People would flock there just to converse with fellow collectors and the shop owner, spin a record or two, and start digging for vintage Indonesian records. They would go home with vinyl records or cassettes that Bang Lian, as he is commonly known, would recommend.

“If you like that, then you’ll love this,” he was wont to say.

But most importantly, they would go home knowing they would come back again. Not just for the collection, but for Bang Lian’s presence himself. His friendliness never failed to draw visitors in. His streetside shop has seen famous visitors such as Swedish band The Cardigans, Icelandic post-rockers Sigur Ros and superstar Katy Perry.

Teenage dream: Lian and superstar Katy Perry, who visited when she toured Indonesia in 2012. (Personal collection/Courtesy of Lian Record )

Jl. Surabaya’s central figure

“In the early 2000s, when vinyl records were not as popular as they are now, my friends and I in Jakarta who liked vinyl would go to Jl. Surabaya,” Samson Pho, owner of Laidback Blues Record Store in Kebayoran Baru, Jakarta, told the The Jakarta Post on July 14. “It has since become a routine for collectors to go there, hunting records and whatnot,” he said.

Lian’s passion and business inspired many. Samson opened his own store in 2014. The same thing happened with Arnold, owner of Piringan Hitam Recordstore (PHR) Senayan, and many other record store owners in Jakarta and arguably, other parts of the country, in the last decade.

“PHR was founded in 2012. It came from my hobby of hunting vinyl records on Jl. Surabaya,” Arnold told the Post on July 16. “Lian was the inspiration behind PHR.”

Over the years, the types of people who visited Lian’s record store expanded. There were scenesters, artists, critics and future DJs. His shop connected many figures from the local entertainment scene.

“One time, I found a Japanese man reading a dictionary outside the store. I thought, ‘That must have been Shun,’” Smita Kirana, bassist of indie rock band Bedchamber, told the Post on July 15.

Piles of records: Lian tending his store. (Personal collection/Courtesy of cmoriginalpress on Instagram)

Shun, full name Shunsuke Izumimoto, would eventually establish Mondo Cafe in South Jakarta, one of Jakarta’s most important music venues responsible for bringing various scenes and subcultures into one place.

“From the moment I stumbled upon an old Indonesian record in Lian’s store, I started to learn [the] Indonesian [language] and Indonesian music history intensively,” Shun told the Post on July 17.

“If I didn’t meet Lian and the friends I made there, there wouldn’t be a Mondo. And I wouldn't have been able to live for more than 10 years in Indonesia,” he said.

Life of music

The legacy of Lian’s record store dates back to his father, who used to sell records near the National Monument (Monas) in the 1960s before he relocated to Jl. Surabaya in the 1970s. Lian, the second of eight children in the family, had helped his father around the shop since he was in fifth grade. As such, his musical knowledge became as extensive as the records that he sold over the decades.

“There is no question about [his knowledge] in vinyl records. He’s also very well-versed in 60s to 70s rock and the likes of it,” Samson said. Lian personally loved The Beatles and Led Zeppelin.

But his forte was always in Indonesian music. From Koes Ploes to Lilis Suryani, he would get foreign visitors to be interested in old Indonesian records. This was also why his store was loved by people the world over. His customers came from Japan, America, Germany, Britain and other European countries. Many were musicians.

“When [lead singer] Jónsi and the rest of Sigur Rós visited Jl. Surabaya, they spent most of their time in [Lian’s store]. They asked a lot about old Indonesian vinyl records,” Ryan Novianto, who accompanied the Icelandic band when they visited Indonesia in 2013, told the Post on July 14.

Other rock bands and international DJs have also paid him a visit, but sometimes a certain artist’s encounter could still baffle him. “When Katy Perry came, he said he was taken by surprise,” one of his customers, Abdi Husairi Nasution, told the Post on July 14. “‘All of a sudden, there are three Alphards parked in front of my store,’ he said. ‘And it’s Katy Perry!’” Abdi recounted.

These occasions would require him to whip out his famous guestbook, which was just a small notebook any elementary school student would have. In it, the signatures are jumbled up together with his own scribbles of customers’ orders.

“I’ve told him, ‘Bang, why didn’t you have the signatures in a separate book?’” Abdi said. Lian laughed and said it was all the same, anyway.

Lian was so melded with figures of the local music scene that some of his visitors, from David Tarigan of the digital archive project Irama Nusantara to Alvin Yunata of the rock band Teenage Death Star, also became his friends for life.

"I even became close with his friends, like Aat [of the electronic group Diskoria] and [vinyl collector Masamichi] Baba who often came to the house,” Lian’s sister Rita Nasution told the Post on July 14.

As his health deteriorated, his friends would get together and start a donation for Lian, which helped him recover for a short period. Unfortunately, his liver complications persisted and forced him to close his store for the last four years. But during those years, nobody replaced him to be in charge.

Post-rocking: Lian and the Icelandic band Sigur Ros who visited the store during their tour in Indonesia in 2013. (Personal collection/Courtesy of Lian Record on Instagram)

“None of us can do it,” Rita said, not in terms of availability, but of ability and expertise.

“Maybe no one can do it as well as him,” Samson said. “After all, the store was his life. His sense of belonging laid there,” he added.

Kindness wins

Asked about why many people look for his store, or why it was labeled as one of the world’s best by foreign media such as The Vinyl Factory, which dubbed it “Indonesia’s most cherished record shop”, Bang Lian would not have a definite answer. “It just spread through word-of-mouth, I think,” Abdi recalled Lian telling him once.

But for Abdi and many others, it was Bang Lian’s kindness that won them over. His kindness, generosity and friendly attitude made them stay a little longer and talk a little deeper.

“He’d say, ‘What album are you looking for?’ I’d say ‘Anything from the 80s,’ and then he’d take out records from his personal collections instead! From that point on, we started talking about 80s music and telling stories about ourselves,” he said.

Bang Lian would come up to his customers and say, “Feel free to spin that record in this turntable.” And then he would teach them how to clean and care for the vinyl records.

“He would play the cassettes and CDs I was interested in on two different players, just so that I knew the quality difference between one player and another,” Donni, another Lian’s customer, said to the Post on July 15.

The cheap price he put on his records was also a point of wonder for people around him. He would keep a record that someone requested even when others were willing to pay twice the price. He had also offered a new set of vinyl records to his friends at a very cheap price. “No worries, we have to share what we have,” Lian said when Arnold asked him why. “What’s important is that people can joyfully listen to good music.”

And with this, people concurred. His intention was spread across the globe from one avid music listener to another. A Facebook marketing team even went all the way to Jl. Surabaya and made a special advertisement for his store so that more people would know of its existence.

“[His life] really shows that you don’t need to have a spectacular skill to be considered a legend,” Samson said. “Being a good person will do.”