The Greenwich Village record store,
owned by a one-of-a-kind NYC character,
stocks the shelves of Lana Del Rey,
Rosalía, Bella Hadid, and more.
By Sim Tumay
February 15, 2023
When a 20-year-old Jamal Alnasr moved to New York City in 1990, he barely
spoke English and only knew the names of 10 artists, like Madonna and
Boney M, whom he’d heard on the radio. A native Palestinian, he arrived in
the city after a few years spent living in Jordan as a teenager. He used music
to teach himself English, then landed his first job at a record shop on
Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, where he read CD pamphlets, learned
lyrics, and researched artists’ influences. After four and a half years, he
opened up his own shop, Village Music, down the street, with the money he
had saved from working.
On opening day, Alnasr decided to put his collection of rare records up for
sale, and made $5,000. “If people came in and meant to spend $20, they
would spend $200,” he recalls. “I had a lot of rare stuff.” Word eventually got
out that he was the man to see if you were looking for an impossible-to-find
record. Upon receiving a request, Alnasr would raise his eyebrows and tell
people to come back in four days, when he would undoubtedly have the
record packaged up and waiting in the back room.
Even with this personal touch, Village Records eventually met the same sad
fate as so many downtown music stores. In 2017, Alnasr could no longer
afford his rent—which he says went up from about $160 in the ’90s to $5,000
—and shuttered the shop. “I was broke as hell,” he admits. He went back to
Palestine and sold some real estate his father had owned. When he returned
to New York, he met a sympathetic landlord and opened Village Revival
Records next door to his old shop. “I want to revive the Village because I’m
really scared of change,” he says of the store’s new moniker. “I want to
rebuild the ’90s.”
Over the last few years, the humble shop has become an unlikely magnet for
stars such as Rosalía and Lana Del Rey, who are devoted customers. Bella
Hadid didn’t have a record collection before she met Alnasr at Village
Revival. An unlikely friendship soon formed between the 53-year-old store
owner and the 26-year-old supermodel, who bonded over their shared
Palestinian heritage and love for music. Hadid was interested to learn more
about Alnasr’s journey to America, he says, and soon brought her mother,
father, and sister Gigi to the shop. One night, Alnasr went to dinner with
Hadid and her boyfriend at the nearby Minetta Tavern, where he gave the
couple a turntable. “Now you guys are going to party tonight,” he told them.
Last year, Hadid posted a series of photos of Alnasr and the shop on her
Instagram: shots of the two embracing, browsing the stacks, and eating
dinner together, as well as images of albums by the Rolling Stones, the
Animals, and one called Palestine Lives! Songs From the Struggle of the
People of Palestine. “Please go visit my friend Jamal,” she wrote in the
caption, accompanied by heart and Palestinian flag emojis. “All welcome,
records for everyone!!!!”
In the early days of her career, Lana Del Rey lived in Greenwich Village. She
was a regular at Village Records, where she purchased albums by Billie
Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nina Simone. “She was a very shy person in the
beginning but she is very down to earth once she feels comfortable with
you,” says Alnasr. Near the shop’s backroom, Alnasr keeps a locked glass
cabinet of autographed records. To the left of Bruce Springsteen and Bob
Dylan sits a vinyl of Lana’s 2012 debut, Born to Die, signed “To Village Music
and Jamal, lots of love.”
Alnasr’s lack of filter and stubborn sensibility give Village Revival a gritty,
old-school New York charm. The week of his birthday, Alnasr was blasting
“Disco Inferno” in the shop, coming off a high from going to a nightclub for
the first time in several years. His is perhaps the only record store left in
Manhattan where you are likely to find the owner smoking a cigarette
behind the counter.
Alnasr has a habit of turning patrons into friends. A question about a
particular Rolling Stones album might lead unexpectedly to an hour-long
conversation about the influence of American blues musicians on the
British band’s work. From there, Alnasr may pull out some records from the
backroom, where he keeps his most prized and unusual finds. Soon enough,
a customer might find themselves, like Hadid, having dinner with him.
Dave Davis, the trombonist of the Sun Ra Arkestra, began his friendship
with Alnasr two years ago, over a conversation about rare big-band jazz
records. Alnasr, who used to see the Arkestra play in his early days as a New
Yorker, immediately connected with Davis, a Philadelphian who stops by
the store whenever he visits the city. Davis collects 78 RPM records, a format
developed in the late 19th century that was commercially obsolete by the
1950s, still highly prized by some collectors but not stocked in many shops.
“He is the only one I’ve found in New York who still believes in those,” Davis
says of Alnasr. “I travel a lot, and when you go record shopping, you can
pretty much conquer a record store, and it stays the same,” Davis continues.
“But the one thing about his record store is that it doesn’t stay the same. He
is constantly getting new records.”
Davis and other artists also value Village Revival as a place to meet and
network with fellow musicians and industry professionals. Chris Pizzolo,
founder of the boutique label Immediate Family Records, once walked into
the original store after playing guitar at a blues jam at the Bitter End down
the street. He walked out with a copy of Alabama Shakes’ Boys and Girls and
a new friendship with Alnasr, who’d been playing the album over the
soundsystem. Alnasr soon invited Pizzolo and his band to perform in the
store, which eventually became a regular gig. Pizzolo often came to Alnasr
for guidance, especially after he decided to start his own label. The record
store owner’s advice: print more vinyl.
Immediate Family Records was recently nominated for its first Latin
Grammy: a Best Contemporary Tropical Album nod for the Pedrito Martinez
Group’s 2021 release Acertijos. “It’s cool because I started going there in my
early 20s, and now I’m in my mid-30s, and he still stays there and gives
everyone the same opportunity,” Pizzolo says.
Pizzolo introduced his peers to Alnasr and Village Revival, including singersongwriters
Cody Simpson, whom Pizzolo manages, and Sizzy Rocket,
whose album Anarchy Pizzolo helped to release. “Jamal’s shop is truly a
oneof-
a-kind experience,” says Simpson. “It’s a treasure trove for music lovers.”
Rocket first met Alnasr in 2021, when Village Revival hosted a meet-andgreet
for her fans before a performance nearby. “It was just the perfect spot,
because the store is small and intimate,” Rocket says. “I walked in, and he
already had my music playing and the videos going. It was just very
welcoming.”
If any customer, celebrity or otherwise, goes into Village Revival looking for
a particular record, Alnasr will do his best to find it for them. He sources
many records from personal collections he purchases, sometimes from
other industry professionals who have died or moved away. He recalls a
customer who had worked in music journalism who once called him about
selling him a prized rare find: an early pressing of The Velvet Underground &
Nico. “I don’t find them, they find me,” he says.
“There are probably 200,000 records in that store, but the craziest thing is
that he knows where everything is,” Pizzolo says. “You could ask for a rare
Édith Piaf bootleg from the ’60s that someone made in France, and he’s got
it cataloged somewhere.”
A 74-year-old customer and lifelong resident of the neighborhood named
John Deglialberti fondly recalls an instance when Alnasr helped him find a
copy of the 1962 album Sinatra and Strings, which Deglialberti was having
trouble locating elsewhere. “When I hear these songs, it brings back a lot of
memories,” he says. “Not only for myself, but also for friends of mine.”
Alnasr’s shop has evolved over the years, but he remains committed
to his
mission to revive the bohemian spirit of Greenwich Village’s past. “I will not
change what I do,” he says. “It’s my love.”
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