Last year, we celebrated Record Store Day by recalling some of our most vivid record-store memories. This time, we asked some of our favorite artists to tell us about their favorite shops and experiences flipping through stacks over the years. So read on to learn about the snarky record pusher who saved Jenny Lewis' life, that time Robert Plant walked in Grimey's in Nashville, A.C. Newman lamenting the myth of the "staff pick," how John Talabot owes his own sound to a mysterious in-store record player, and much more.--------------------
*Jenny Lewis
**Aron's Records; Los Angeles, CA [closed]*
I was searching for a Jungle Brothers cassette for the tape player in my '64 Chevy Malibu (painted perfect in a color called Cinnamon Sunset) at the legendary Aron's Records on Highland Blvd. in 1995. That's where I heard Stephen Malkmus' voice for the first time. I asked the guy behind the desk who it was and he rolled his eyes and pointed me towards the Ps. I was almost exclusively listening to hip-hop and jazz at that point in my life, but Pavement's Wowee Zowee permeated my musical tunnel vision. It was like rap music in the lyrical flow, and kind of out-there, like Eric Dolphy. I stood in the aisle staring at the cover.
I had fallen in love with "Rattled by the Rush" and then made my way back though their other records. If not for that snarky fucker who decided to play that record at that exact moment on that day in Los Angeles, I may have never started a band. I probably would have become a shitty white MC Lyte/Monie Love wannabe. So thank you, snarky fucker who worked at Aron's. I love you.
P.S.-- My band got to open for Pavement for a few shows 15 years later. I wouldn't have believed it if you told me that back in '95.
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Photo by Colin Kerrigan
*Danny Brown
**Whites Records; Detroit, MI [closed]*
Whites Records used to be located on Ferry Park, which we called The Zone, because of its zip code. (West Grand Blvd. divides the zip codes 48206 and 48208. The Zone is on one side, and my neighborhood, Linwood, is on the other-- they didn't get along too well.) It was the first record store I found that carried a lot of independent rap music and mixtapes. It was the first place I heard 2Pac's "Hit 'Em Up". When Wu-Tang Forever came out, me and my homies skipped school to go buy it from Whites. But, like I said, our neighborhoods don't get along. We pretty much got jumped and had to run home just to purchase the second Wu-Tang album. It was worth it.
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Photo by Tom Spray
*How to Dress Well's Tom Krell*
When I was 15, I got kicked out of high school and had to start at a new one. It was super tough, but I very quickly and happily made friends with a boy named Jamie. At this point, the records that meant the world to me were Country Grammar by Nelly and Fevers and Mirrors by Bright Eyes. Jamie and I bonded pretty intensely over music, and he pushed me to start playing. We also spent a lot of time at a record store in Boulder, Colorado. The main guy who worked there-- and he must've worked there seven days a week for like 10 years-- was this insanely smug, super-pretentious thirtysomething industrial music guru/weirdo. He wore all black, looked like he never slept, and generally behaved like he hated life. He was so awesome. We loved how much he just hated us-- we would ask for, like, older Alkaline Trio or Further Seems Forever vinyls, and he just thought we were complete wimps and dweebs. Which we were, of course.
One day we got up the courage to ask him for a recommendation. This was unprecedented. He begrudgingly took us to the 7" rack and dug out a split that would change my life forever. He knew what we liked, but he wasn't going to cater to our teen tastes. He told us something super harsh like, "This is like what you guys like... but not stupid." We were embarrassed and excited. He handed me a 7" with a drawing of the moon on it. I had never heard of either Current 93 or Antony and the Johnsons, but we took his advice. We couldn't not.
That day, I bought the Current 93/Antony and the Johnsons' "Immortal Bird"/"Cripple and the Starfish" split 7", went home, and listened in a kind of confused awe. The A-side was wild. The B-side made me cry. I had never heard anything like it. This changed me forever-- two artists doing something completely progressive and free, with an emotional intensity I had never heard before. I still love this record so much. It opened up a whole world for me: Suddenly, I was listening to CocoRosie, Black Dice, and eventually Michael Cashmore. Yes!
