Vans and music: an interview with Salvadiscos

Tokyo-based clothing and record label Wacko Maria has teamed up with Vault by Vans to release a new collaborative collection. Inspired by a shared love of music and collector culture, the collaboration features three colorful variations of the iconic OG Authentic LX Vans sneaker. To celebrate the launch we talk to our favourite BCN based collector-DJs, Salvadiscos, about digging records, DJing and life in Barcelona.

Who chooses which album to listen to every day in the store.

Shiho: We buy and sell records. We play music. We share good times through music. Salvadiscos has become a meeting point for everybody. Music connects people. 

Jordi: Salvadiscos is a collective of people who share a passionate sickness for music. It began with a friend of mine, Salva, and me. Salva was the director of Hipnotik Festival, one of the top hip hop festivals in this country, and after this project, he came to me because I have been a vinyl collector and DJ since the 90s. So we started selling records in the Lost & Found Market here, in Barcelona, and in Madrid. This led to a DJ collaboration, which is something I had done before for Lasal, a legendary beach-bar in Maresme. 

Everybody started to ask for a vinyl-only DJ service, but there was nowhere we could find an acceptable DJ set or sound-system that worked properly. I pushed one of our customers at the time, Macera BCN, to buy the equipment. I pushed so hard I convinced myself. So Salva and I started to buy turntables, mixers, portable sound-systems with the flight cases, and we hit the road offering a full DJ service as “Salvadiscos Disco Mobile”! (laughs).

If you had to take a guess, how many vinyls do you buy in a year? 

J: Around 1,000 a year, if there is no special opportunity, which happens every year… (laughs). You have to buy in order to offer new stuff.

You go to people’s homes to collect vinyls that they want to get rid of. 

a. Have you ever found a collection worth a fortune?

J: Yes. I know an antique collector friend of my mum’s, from my hometown, a retired man who digs around vintage markets. He called once to tell me that a colleague of his, another antique collector, had just passed away, and her daughter was selling all the records. It took me two days to pack and transport all of them. When I told her my story –that I was about to open a new store and that my father always told me I would end up with a huge collection, kind of like hers’– the two of us ended up in tears, hugging.

b. What’s the weirdest collection you’ve ever come across? 

J: Maybe the craziest story is the one of a Scottish and an Irish dude, working class street heads with really sped up attitudes, like from Trainspotting, that sold me three boxes of amazing Balearic obscure treasures, a DJ collection worth a fortune, for only a hundred bucks in hand, hurriedly and in a building doorway. They were definitely on drugs and didn't know what they were doing. On the first night, I slept truly happily. The second night, I couldn’t sleep anymore. There was something weird about all this.

As I started to dig into that collection I discovered the money and effort that was behind those records. I knew they were stolen. I had nightmares about the owner coming back for their stolen records. It happened a few months later, as I had pictured. When I showed him all the records collected and restored in perfect conditions, he couldn't believe it. This huge tattooed macho shed a tear. So, I had to give them back. It was that man’s lifetime collection, I could not keep it from him.

What’s coming up in terms of projects in the near future for Salvadiscos? 

S: We are opening up a new space, which is a little bit bigger than the current Salvadiscos, so we can enjoy music with high-fidelity sounds. It’ll be a cultural association for music lovers, so we can keep connecting music and people. There will be records, good coffee, craft beer, events, and much more. 

J: More Salvadiscos, more of everything. Bigger, cooler & cosier. We are actually finishing the reformation of a new space in the same square of our current location, the basement in the middle of the Plaça Santa Madrona. A cosy and comfortable place to listen to music and have a drink while you dig through some records: what we are now, but bigger and better. We are going to have an open booth to let DJs come every day to spin and show what they have to say. We will be open to concerts and performances! We have emptied our pockets, and we are really excited to see what's going to happen from now on.