Phantasmagoria Montreal

08/06/2025

Peter’s gold record in its new home. Thanks, Lois!!!❤️❤️❤️

08/01/2025

My Best Man, both at my wedding in 1987 and at Phantasmagoria Montreal throughout the ‘80’s, Peter Fowler, was recognized for his passion and salesmanship for promoting Blue Rodeo’s debut album, also in 1987, with this gold record plaque. In addition, Vic Karakul, my main man and manager of Phantasmagoria Montreal throughout the 70’s and Phantasmagoria Vancouver in the 80’s, while attending my wedding in Toronto, was introduced to Blue Rodeo by me on our way to the airport for his return to Vancouver and I gifted him the cassette we’d been listening to as a farewell gift as he left me at the departures area at the airport. Peter’s sister, Lois, just gifted me with this treasure that she decided to part with and I am very grateful to her for her generosity! It shall hang with pride on my gallery wall!

06/07/2025

From The Montreal Gazette: Memories of Phantasmagoria

06/07/2025

Deja Vu: The Exhibit - Montreal Gazette Feature “Little Shop of Wonders”.

01/28/2025

Rufus Wainwright remembers buying his first record - at Phantasmagoria!!! This is from The Guardian’s Saturday Magazine. Wainwright’s opera “Dream Requiem” was just released on January 17. Apparently he’s dropped the Rufus and now goes by just Wainwright like Verdi, Rossini, Madonna, et al.❤️❤️❤️

11/28/2024

56 years ago today I was on my way to Capitol Records Montreal warehouse on Airport Road to pick 100 copies of “The Beatles” White Album for the opening day of Phantasmagoria. Every year on this anniversary I remember the excitement of unboxing the very first shipment of records and welcoming our first customers through the door. Although November 27 is the official release date in Canada of the “White Album” as it was instantly referred to Capitol Records didn’t ship it to stores until the next day. We had to pay cash ($800.) for that first order and then were given a credit account so that we could stock the store and pay for the inventory later, in 30-60 days. We headed back to Capitol the next morning for another 100 copies and that must have repeated itself for quite a while. Slowly, one by one, the other record companies got on board and opened accounts with credit so we could build up our selection. It was pretty lean to start with and took a while for the walls to fill in. They were pretty exciting times!!!

11/28/2023

Cue jet engines for take off! It’s that time again! Today, November 28 marks the 55th Anniversary of Phantasmagoria’s opening AND the Canadian release of “THE BEATLES”, aka the White Album! It is still a throbbing, vital, ingenious work of art that is a joy to listen to track by track in its entirety! Imagine if the store were still open and the old
bald man behind the counter was the same guy you bought it from in 1968!

11/28/2022

The first sounds heard as Phantasmagoria opened its doors for the first time 54 years ago today on November 28, 1968!

Cue jet engines!!!

Provided to YouTube by Universal Music GroupBack In The U.S.S.R. (2018 Mix) · The BeatlesThe Beatles℗ 2018 Calderstone Productions Limited (a Division of Uni...

11/28/2022

Happy Birthday Beatles “White Album”!!! First released in Canada on November 28, 1968.
And Happy Birthday Phantasmagoria opened that very same day! Both 54 years ago today!!!

11/27/2022

November 28, 1968 is the 54th Anniversary of both the opening of Phantasmagoria and the release of “The Beatles”, AKA “The White Album” in Canada. The store opened in a former laundromat basement in the McGill University “ghetto” with a paltry $800. in inventory mostly invested in 100 copies of the new Beatles double album which sold out that day. With another batch of 100 “White Album”s procured the following morning from Capitol Records, the first major label to put a little faith in us we were off to the races, slowly building credit-worthiness with the other major distributors at the dawn of “alternative“ music which had few avenues of promotion in those early days. London Records thought twice about opening an account for a store that wouldn’t stock Tom Jones and Englebert Humperdink, two of their biggest sellers then, but had to have Moody Blues and John Mayall, not to mention The Rolling Stones, whose “Beggars Banquet” had just been released, also in an all-white cover. From humble beginnings grew the little record store that could “break” unknown bands and artists that nobody had heard of before the arrival of Doug Pringle on CKGM-FM a year later. 100 remained the barometer of our excitement about a new record through the years. Toto, Joe Jackson, The Parachute Club were a few we jumped on at first hearing that proved to be giant hits. With the move to “the big store” down the block in 1971 we made the jump from basement “dive” to psychedelic glamour, couches intact plus a saltwater aquarium as a centrepiece to the living room ambiance. Some of our regulars preferred the low-key vibe of the original digs at first but that probably had more to do with the No-smoking rule enforced in the new location, “for the sake of the fish”, if not the carpeted floor or the fact that it was “illegal” to smoke in stores in Montreal even back then, notwithstanding the purple haze that often wafted out of the back room. Good times were had and the music just got better and better which made going to work every day a real joy!