One can click around on blogs and go down YouTube wormholes, but my musical life wouldn't be what it is if it hadn't been for the contingent intervention of that one record store bro, whose whole life was dedicated to ordering a few copies of a weird UK 7"s. He broke me out of my teen comfort zone and pointed me to a world of musical expression I had never before imagined. In that human intervention, there is the possibility of a truly fresh start: not the next video that algorithmically follows from the video you're presently watching, not some repost of something trendy, not some banner ad or car commercial or whatever, but a real rupture, a real change effected by a person who lives for and loves music. Love to that dude who sold Jamie and I that 7" and love to real record stores everywhere.
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"The main guy who worked at this store was an insanely smug, super-pretentious thirtysomething who generally behaved like
he hated life. He was so awesome." -- How to Dress Well
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*Antony Hegarty
**Tower Records; San Jose, CA [closed]*
When I was 14, I used to sit on the floor putting on my makeup at Tower Records on Bascom Ave. in San Jose, and the employees would play me Soft Cell's "Non-Stop Exotic Video Show" on repeat on the monitors. All the death rockers and speed freaks worked at Tower and every day they would give me rides and cigarettes. It was the only decent place in the whole city. I stole the first Creatures album from there. You can't do that on iTunes.
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Photo by Jeffrey Sauger
*King Tuff's Kyle Thomas
**Meridian's Music; Brattleboro, VT*
My entire education came from working in a record store as a teenager. All I did was drink beer out of coffee cups and sleep on the couch and check out all the cute girls buying Belle & Sebastian records. I learned about rock'n'roll and sex and friendship, and I realized I could do whatever I wanted. I never went to class ever again. It was basically like high school if high school taught you about things you actually wanted to know about.
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"If not for that snarky fucker at Aron's Records, I probably would have become a shitty white MC Lyte wannabe." -- Jenny Lewis
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*Lambchop's Ryan Norris
**Grimey's; Nashville, TN*
Part of the appeal of coming to Grimey's is you never know what you're going to get. As a longtime on-again, off-again employee of the legendary Nashville record store, I've had some noteworthy experiences there over the years, like when Nick Cave got a little too familiar with my girlfriend. Or when I arrived one morning-- probably a few minutes late, a little hung over, and under-caffeinated-- and the ubiquitous early knock came on the door. My manager Anna went to shoo the person away and then I heard her say, "I'm sorry sir, but we don't open until... oh, um, come on in." I thought to myself, "Who the fuck is she letting in already?"
But when I looked up to see a wizened, hooded figure move past, I realized, "Oh shit, that's Robert Plant." He went to the new arrivals and browsed a bit. He hung around, and not a single customer suspected that this older gentleman in a hoodie was the towering monolith of yore. He came to the counter with one of Numero's Eccentric Soul comps. As I'm no stranger to fame, I played it cool and was complimenting him on his purchase when I noticed something catch his eye. "Enter to win a Peter Gabriel signed lithograph?" he said. "That fat bastard! First he beats me at tennis and now this?!"
All that's to say: Enter and support your local record store because you just never know what or who you'll find inside.
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*Jessie Ware
**Amoeba; San Francisco, CA*
I played a show at Amoeba in January and as I was walking out, my sister jokingly said, ''Look, it's Ryan Gosling!'' Then I screamed, ''It is Ryan Gosling!"
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*Edwyn Collins
**Rough Trade West; London, England*
Back in 1980, Postcard Records of Scotland was brand new, and [label founder] Alan Horne and I were scratching our heads. How to get "Falling and Laughing", the first Orange Juice single, to the world? We didn't know anything about distribution, business, or finance. So he borrowed his dad's Austin Maxi, and we put the singles in the boot and set off with a list of UK record shops we took from the back pages of NME and Melody Maker. In Glasgow, Listen Records took a few, a very few. Glasgow was never really interested in Orange Juice.
