You know those vintage stores you see in Hollywood movies where a person can find basically anything collectible?
We’ve got one right here under our noses and it’s called Joe’s MAC, located in Amcorp Mall in Petaling Jaya on the basement floor. Joe the owner, is a connoisseur of music up to the classical era and a cheerful, carefree guy, he started up his business with the love of music and art.
He’s provided us with the possibility to sell, buy new and vintage items in correlation of anything musical or artistic. Such as, vinyls, turn-tables, guitars, interesting local art and rare creative oddities are all in the reach of your hands. Think flea-market style; if you have a secret love of vintage items, this is the place to be.
Using the extensively big basement space at the bottom of Amcorp mall wisely, Joe takes the tables from the market stall and literally turns it into a fun flea market. From antique telephones, to vintage stamps, to paintings that make no sense but are indefinitely creative, Joe takes the meaning of random vintage collectibles to a different level.
But setting aside these rare oddities, Joe’s MAC is well known to most of the music community in Kuala Lumpur as a place to go ‘crate-digging’, which in other terms, means a vinyl-lover’s wet dream.
Joe Rozario is well-known for being a music guru, especially in terms of vinyls as he has probably one of the biggest vinyl collections in Kuala Lumpur with ranging genres from reggae, electronic to traditional Malay music, and much more.
You never know what you might stumble across on, Joe’s has the reputation of being a market place full of vintage, rare, precious, funny, silly collectibles that attract all sorts of different people to it and simply makes it a fun place to be, as the topics of different sorts of conversation to have with him are endless.
Being more infamous for the huge vinyl collection be it used or new, Joe’s is a hotspot for many artists to come and vinyl-shop.
For instance San Soda, a well-known Belgian DJ who now resides in Berlin and does shows all over the world in recognition of his good music once asked me where to take him to show him what Malaysia has to offer in terms of music collection. The first thing that popped into my head was Joe’s MAC in Amcorp mall, after spending a good few hours crate-digging, I daresay he walked out with a smile that etched from ear to ear as he carried the vinyls in his hands.
When I asked him why he was so pleased, he replied “Because I found an original electronic vinyl that’s rare to find in Europe, let alone Asia. And I got it for 25 ringgit.”
Not only is Joe’s MAC a treasure trove for all these items, but his franchise also provide services such as: vinyl record cleaning, bands and music groups for functions, instrument tuning, repairs of turn-tables, amplifiers and speakers, vinyl conversion to CD format, and rental equipment for photo-shoots, TV, movies, and so forth.
As you can see, Joe is a man of many talents and business and he shares it so freely to the rest of the community in this country to be able to enjoy music like we should, the old-school way.
Nothing can be better than the love of music and creating awareness for the love of music on the classic vinyls. Before everything turns technological, you should heed the chance of being able to take a walk down memory lane where you can still play a beautiful record on a vinyl-player and enjoy the pure, raw sounds of how we used to listen to music before.
If you are interested in checking this place out; remember, you can sell and buy new or used items and rent the services Joe’s MAC has to offer. You will most probably bump into the friendly man, Joe Rozario himself as I do every time I visit his place and have an interesting chat with him on the musical side of life.
