Interview with Dan Kuster (Gold Shop Reggae, NYC)

The people over at clientele posted a nice little interview with Dan Kuster yesterday.

Kuster is a former A&R of Greensleeves Records and now CEO of Gold Shop Reggae. Gold Shop releases super rare 7″ vinyl re-pressings from artists from labels like Eclipse Records, Part 2, African Love, or Witty.

In the interview, Dan e.g. talks about how he became so involved in reggae music:

I am originally from Burlington VT, and that is where I got into reggae. Some of the guys that were a few years older than me used to play reggae on the local college radio station, and me and my friends kind of learned it from them. I spent a lot of time in NY as a child, so when I reached the age to be out on my own, it was kind of the obvious place to go. When I moved here I used to hang out at the reggae shops in the Bronx and Brooklyn, and then started traveling to Jamaica often so I quickly immersed in the whole scene. My partner and I saw an angle to start supplying some of the NY shops with records imported from Jamaica, so in the early years we would drive around the boroughs selling records out of the trunk of our cars. This evolved into a full on distribution company and record label which thrived up until the introduction of cd burners and then mp3s. The market that we serviced promptly collapsed, and our company closed, but I have stayed in the reggae music business ever since.

Read the whole interview here.

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