We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dave James a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Dave, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

So the idea for Factory Records was a no brainer. This is my second indie record store. I had a shop across town for fifteen years, Noise Noise Noise Records, from 1991 to 2006. Noise3 was a huge success until I had the bright idea to spend all my profits and more on a nasty heroin addiction. That obviously didn’t work out for me, so I had to shutter the doors and get my shit together.

I took a few years off, doing just that, while also staying connected to the music industry, working with a DIY rock band, doing merch and promotions, and playing designated driver on a couple of USA tours. I also spent almost a year working the counter of the location of a corporate national chain music store, which was humbling yet very rewarding, and let me get my feet back into my passion.

I got the opportunity to open Factory in 2010. A friend of a friend was looking to lease out a small space where another indie record store had recently vacated, behind her barbershop.

After the previous shop shut down, Costa Mesa had no independent record stores, only the corporate store where I was employed (which was mostly CDs and DVDs). After some initial fears and hesitation, I realized I was in a place to keep the mom and pop record shop vibe alive in my town. I took the plunge back into being a record store owner in April, 2010, and the rest is history.

Dave, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I developed a passion for collecting records probably around the age of 10. I had a paper route then, which is how newspapers were delivered many years ago: kids would strap bags onto the handlebars of bicycles and throw the papers onto the porches or driveways of houses. This was done at sunrise on the weekends, so I’d hit the garage sales as I did my route, picking up used records people were selling.

As I got a little older, I was allowed to ride my bike with a few friends to the local independent record store, where I spent a lot of that paper route money on vinyl.

I got a job at that record store at the start of 1988, and opened my first shop in 1991, when I was 22 years old.

So for most of the last 32 years, I’ve been at the helm of an independent Costa Mesa record store. Noise Noise Noise was and Factory Records is known for having an eclectic mix of new and used vinyl, cassette tapes and CDs, focusing on everything from the mainstream to oddball independent releases and a whole bunch of in-between.

I think one huge thing that Factory Records provides is the intimate in-person community shopping experience, that seems to be a dying breed these days. We’re a place where you can come in and browse and shoot the shit, and you’re not gonna be pressured to buy anything.

(Of course, we all work hard to create a great environment where people do buy things, or I wouldn’t have lasted in this business this long.)

Often, we’ve got some of our friends hanging out on the front patio who also love to talk about the music community and record collecting, and new customers will find themselves part of the conversation.

You don’t get this experience online, and there is no bot and no site that can replicate using your fingers to flip through a stack of freshly priced vinyl records, and no blog or chat can match the experience of a group of people breaking bread around these boxes of records.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I think the funniest thing I’ve had to unlearn is the slacker vibe that was prevalent in record stores in the 1980s and 90s (and I’m sure the 70s, too). Record stores were more essential back then, so it was easier to get away with a stoner IDGAF attitude, and while I wasn’t a straight up asshole back in the day – that’s just not how I am – I (and others I worked with) could definitely be laid back to the point of being annoying at times, and a little attitude could be thrown in, too.

(Go watch the movie High Fidelity for an example.)

These days, I approach customers with a sense of appreciation and gratitude. It’s a challenge to get people out of the e-commerce world and into a brick and mortar shop, and I have to make that visit worthwhile for those who take the time to come into Factory.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

I’m gonna go back to Noise Noise Noise, because everyone loves a junkie success story. Beyond almost missing payroll and being near death, my drug habit essentially took away my ability to take care of payroll (and, obviously, my employees hit the road), and it killed the business.

I went from a thriving independent record store with a handful of great employees, to just me, unable to open on time, if at all. When I did get the doors open, it would be long enough to sell enough records to get high for a few days. I’d lock up early and spend a lot of time in the bathroom shooting heroin and smoking meth.

And often, after getting good and high, I’d keep the shop open until 2 or 3 in the morning. (And, oddly enough, I’d get a little bit of business at these strange hours. Not the clientele I’d want to deal with these days, but if they had money, they were welcome.)

Obviously, this type of behavior didn’t fly in the long run, and after a few months of not paying rent, my landlord gave me the boot, and Noise Noise Noise Records was no more as of mid-2006.

A few more events got me to my rock bottom, so I made the choice to get clean and sober, and have been since early 2007.

I’ve got a whole bunch of hard learned lessons which I keep in my back pocket when I’m at Factory Records. Payroll and rent have never been missed and never been late at this second shop.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @factoryrecordsdavenoise
• Facebook: Factory Records Costa Mesa
• Yelp: Factory Records https://s.yelp.com/MoiOMKrAkM
• Other: TikTok @factoryrecordscostamesa Threads: @factoryrecordsdavenoise