Say goodbye to Pat Deasey, co-owner and cofounder of suburban record store recordwonder, who died suddenly on Sat 4/22 at age 55. Plus, hip-hop duo VirgoTwins release party this Friday at goldendaggerchi, and more. | ✍️ imLeor | JR1Nelson
Record Wonderland co-owner Pat Deasey died unexpectedly on Saturday, April 22, at age 55. “He was a workhorse—you didn’t always know he was here, but he kept the place together,” says his friend Steve Young, co-owner of the store. “He was the order agent, and I’m the chaos agent.” Young met Deasey in the 1980s when they were students at Northwestern University, where they were both Evans Scholars. Young was a year ahead of Deasey, who graduated in 1990, but they roomed together and grew close.
“We’ve been going to concerts together for 25 years—we went to see the Residents together a few weeks ago,” Young says. “We both came to this without retail experience.” Deasey and Young started selling records online around 2005, and in 2016 they opened a brick-and-mortar shop in suburban Roselle. “It’s a cheap space,” Young says. “We’re in a ragged strip mall here that’s only half full. We’re a destination. People can Google ‘records’ near us and find us.
Young credits Deasey with Record Wonderland’s layout and design. “He had a vision to create a space that’s appealing,” Young says. “I think he very much succeeded in that.” Deasey’s approach, he explains, was similar to what grocery stores do: milk is always at the back, so that even customers who just need a new bottle will pass other enticing inventory on the way.
“We were both kids in the 80s, so we both liked punk music,” Young says. “He’s a very irreverent person, so the more obnoxious, the better.” Deasey loved all kinds of rock, and in the 90s he became a big Pearl Jam fan. But his omnivorous tastes extended beyond that genre—the most recent music he bought, Young recalls, was a DJ Quik album that came into the shop. “The beauty of working in a record store is we get exposed to music all the time,” Young says.
Young says Deasey could be gruff, but he wanted to make people happy—something he surely did for the record collectors around Chicagoland who’ve made the trek to Roselle to visit Record Wonderland. Deasey died on what the shop’s social media posts say was its most successful Record Store Day yet. “We are crushed that he wasn’t there to experience it,” Record Wonderland wrote on Instagram. “The day certainly would not have been a success without his work and planning.
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