SUPPORT YR LOCAL RECORD STORE

[defrog]

So Saturday was apparently Record Store Day. Which is a good thing to have. Not just record stores, but a day honoring them.

Seeing as how they’re a dying breed.

No surprise, given that most people these days get their music either from Best Buy, Wal-mart, Amazon.com, iTunes or, um, The Pirate Bay. Or even Starbucks, if you believe Thurston Moore.

Whether this is good or bad depends on who you ask and, more crucially, how old they are and – even more crucially than that – how much music really means to them.

For me, as an impressionable young teenage Nashvillian who grew up around the business (Papa Frog was once A&R for Monument Records and a session guitarist), record stores were full of mystery and magic (and yes, let’s admit it, Ohio Players album covers). Three hours of flipping through racks was my idea of a Friday night well spent.

And that was just weak-ass mall chains like The Sound Shop and Port-O-Call. When I graduated to indie stores (the first one in the form of The Great Escape, a store that specialized in new comics but also bought and sold used books and records), it was like escalating from 3.2% beer to heroin. Well, okay, no it wasn’t. But it was a whole new world to discover.

And discovery is pretty much what the record store experience is all about – finding new stuff you’ve never heard of and that none of yr friends have never heard of, which makes it a little more precious a find. Or even if it’s a bootleg pressing or a rare picturedisc version of an album other people have.

But there’s a little more to it than that. Indie record stores have personality – no two are alike, even if they might seem superficially similar. They also have a sense of community to them. You may not know all of the regulars, but yr all there for the same reason – an insane passion for music. I can walk into Grimey’s in Nashville or Plaza-Wuxtry Records in Carbondale, IL or Rasputin Records in Campbell, CA and end up in a conversation with the cashier about, say, how it would be awesome if someone made an album of a band of kids covering Danzig songs. You don't really get that kind of interaction in Best Buy.

Those days are fading away, even though there’s talk of the resurgence of vinyl records. I doubt it will be enough. It may not matter. What sites like Amazon or CD Universe lack in personality, they make up for in selection and discoverability. So at least it’s possible to keep the beast well-fed. And seeing as how Hong Kong doesn’t really have the equivalent of an indie record store (we do have them but they all sell the same local Top 10 Cantopop/Mandopop/J-pop/K-pop albums you can get at HMV), I get better results via HMV or the Web anyway.

I suppose making music easier to find takes some of the fun out of hunting for that rare Spermbirds album. On the other hand, that frees up lots of spare time for Internet porn. Or, you know, something.

Still, whenever I travel – be it to the US, or Japan, Korea, Singapore, Sydney, Barcelona, Helsinki or wherever else I may roam – whenever I’ve got some spare time, you’ll find me in the nearest record store, flipping through the racks just to see what I can see. Which is probably why if the record stores do finally go the way of the Edsel, only the old bastards like me will miss them.

So Happy Record Day.

For more wisdom, see bedsitter23 ’s tribute post that inspired this one.

Spin me right round,

This is dF

Comments

[lorilori.livejournal.com]

The only indie record store I know of in Chicago is Reckless Records. http://www.reckless.com/.