We went to Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool. Shops would take two, three, or sometimes nothing. We were shy and arrogant at the same time. Selling ourselves was nerve-wracking, but I considered that it had to be done. Alan was painfully shy, but could come across as quite... prickly, let's say. Anyway, we finally arrive in London. Rough Trade the shop and the label were the same thing back then. We couldn't believe it. They took 200. Scott Piering, the Rough Trade press guy, who is sadly no longer with us, really liked it. He was the one who made [Rough Trade founder] Geoff Travis get into us. Then we went to Small Wonder in north London and they took 100. We were justified in our endeavours. Elation!
On the drive back, the windscreen blew in and we had no money to fix it. So Alan drove 300 miles with no windscreen, through rain and hail. We had 900 copies and, because of the London support, we soon got rid of them all. We were on our haphazard way. I'm writing this on tour in Spain and I've been to three record shops in two days. They still excite me.
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Photo by Moses Berkson
*Eleanor Friedberger*
I live in New York and I'm very spoiled for record stores. There are four within about six blocks of my house. (There are probably more I don't even know about.) Two of them sell new records and second-hand records, two only sell second-hand records, and one doesn't put prices on their records-- you just take them up front and the guy behind the counter gives you a price. At that last place, the records are in the basement: stacks and stacks and piles and piles. I've never seen so many records. They're not in any order and they're very dusty. I've seen guys down there wearing gloves and surgical masks looking through records and playing them on their own portable turntables. Nothing about that looks like fun to me.
The one that's closest to my house is the one I've never been to. I don't know why; I have no good reason not to go there. A friend told me he goes there to buy used CDs for something like 50 cents each. "That's cheaper than iTunes!" I said. He puts them in his computer and then tries to sell them back to another store. That doesn't sound like much fun either.
Another store is owned by a friend of a friend. He once gave me a plastic, blue crate for free. That seemed very generous; even more generous than the discount he gave me on the records. I put some of my records in the crate and it sat in my bedroom until I got sick of looking at the blue plastic, and then I moved it down to the basement-- the crate, not the records.
The store that's farthest from my house (I just looked it up: 0.7 miles, or about seven and a half blocks away) is supposed to be the best in the neighborhood. (It was voted "best" by some publication.) I went on a recent Sunday afternoon and the place was packed, like a party but with no alcohol. I bought a reissue of a Silver Apples record just because I was in the mood to buy something, or feel like I was part of the party. Now that was fun. I felt great walking the seven and a half blocks home.
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"Working at a record store was basically like
high school if high school taught you about things
you actually wanted to know about." -- King Tuff
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*Real Estate's Alex Bleeker
**Golden Hits; Ridgewood, NJ [closed]*
When [Real Estate's] Matt, Martin, and I were in high school, we caught wind of a rumor that a record store would be opening downtown. We did what any sensible suburban music freaks would have done: rode our bikes there and begged the owner for jobs.
The subterranean shop, Golden Hits, was still a few days away from opening, so the young owner Josh put us to work. We were paid in pizza and old cassette tapes. The store's initial inventory consisted mostly of Josh's personal collection. We spent a few days alphabetizing and cataloging, telling Josh what labels we were into, and speculating about whether or not he wanted to smoke weed with us.
The only problem with keeping us on as employees was that we made up a significant percentage of his potential customers. There was not much of a market for a boutique record record store in Ridgewood. So our positions were soon terminated and the shop folded pretty shortly after. Still, it was around long enough to expose me to some great music I hadn't yet heard, including Spacemen 3, Olivia Tremor Control, and the Dukes of the Stratosphear.
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Photo by Noah Kalina
*A.C. Newman
**Scratch Records; Vancouver, British Columbia*
My favorite record store is Scratch Records, in particular the first subterranean location on Cambie St. Why? Because I worked there and for years most of my social life revolved around that place. The owner Keith Parry was the drummer in my band Superconductor. It was the classic labor-of-love record store. People used to collect there around 6 p.m. on Friday night in preparation for going to the Cambie Hotel, the dive bar across the street that I felt like we discovered, like we were the first people to ever co-opt a dive bar.
