Rodriguez grabbed one last LP, an obscure album by a 70s soft rock band called Egg Cream. He turned to the film camera and explained that it was the first album he bought when he moved to New York in the early 2000s. "That was about 17 years ago," he said. "And here it is again, Egg Cream."
Searching for a few more records, Rodriguez picked up the album "Return of Dragon" by '90s rapper Sisqó. He then put the record back and shook his head. "That's his second album. That one doesn't have 'Thong Song' on it," he said. "You need to find 'Thong Song.'"
"I think the younger generation grew up used to streaming and digital music, and they're looking for something different, for a change," he said. "And having a giant, square piece of cardboard that has artwork on it, that you have to physically place a needle on — that's something that's exciting and new to them."
As he continued digging through the crates, Rodriguez expounded on what he sees as the underlying factors behind vinyl's recent resurgence in sales.
Rodriguez said the crew's most unexpected stop was at the back of an antique store in Fargo, North Dakota, where he "lucked out" in finding a 50% off sale on a hoard of great vinyl. When asked what drew him to Academy Records in specific, he called the location a "New York staple."
Rodriguez told us that this year's trip was the 11th cross-country road trip he'd taken for the festival in the past four years. He said the crew will have driven over 10,000 miles by the time they circled back to Los Angeles.
The director of the documentary crew, Vincent Vittorio (not pictured), told us that he met Rodriguez at a hotel in upstate New York when Rodriguez was in the middle of one of his cross-country record trips. The two native Californians hit it off, and Vittorio jumped on the opportunity to film Rodriguez's travels. "There's something that's really fascinating to me about the dedication and the process," Vittorio said. "And it's all about the purity of the albums."
He checked all prospective records for scratches and explained that damaged vinyl wouldn't sell.
Rodriguez picked out a 1985 record from art-pop singer Grace Jones. He said that he's seen a sharp resurgence in demand for her records after Jones played a circuit of festivals in recent years.
He described his process of assessing the demand for records: "I listen to what people tell me they look for. I follow lots of social media for it. I look at #vinyl on Instagram to see what people are posting, and it kind of gives me an idea of what people like."
As Rodriguez started to dig through the crates, we asked how he goes about choosing records. He said that while he's looking for anything that catches his eye, he also has to find "certain classics" like "Pink Floyd or Fleetwood Mac," as well as any other vinyl that he sees potential demand for.
"It was not the best store," he said, "because I had two months to get like 20,000 records. But they liked it enough and said, 'You're the in-house guy now.'"
Rodriguez, 37, described how he was "thrown into" his job as Coachella's record store owner. He was working at the Glass House Record Store in Pomona, California, when the opportunity presented itself. The festival previously had a group of vendors selling vinyl, but that fell through in 2013, and Coachella's managers asked him to put a store together in 2 months.
We met Rodriguez at Academy Records, a new-and-used vinyl shop in Manhattan's East Village. He and the documentary crew following him arrived in a van.
