever since.
“Me and Marc had it down to a science for a bit,” Mazzochetti said. “I do everything old. Marc does everything new. And we’re just here talking about movies and music while we are drilling away at things. We’re psychopaths with organization.”
The store began with lots of trinkets and evolved into a full-fledged record store that hosts listening parties and partners with other neighborhood stores for events like music-themed quizzo.
Even better, there’s lots of harmony with the other similar stores on the Ave. Faletti said he was welcomed to the neighborhood by the nearby Beautiful World Syndicate and he followed suit by welcoming Echo Echo, which opened a few blocks away in April.
It’s one big happy South Philly family.
“We’ve really tried to create an analog community,” Faletti said. “There’s two book stores, three record stores and a typewriter store. We want to be a part of creating ‘Analog Avenue.’ ”
Each place is different and offers something unique to the community. Faletti said Latchkey gets most of its ideas from its customers.
“The thing I enjoy the most is trying to find the thing that people are looking for that somebody else in the neighborhood doesn’t have and bring that to people as much as we can,” he said. “It’s the puzzle-making fun of being a small business.
“Running a record store can be a humbling experience. No matter how much I think I know, every week, I learn about six to 20 new bands that I’ve never heard of that people are looking for. Customers are educating us and a lot of what we carry comes from recommendations from people who are looking for things that we don’t have. That listening and learning is a part of the job.”
It’s music to his ears. ••