When I got the job there, it felt like validation. Later in life, many friends would tell me that they were intimidated by our asshole record-store-employee ways, that we laughed at their tastes. But I don't recall doing that at all. I remember being hung over most of the time. Excuse me if I don't want to talk to you about the Melvins for an hour. I was tired. I remember listening to Mayo Thompson's Corky's Debt to His Father non-stop for an entire day and not selling one copy of it. What kind of world lets that happen? It made you angry. That scene in High Fidelity where John Cusack plays the Beta Band song and immediately sells a bunch of copies was such bullshit. No one cared about any of our staff picks.
My pay was less than the lowest legal wage, but I understood how little money came in. Keith lived in the store for quite a long time, being a struggling entrepreneur in a cave-like back room that had an even more cave-like sleeping alcove in it. The place was under street level after all, seemingly carved out of the building's foundation, and in my memories that back room was completely made of stone. Like the Flintstones' house. Once, a junkie ran back into the sanctum and frantically offered to blow me if I would help him escape from some unseen pursuer. I recall Keith once had a junkie threaten him with a needle. For reasons like this, he had a metal bar behind the counter. When those frat guys were talking openly in the store about stealing the Dwarves' "Blood Guts and Pussy" poster-- the one with the hot topless girls-- I thought, "Am I going to have to use the metal bar?" The poster stayed on the wall.
One of the funnest gigs of my life happened there, too. There were other great in-stores of note (Unrest, Giant Sand) but the greatest was Mecca Normal and Zip Code Rapists, Gregg Turkington's (aka Neil Hamburger) two-piece band. Near the end of ZCR's set, when things really disintegrated, Jean Smith and Gregg T. did a duet that sounded occasionally like Tuvan throat singing but mostly like two hobos yelling at each other. The whole thing ended in a used LP fight that originated in the Greg Kihn wing of the $1 section. Keith tried to distract everyone from the new records by supplying Nettwerk cut-out vinyl 12"s he had in the back room. He was having fun at the record fight, but he preferred that we break the worthless stuff. A year or two later, when my girlfriend dumped me for him, it seemed like a good time to stop working there.
*Next: More tales from Jim James, Dum Dum Girls, the National, and more.*
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*Photo by Neil Krug
*Jim James
**Grimey's; Nashville, TN*
Grimey's is full of sweet people doing sweet things for the earth. Grimey and Doyle always turn me on to some of the coldest music I ain't never yet heard. I'll walk in there and say, "What's up?" And they'll say, "Here's what's up!" and blow my mind. One time, I bought a rainbow and walked out the door with it. A real live rainbow! Grimey's is a special place for the community-- not only do they deal in great recorded music but they also have a place to showcase great live music in "the basement," one of the greatest clubs on earth. God bless 'em and may they live long and prosper.
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*Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan
**Caldor; Peekskill, NY [closed]*
Growing up in the suburbs, I did the bulk of my record shopping at department stores. Most of my earliest 45s were purchased on tag-along-with-mom trips to Caldor in Peekskill, including my first multi-single shopping spree ("I Think We're Alone Now", "Penny Lane", and Harpers' Bizarre's "59th Street Bridge Song"). I started making the transition to LPs there, notably when I passed up Surrealistic Pillow (ever discerning, I determined that as the owner of both "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit", I already had a third of that one-- as yet unaware of how much I would love "Embryonic Journey" and "Comin' Back to Me") for the brand-new After Bathing at Baxter's-- quite the mind expander, that one.
