RIP the record store

I was thinking about record stores after reading this article about record stores going the way of the horse and carriage. I remember some of the first record stores I ever went to as a child, when I was shopping Meri’s and Woolworths’s at the old Richland Mall and debating about buying an old 45 at Meri’s for a premium price as opposed to the current selections over at Woolworth’s for a slightly cheaper price. (I keep thinking it was 99 cents vs. $1.29, which was a lotta comic book and bubblegum money back in ’73.)

I still have some of the 45’s but nothing hooked up to play ’em on. My wife has a valuable collection of 8-tracks that cause some amusement for me (I was never a fan of the 8-track, even when it was the music media of choice for friends in grade school and junior high). I’m not quite like my NYC buddy Brian, who’s moved everything to hard drive – I still have a large CD and LP collection. Yes, one day I should get all the undigitized stuff digitized, but it’s not happening anytime soon. Maybe after retirement? Good joke.

There was Barry, the owner of Flipside records, who I became friends with and who would pass on some cool promo LPs for a buck or two. We’d talk about all the different bands and what he liked and what I liked. I’ve never found a good digital version of that great Gary Myrick & the Figures LP.

I worked at Peaches Records and Tapes for a while, even while never passing the polygraph (why one needed a polygraph to work at a record store is still a freaking mystery to me – guess they figured drug testing would’ve been absolutely ridiculous). While I worked the stacks at Peaches, I pondered the greater mysteries of the universe (past the polygraph bit), like why the hell Ray Charles was in country, of all sections, and why one would play Prince’s “Sign of the Times” on the store’s stereo system without knowing what was going to come out of the speakers beforehand. I recall the growing CD section and shrinking LP section, while cassettes held their own… for a while, anyway.

The last time I really thought about flipping thru the stacks at a record store was while I was watching “High Fidelity,” which was released the same year that Metallica sued Napster, and the NSYNC release “No Strings Attached” debuted with record (pardon the pun) sales of 2.4 million CDs… probably the last time that’ll ever happen.

I had a Scot friend in college, in the college radio station actually, whose chosen nom d’air was Dredge Sludge, who turned me on to Budgie, Riot, Judas Priest, and other English Metal back before hair and metal became so friendly. Dredge wound up running a local chain of record stores (though I do wish he’d gone into brewing, because he made one of the absolute best Guinness knockoffs in his basement, he could’ve gotten ahead of the whole craft brewing movement). I ran into him many years ago, (after 2000) and he was livid about downloaders, professed hatred for Chuck D for embracing what was already happening, and was basically quite pissed off about where the record business was going.

I loved the used record stores and used CD shops, but even they seem to be sliding down that gravity well as I see more DVDs than CDs in there. Nate and I would check out a few in KC when we were up there on a work jaunt or two… now he probably knows where all the good ones are – or no longer has need of them, eh?

Well, the record business has gone there and now, there aren’t as many great little record shops to browse around. And it’s a part of my life that I’ll miss quite a lot. I’ll still pop in to the odd used music shop (shout out to Papa Jazz in Columbia, SC, I stop there every time I’m in town; and Vintage Stock closer to home), but most of my browsing is done thru the ‘net today, via music blogs or odd radio stations, podcasts, etc. …

And yes, I know he did a couple of country music albums, but really, Ray Charles did NOT belong in the country section.