Here’s what it’s like to attend a Cue the Record vinyl listening session: Feet tapping, eyes closed, heads nodding to the beat, singing and dancing like no one is watching. For everyone in the room, it’s not just an event, it’s an experience.
Cue the Record creates a space for people to bond over “a shared love of music and analog sound,” according to its site. Based in New York, the collective was founded by Mustafa Ali-Smith and Semaj “Sem” Davis, both 28-year-old, mid-Westerners from Chicago and Detroit respectively.
The collective’s monthly vinyl listening sessions are the real draw. On Sunday evenings at 4:30 p.m., music lovers come together to listen to an album, in full, on vinyl and discuss its personal significance to them as individuals and its cultural contributions to music in general.
“Cue the Record is like a book club for music lovers basically,” says Davis, who freelances in production and works in real estate.
As a unit, Ali-Smith and Davis have created a “third space,” a place beyond work and home that people visit often to find community and connect around a shared interest. Originally called a “third place,” the term was defined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in 1989.