The Kaplan family switched their allegiance to nearby White's, which, thanks to the adjacent Waldbaum's, was accessible without going outside. By then I was pretty much off the 45, though I made a few (not enough) purchases from their collection of cutouts (Five Americans' "Western Union", not to mention "Happy Jack" complete with the Ralph Steadman picture sleeve). The day after I saw the Kinks for the first time, I made a beeline to White's and picked up The Kinks Kronikles from their regular stock and Kinda Kinks from the $1.99 section. But like most fishermen, it's the one that got away that you can't forget-- I wonder how my life would have changed if I had ever pulled the trigger on the original Elektra edition of Nuggets, which I examined without purchase countless times.
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Photo by Shawn Brackbill
*Dum Dum Girls' Dee Dee
**Streetlight Records; Santa Cruz, CA*
I grew up in a small East Bay suburb near Berkeley, and the tiny record store in it was awful. Most of the music I listened to was handed down to me by my parents, mainly 60s stuff. Oldies. My town's library was also small but it had a decent music selection. I spent a lot of time there having more books than friends.
Aside from the mainstream groups I got into in elementary school (NKOTB, SWV, TLC), I developed a very disjointed take 80s and early-90s stuff through the library catalog and cassette dubs from friends. The best finds were that live Depeche Mode Songs of Faith and Devotion album and the Cure's Disintegration. I would choreograph dances to them on Wednesdays when my parents went out and I babysat my brother. Bad gothic ballets.
Eventually, I got my dad to drive me to the closest Rasputin's in San Lorenzo. My first self-funded purchase there was Radiohead's Pablo Honey. I also recall later trips for Elastica's first record and Bjork's Post. But my first standout record-store memory was getting Patti Smith's Horses from Streetlight Records while visiting my grandmother in Santa Cruz. I listened to it everyday for maybe a year! I was a patron there later on during college, too.
Another notable event occurred years later, when I made my first off-the-wall purchase from Amoeba in San Francisco: Sonic Boom's Spectrum for $60. I felt like the queen of the world. That and of course seeing my first EP on Captured Tracks in a shop somewhere randomly-- a massive rush of pride and self-consciousness. I still feel that way whenever I see a record of mine or a friend's, or almost even more so, a record my own label Zoo Music has put out. I probably took a hundred photos of Dirty Beaches' Badlands in various shops across the world. Viva vinyl.
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*Mark Kozelek
**Luna Music; Indianapolis, IN*
I wish that I could write about my favorite record stores in San Francisco, but they've all closed. I especially loved walking to Tower Records in North Beach, which is now a Walgreens. The last CD I bought there was Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News. I also loved Bay Area Records and Tapes on Polk Street and will never forget walking in there in 1992 and seeing my first record, Down Colorfull Hill, on both CD and cassette. It's been closed forever and it's now a corner store called Blue Fog Market. I don't get over to the Haight much, where Amoeba is, so I have to whittle my favorite indie record stores down to places that I stop at while on tour.
I like Luna Music in Indianapolis. It's run by an amazing guy named Todd Robinson. I've played in-store performances for Todd over the years, because he and his wife Katy invite me over for dinner and treat me with respect. Plus, he gives me great deals and alerts me to any Andres Segovia records that happen to pass through.
I also like Park Avenue CDs in Orlando. It's the coolest record store in Florida. It's run by a great guy named Sandy, and a cool girl named Shelly. I've known both of them since the mid-90s. And the last one that comes to mind is Slow Boat Records in Wellington, New Zealand. I bought an Andres Segovia five-disc set there in 2008, and it changed my life.
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Photo by Deirdre O'Callaghan
*The National's Aaron Dessner
**Shake It Records; Cincinnati, OH*
Shake It Records has an incredible collection of old and new music, and they release a lot of great and often rare/overlooked stuff on their own imprint. They were one of the stores that made us feel we had a chance when we were self-releasing on Brassland-- they stocked and promoted our records long before most people cared-- though early on it was probably Matt's mom that was buying most of the records we sold there. In 2004, Shake It released a limited-edition vinyl run of our Cherry Tree EP which seems to be quite rare now (we see knock-offs in Eastern Europe especially). And they've been big supporters of Bryce's annual Music Now festival in Cincinnati. We can't thank Darren and Shake It enough for keeping independent music alive in Cincinnati.
