Record Stores R.I.P.
I mourn the loss of the record stores. Not the “end-cap” displays that record companies fought to control or the overpriced CDs. The experience of record shopping.
Any true music fan has probably worked in a record store at some point. You have all of this otherwise useless trivia and knowledge about band histories and releases stored in your head and need to expose others to it. During the summer between high school and college I worked at a now defunct chain known as Record World. The store was in a mall at the border of Queens and Long Island in Valley Stream, New York.
It was a great summer job. Everyone working there was heavily into music, some people – like me – were in bands. I got to carry around the key that unlocked the glass cases holding the cassette tapes. This was before the plastic security strips were introduced. Those cassettes had to be protected under lock and key! Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, Hot Tuna. Anyone could just walk away with those tapes…
My favorite thing was the Phonolog book. It was this massive yellow pages of record releases, telling you what songs were in print and could be “special ordered” if they weren’t in the store. Every few weeks, updated pages would be mailed to the store and they would have to be added to this huge binder. It’s hard to believe that this was only a few years before the internet…
Being in a mall store wasn’t quite the ultra-cool store experience portrayed in High Fidelity, but it had its moments. The best part was the customers who knew one line of a song and you had to figure out the title and artist. Most of the time it was something in the Top 40, so it wasn’t too difficult, but sometimes the song was 20 years old and it took three people to decipher the tune.
I was also a big fan of wasting an afternoon looking for imports and used stuff. Walking around the East Village looking for that one New Order single could suck up hours of a Saturday.
I spent several days in London, UK in 1996 just record shopping. It was so liberating to just walk the streets of Soho finding import singles that would cost double in New York (this was when the dollar was still worth something). I came home with a whole extra bag stuffed with vinyl and CDs – Pet Shop Boys remixes, Afghan Whigs bonus tracks, several compilations not available in the U.S. I was very proud of my findings.
I went to San Francisco this past Fall and noticed that the Tower Records was being used as a Halloween costume shop. It was kinda sad. In New York, the old Tower music outlet and main store on 4th street are gone. They had some great stuff in there. It was a landmark of the Village.
Since I make my living working on the Web now, I can’t really complain. The online communities are useful, but there is something about listening to a track in a store and discussing artists with the guy behind the counter that can’t be replaced with the internet…
