Having worked in record stores since the late ’80s, Rocksteady Record’s proud owner Pat Monaghan is a laidback, thoughtful and thoroughly knowledgeable music devotee. The store will stock mostly vinyl (new and second hand) and turntables, while Monaghan promises that his black-wax baby will focus on local talent, including bands not signed yet to big distributors, as well as a great line in reggae (it is called rocksteady records, after all), funk, soul, rock, jazz, hip hop, indie and new wave.
“A real driver for me was that when I was growing up, you could go to the city and do a tour of the CBD’s record stores,” he says. “I wanted to bring back more of a circuit – so now there’ll be Missing Link, Collectors Corner, Wax Museum Records, Off the Hip, Basement Discs and you can finish up at Rocksteady Records”.