Featured Conversation: Bryan of Totally Real Records

Published on Jan 12, 2025

Bryan joins us to talk a little about his record label, a little about working in a record store and a lot about a 1962 record he became fascinated with

“I don’t even remember if it was on a greatest hits collection, or if it was a seven inch, or what, but this one song, when I put the record on, was playing, and I was like, I love this, this is the most perfect sounding song I’ve ever heard.”

So would you like to start off by telling me a little bit about yourself and your record label?

So as you know, I’ve done music stuff in various ways for a long time, but I guess most recently, and what now a lot of people know of is Totally Real Records, which got started right as the pandemic was hitting, kind of just by coincidence. But then I sort of liked that the label became where I put my music energy, instead of playing in a band. So, yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past few years. Kind of started out sort of a place where I could help out friends with music stuff, which I’d always done as a booker, as a musician, as someone who can help design artwork and get stuff made, and all the things that bands usually need, stuff I’d always kind of done. And it was at that point where I was like, okay, I need to make sense of how and why I do this, rather than just saying yes to everybody. So I was like, I will still help you if I can, but it has to be through the record label because I would get emails from friends and people I didn’t really know, but I would still just be like, Yeah, sure. I can help. 

So you needed to take control of that.

Yeah. Especially once I was married and had a house and my first kid and all that, I didn’t have unlimited resources and time anymore to give away, So I was like, okay, I still want to be able to do this stuff, but it has to be under this umbrella of Totally Real Records. Actually, I created the name when my band was about to come back and start releasing music after not putting anything out for three or four years. We had made a record, or were making a record, and we had the first single, we were putting it on the internet, and I needed to come up with a label name. And I was just like,  Totally Real Records. Sounds fun kind of, kind of tongue in cheek. It was like a joke. it’s absolutely not a real record label, but it sounds like it is. And it kind of referenced a couple things, like, my friend Travis has a record label called Serious Business. And I like that. That’s that same kind of self deprecating kind of thing, but it’s, he’s done very legitimate work. And so that was a little inspiration for the name. But anyway, like I said, with that first use of it really wasn’t meant to be anything. But then I was like, Oh, I made this name, and I started getting ideas. And the next time someone came along and asked me to help them figure out a release, I was like, Well, I kind of have this label thing. Maybe I should help you in that capacity, and it snowballed from there.

That’s great. You mentioned to me that you have a record that’s kind of special to you. Let’s hear about that.

As I mentioned, I’ve had a lot of jobs and hobbies and ways I’ve spent my time over the past couple decades doing music stuff for a short period of time, at one of those workshops in Park Slope in Brooklyn. And it was, I mean, I wasn’t working there often. It was like once a once a week-ish, sometimes more, sometimes less, for maybe a year, year and a half or so. But I wound up working there just because I kept hanging out there. At the time I lived down the block, and I would just go there and hang out every day, and probably annoy the people working, because I wasn’t buying anything. Most of the time I was just sitting there talking about music and trying to get them to listen to my band, probably. But eventually  they needed someone to work a day when they didn’t have anybody, and so they hired me. I kinda fell into that, just by hanging around, I got a job. Funny enough, that’s how I’ve gotten a number of jobs that I’ve really liked. Just hang around long enough to be placed right there. So, yeah, I worked in this record shop. And, you know, I have to preface this with, I’m not, like, I’m not a big vinyl collector, despite the fact I have a record label and I put out vinyl. I’m not going on Discogs. I’m not spending $100 on records. I just  don’t have the budget for it, but it’s just also not my relationship with music. I appreciate it. I like what I like. I get excited about things when I do, but I’m not like obsessing over filling my house with vinyl. That said, I certainly have hundreds of records, you know, partially thanks to my parents. They both gave me their record collections when I was a kid. So I’ve got all 60s, 70s stuff. I still have that, and I have plenty of new records. I have my friends’ records, all that. But I was working in this record shop. And when you’re working in a record shop you learn a lot, and you have your kind of niche in the shop. That shop in particular was very big on dub and reggae stuff and post punk, all those kinds of things. The shop is actually owned by the singer from the band Radio Four. So to give you a little context of that, like Brooklyn, aughts, post punk, dance punk, and, you know, influences They had a really great selection of used vinyl, new vinyl, same with CDs. They even had vintage clothing. So while working there, a lot of random records would come through. All sorts of boxes would come in. We’d have 400 new records that we had to go through and price and figure out what was garbage and what wasn’t. You worked at a record store, right?

Yeah, five years.

