Rob Sexton probably would have hated all the praise being heaped on him over the past few days.
“Rob didn’t like any bulls–t. He wouldn’t have believed it,” said Sexton’s longtime Slap of Reality bandmate Frank Lacatena. “But everything that is being said is true.”
Sexton, a Tampa Bay native and a drummer for highly-regarded hardcore punk bands that toured the U.S. and beyond, died Saturday due to complications from a stroke. He’d been hospitalized since June 19, said Cathy Atwell, Sexton’s ex-wife with whom he remained close and shared an 18-year-old son.
Through the past two decades, many came to know him as the bearded and outwardly gruff owner of Planet Retro, currently located on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street North, at the edge of St. Petersburg’s Edge District.
The shop, with its expertly curated selection of punk, metal and hip-hop vinyl records, and its parking lot, which Sexton opened up to all sorts of artists and indie vendors for recurring Punk Rock Flea Markets, became, for some, a last bastion of an earlier era in the city, when downtown was being revived by artists, rock shows and scrappy independent businesses.
While Sexton could come off as a curmudgeon who refused to suffer fools, friends said those who broke through that outer crust knew him as tirelessly helpful, generous with advice and deeply invested in the local artistic community and small businesses.
“If you were a local band and you needed somewhere to perform for the first time, he’d provide a venue for that. If you were a band and needed flyers for your first show, you’d hit him up in his shop and he’d help you,” said Joe Kiser, another Slap of Reality bandmate. “He was always willing to help people, as long as people were willing to try to do things themselves. That’s what he respected.”
Atwell recalled how often he’d given other musicians a place to sleep in his home, even if he didn’t know them well yet.
“He was just a very loyal person to not only specific musicians but to the music community,” Atwell said. “And he was always buying records and trading records, for years. The store really started with his personal collection.”
In the days since his death, hundreds of loving and appreciative comments have been posted online on the Planet Retro Facebook page and elsewhere on social media from Sexton’s friends and customers — a line that was always blurry.
“A record store clerk is kind of like a bartender, people talk to you, confess to you,” said Keith Ulrey, a musician and owner of Microgroove record store in Tampa, who knew Sexton for decades. “People say, I’m in this pinch, or I’m in this band, and Rob was so open with giving advice. Do this, play here, take this life advice, or advice about being in a DIY band. And people respected his advice on multiple levels because he was in these very respected, respected bands, for years, but also a pillar of the business community.”
Ulrey said he chatted with Sexton about the business nearly every day through online messages.
“The stuff he had was punk rock, metal, rare psychedelic rock, stuff that would make a collector drool,” Ulrey said, ”but the reason he had that stuff was his deep connections. There’s no trick or secret — people simply trusted Rob with their collections. When it came time to sell, as people get older, or needed space or financial reasons, those people thought of Rob.”
Many who posted about Sexton online were musicians who credited him with providing a venue to perform when no one else would, and a place to sell their music when options were scarce.
Others were simply music fans who credited the shows he helped promote and the gathering place that the Punk Rock Flea Markets provided with keeping a certain community alive or supporting their mental health.
“In the face of St. Pete becoming all high-rises and gentrification, this man stood for punk rock, DIY, local artists and zines, bands and the artsy kids,” said Shannon Kelly, who befriended Sexton when she owned a store close to his. “All the stuff that made St. Pete so cool. He was like the scene’s big brother.”
Sexton was born and raised in Clair-Mel, just outside of Tampa. He first met his Slap of Reality bandmates in public high school, after he’d been kicked out of private school, Kiser said.
Eventually the band put out an album on Skene!, an indie label that at the time was home to bands like Jawbreaker and Green Day. In the mid-1990s, Skene! signed a deal with Elektra Records as major labels “figured out they could make money off punk,” Kiser said.
For a while, Sexton moved to the New York City area to be closer to studios and touring opportunities. He also, for a time, ran a collectibles store in New Jersey. Beyond records, he was a lover of collectible toys and monster memorabilia, especially items sourced from Japan.
Bob Suren, who later played with Sexton in the band Failure Face, recalled Sexton, in his own way, mentoring the other guys in that band who were all years younger and less experienced than Sexton, who had already toured for years.
“We’re on tour and Rob was driving the van and I was trying to read the map and failing. He had really been doing everything, handling everything, but we were lost,” Suren said. “He was exhausted. He pulled over and said someone else is going to drive and someone is going to figure out how to read the map, or there’s no show tonight. That’s it. He got in the back of the van and laid down to sleep. And it was exactly the dose of tough love that we needed.”
Later, when there wasn’t enough room for the whole band to sleep comfortably in their van, Sexton grabbed his pillow and blanket and slept on the ground in a parking lot.
“We woke up, surrounded by cops,” he said. “Someone had called the police to say there was a dead body in the parking lot.”
The earliest incarnation of what would become Planet Retro, Suren said, was a storage unit in St. Petersburg that Sexton would open for a few hours on the weekend for vinyl lovers.
“Just by word of mouth he’d get 100, 200 people to show up and dig through these boxes that weren’t even organized,” Suren said. “He was just so good at knowing how to do that kind of stuff.”
Later, the store was located above a furniture store in downtown, and then in its own storefront on Central Avenue before moving to the location on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street.
Sexton is survived by a son, Robbie.
Atwell said it’s possible there will be a community memorial for Sexton at Planet Retro, but the details have not been worked out yet.
