"Record stores can't save your life. But they can give you a better one."-Nick Hornby
Like the title of this posting emphatically implores of all of you: SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL RECORD STORE!!! I do not mean any box store establishment or nationwide coffee store emporium that happens to also sell music. I mean, an authentic brick and mortar record store. I do realize that such places are sadly less prevalent than in the past but they do still exist and they will only continue to exist if we choose to frequent them, support them and cherish them as essential members of our communities, our interpersonal, face-to-face, human-to-human communities that is.
On April 19, 2014, the seventh official Record Store Day, the nationwide annual event which celebrates the culture and (again) community of independent record stores will occur once again. This day will feature a plethora of EXCLUSIVE items that recording artists and record labels will make available solely on that day--a list of items that you can easily peruse on the official Record Store Day website (www.recordstoreday.com)--and it is an event that has inspired legions of music fans to physically fill up record stores across the country, gathering together in that joy of discovery and unabashed love of music.
For me, it is a day that truly fills my heart. While I have to admit that those aforementioned EXCLUSIVE items are the draw and also quite expensive in some cases, I just love visiting a few records stores in my city on that day just to see these establishments filled from one end to the other with actual, bonafide people, some of whom have arrived as early as 7:00 A.M. to partake. It is a sight that especially warms me so tremendously as I strongly feel that the record store is truly one of the last public places we have that inspires a sense of togetherness, conversation and communication between friends and most importantly, strangers. I make that statement without any sense of hyperbole. Yes, of course we have restaurants and coffee shops but even those places have gradually become locations where we have become increasingly isolated within the virtual worlds of our own making. And while movie theaters and sports stadiums are designed for everyone to jointly experience a collective event together yet separately, I do wonder if records stores are representative of the final bastions of physical, interpersonal communication and public inter-connectivity. Whether they are or not, I just know that, for me, records stores are unlike any other places I have ever visited in my lifetime. They are sanctuaries to me. They are as sacred as art museums. They are the places where my life has changed over and over and over again.
While I do not remember the very first time I ever set foot within a record store, my life within record stores began during my childhood as I would occasionally venture into them with my Father when he made purchases for himself. By the later 1970's, perhaps by the time I was eight or nine years old, and propelled by my developing obsession with The Beatles, I began to buy my own records with the allowance money I received from household chores.
Throughout my formative years, from childhood all the way through adolescence, my primary record store experiences were centered around two locations. Mostly, I found myself happily wandering around JR's Music Shop, located inside Evergreen Plaza, a shopping mall near my home and also at times, at Rose Records which was located just shy of the deafening L train tracks in downtown Chicago.
What I remember being transfixed by the most were the walls of albums, with their cover artwork vividly displayed like paintings from one end of the store to the other. And like paintings in those aforementioned art museums, those album covers elicited a world of emotional responses from me as certain album covers instantly attracted my attention, like the giant multi-colored spaceship that adorned albums by Electric Light Orchestra's "Out Of The Blue" (released October 3, 1977), or even terrified me, like the horrifying and downright evil looking green face from "Alice Cooper Goes To Hell" (released June 25, 1976).
Over the years and to this day, the world of the record store became a place of invention and most importantly, the joy of discovery. That sense of discovery always occurred when I was hoping and wishing to find a desired title, and subsequently feeling that tremendous sense of striking gold when said item was ready and waiting for me to take it home. Even better are the times when I have absolutely no idea whats over of what I am looking for but I will always just know it when I find it. That sense of discovery is exactly how Badfinger came into my life. It was how Big Star and even The Police entered my life as well. The band Real Estate, as I stated last month, was completely foreign to me until I entered Strictly Discs on Monroe Street with the intent of purchasing a completely different title and finding myself completely mesmerized by what I was hearing over the store speakers so completely that I purchased that album as well on the spot.
Inside the record store, I have always loved the full tactile experience of feeling the weight of the records in my hands, turning the package over and over studying song titles and album credits, and eventually making the discovery that every piece of the record store experience contributed crucially to the actual musical experience. So many memories I have when listening to certain albums are due to the circumstances in which I purchased those albums from the record store.
I vividly remember Tuesday, March 9, 1987. I was 18 years old and during a free period from school and just some time before I was set to take a class field trip to who knows where, I ventured several blocks from campus to the record store (whose name escapes me) that was located on 53rd street in Hyde Park and bought a cassette copy of U2's "The Joshua Tree" which was released that very day. I popped the cassette into my Walkman and headed back to school with "Where The Streets Have No Name" blaring between my ears and "With Or Without You" pounding along with my heart as I stepped onto the yellow school bus and sat along with my friends.
That it essentially how my album collection and record store visits increased over my teenage years. I had my allowance money and I also had my wages from my part time job working in my high school library--a job I attained solely to be in the presence of a college girl who also worked at the library! When I was surprised to actually receive a paycheck, my first thought was "Now I can buy more records!"
When I arrived in Madison in the late summer of 1987, I had found my record store "Mecca" as State Street contained not only a Rose Records, but also a Discount Records (where I would briefly work shortly after my college graduation), a classical music store, the Exclusive Company, the legendary B-Side Records and a variety of used record stores including the resilient Sugar Shack. It was during this time that the entire culture of the record store community began to reveal itself to me. I slowly began to make friends at each store, aside from B-Side, which was a place that seriously intimidated me as that store's staff suffered absolutely no musical fools lightly at all. Each store possessed its own character and identity and yet they were all filled with somewhat similar and decidedly left of center individuals who truly and passionately loved music and spoke of artists and bands the way some kids would speak of sports players and the stats found on baseball cards. It didn't matter what the musical format was especially as my four years of college saw the music industry weathering the sea change from vinyl to compact discs. The music was all that mattered and the record store was the place in which to congregate.
With the rise of the internet community and the sea change from physical releases to digital releases and downloading, the record store has become a ore obsolete environment. My beloved State Street "Mecca" is gone as Discount Records, Rose Records, and the Exclusive Company have all folded. The classical music store is long gone. And only the mighty B-Side Records, my personal record store of choice, remains standing on that street to this day.
It just makes me so sad to witness this erosion of something that has meant the world to me at the expense of advancing technology, as I feel that the two could very easily co-exist. They serve different purposes for different people and different needs but to extinguish one in favor of another is just something I cannot reconcile within myself. Please be assured that I am not some sort of Luddite as I am not against technology. I download music just like you, I do occasionally purchase music online and I do love how more artists have taken control over their own careers by making the connections between themselves and fans more direct. And furthermore, the internet has become a wonderful way to discover new artists as well. And hey, I do have this blogsite, don't I? But, for me, there is just no other place in the world like a record store, for the environments, for the physicality and most importantly of all, the people and the connections we all make in the same space together.
This year's Ambassador of the Record Store Day celebration is none other than the inimitable Chuck D. of Public Enemy, who in a statement, expressed the following:
"I don't go one single day without emphasizing that the genre of hip-hop is spawned from DJ culture. The founding members of Public Enemy were, and still are, DJs. The tool and fuel for DJs has forever been recordings. And where these recordings have long connected, with pros and fans alike, has simply been The Record Store, the connection point of listener and the recording."
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
I cannot imagine what my life would have been like if record stores did not exist and were not a tremendously huge part in shaping the individual I am. It is entirely due to that endless gratitude that I will always step through the doors of a record store for as long as they are able to exist...and I sincerely wish that they are able to exist long after my own lifetime for any individuals out there who need to find a place to call their own and find others like themselves as well, all the while discovering great music along the way.
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL RECORD STORE on April 19th...and for each and every day thereafter.
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