So you know, that was part of the fun of it. You’re not working at a record shop to make money, to make a lot of money. You’re working there because you love music, you want to be around it, yeah, maybe it has something to do with figuring out your identity or whatever. I listened to a lot of random music, a lot of stuff I hadn’t heard of before. I’d say at that point, I was very interested in music. I played in bands. Knew a lot about certain music, but I didn’t know much about a lot of music. You know what I mean, my focus and my knowledge was kind of narrow. So a great thing for me working there was just exposure to a lot of stuff, mostly because it randomly came into the shop in a milk crate. So every once in a while I’d hear something, and it kind of got stuck in my head, like songs do, and we put it on again and again, and one day -  I don’t remember the circumstances. I don’t even remember if it was on a greatest hits collection, or if it was a seven inch, or what, but this one song, when I put the record on, was playing, and I was like, I love this, this is the most perfect sounding song I’ve ever heard. I couldn’t, I couldn’t really make out the lyrics from what I recall. It was actually a very bad, scratched up copy, and but the sound of the music, it just struck me and like lodged itself in my brain, so that every time I went to work there, I’d see if that record was still in the used bins, and put it on, and put the song on, and that’s kind of how it weaseled its way into my brain. Now, uh, a caveat about the song. I’m not advocating for the content of the song. It’s lyrically not the best.

 Seems the general take on it was definitely split. The song is, If You Wanna be Happy by Jimmy Soul, and it’s one of those things when I heard it, and I don’t think I’d heard it before, I know it’s been in some movies and stuff, but I wasn’t familiar with it when I first heard it in the shop, but just hearing it, the sound just grabbed me, and I just had to hear it every day when I was in the record shop, and I probably played it over and over and annoyed the hell out of a lot of customers, so that it just became a fixation. I didn’t, I didn’t buy the record from the shop, though. I didn’t take it home, but it was just there. It’s just one of those things that lived in the shop. And there were other records that were in regular rotation, but I didn’t get it at the same point. I was also playing it as I was walking to shows around Brooklyn, and there was a place in Williamsburg called Sound Fix. It was a record shop, and it was  a coffee shop. I think the coffee shop was just called Fix, or maybe the whole thing was Sound Fix. But it was like a coffee shop bar, because what’s not a coffee shop bar and record shop in 2006?

I didn’t hang out in Williamsburg much at the time because I lived in the Park Slope Area, so most of my world was around there, this record shop, Union Hall, etc., but somehow I got hooked up there and started putting on a couple shows. So I was going up to Sound Fix every once in a while. And of course, I buy something. I saw this record there. It’s like, oh my god, they have it. And I got it. And the funny thing is, it still has this sticker on it. I paid $6.99 for this. $6.99 for a seven inch. I feel like I overpaid, especially if you go on eBay and it’s a dollar. But it’s just such a novelty to me. It’s like, oh my god, they have that record that I am always listening to but like I said before, it was such a bad copy that you couldn’t even really make out all the lyrics of the one I would listen to in the shop. 

What was your reaction when you finally realized what the song was about?

I mean, I had the general sense of what the song was about, but when I heard it more, I was like, oh, I don’t feel great about this. So the concept is basically, if you want to be happy for the rest of your life, marry an ugly woman. which sounds terrible to say. Like I said, I read a couple things articles now where I get the spin on it, where it’s saying don’t marry someone for their looks. It’s about not being shallow. But in the song, it talks about, like, she’ll be a good cook, she’ll take care of you, she won’t one up  you.

What year did this record come out?

It was 1963, I might be off by a little bit (ed. note: 1962). But then I was looking into it and I never had looked into it before. But, you know, it’s probably a record I’ve thought about more than any others, right? So I looked it up and it’s kind of a rewrite of a song that was recorded in 1930 by a Trinidadian artist. And then I went back and I heard that one - Roaring Lion was the original artist -  and that one’s even more intense. But, you know, also it was the 1930s, so in terms of political correctness and everything I wouldn’t expect either of these to stand up. But the fact of it is, the music just sounds really good to me, even a little tinny and almost like low body sounding.

So the really funny thing is, I don’t even know if I ever listened to the B side of it before, I would just listen to this song. So I did that earlier today, and it’s fine, but it’s not good. It’s not as good. 

It’s not too deep of a thing, but it was more just about these funny associations that you get with music and places. I have records that I don’t really enjoy all that much, but they remind me of a certain time or place, and I keep them because I don’t want to lose that connection. 

Bryan B is the human behind Totally Real Records, a DIY record label based on Long Island, NY.

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