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Photo by Erez Avissar
*Madlib
**Groove Merchant; San Francisco, CA*
First on the list of places to stop for any vinyl in SF, and it’s been that way for years.
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*DJ Koze
**Traktor; Hamburg, Germany [closed]*
I grew up in a small town right at the border of Denmark, and it was hard to find vinyls up there. So me and some friends took the train to Hamburg in once in a while. Back in the mid 80s, there existed this incredible record store called Traktor right on Eppendorfer Landstraße. I remember we felt very insecure every time when we entered this store.
We were haunted by this special atmosphere in the air there. All the older customers seemed to be real specialists and they took plenty of records out of the shelves and listened to them for just seconds, skipping the needle, before deciding which track was good for them and which wasn't. But the real authority were the guys running the shops. They were super cool and they never laughed. You could say they were almost arrogant. Sometimes we asked for a track we had been reading about in a hipster magazine, and they would answer, "You have been reading about this track, it's not out yet-- they wrote that, too." Pure humiliation!
There was this special DJ-only basement where you had to show some proof that you were an actual DJ. Thus we cloned a "DJ passport" from a dancing school in Flensburg that held disco nights each weekend. Once we were in the record shop, we tried to act professional, collected a stash of vinyl, went up to the basement "security" guy, showed our DJ ID and he opened the gate for us so we could go downstairs. We played out all the hard-to-find bootlegs on our own stereo. It was magic. Though we always feared we'd get busted.
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*Pissed Jeans' Matt Korvette
**Double Decker Records; Allentown, PA*
One day I was hanging out at Double Decker (as I often did, daily, from ages 18 to 23), and the owner (and my good friend) Jamie Holmes asked me if I'd watch the shop for five minutes while he went down the street to grab a sandwich. I said sure. A minute or two later, another friend of mine came in, and for reasons I cannot remember, we started wrestling, which led to my friend falling backwards into the front door, shattering the glass. He wasn't that hurt, but the window was ruined. We had to wait another few minutes in fearful anxiety, and then watch as Jamie came back up the steps, completely shocked by the smashed glass. Even after this, he still let me hang out all the time, and actually let me burn a couple of CDs for times when I was hard up on buying them. If there's a better record store, it doesn't exist on earth.
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*Pro Era's Chuck Strangers
**Disc-O-Rama; New York, NY*
Al Green's Let's Stay Together was the first record I copped. It was the first time I had ever really experimented with a record player, so while I was trying to preview a record, I scratched it really badly. The cashier got pissed and started yelling at me and made me buy it.
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Photo by Jacek Poremba
*Daughn Gibson
**Double Decker Records; Allentown, PA*
Somewhere between an Icons of Filth 7" and a Sparklehorse LP, Randall Huth of Pissed Jeans and I found ourselves behind the closed doors of Allentown's pride, Double Decker Records, pre-gaming an Electric Wizard/Warhorse show with the store's owner, Holmsey, a jug of Sutter Home, and bottles of Jack and SoCo. Roaming the racks, not looking for anything in particular, I noted the compatibility of SoCo's Juicy Fruit taste and the vocal harmonies of "The Wizard" by Uriah Heap, which was playing over Double Decker's speakers.
The last memories I have before the show were taking one last slug of Jack in Holmsey's red record convention van and coming-to briefly while standing in line. During the show, I found myself on a couch with barf in my lap. I motioned to Randall that it might be time to leave, and as he made his way towards me, he dropped a nearly drained SoCo bottle to the floor, the sound of it shattering fully absorbed in the war of an Orange full stack.
Out in the street in Allentown's early hours, we hollered down passing cars, asking them "where the goddamn record store was" and finally we were scooped up by Allentown's finest and locked up. I was released at 8 a.m., called my work, lost my job, and proceeded to walk the long mile back to Double Decker for my car. Elementary school children squealed and ran quickly away from me as I threw up over the 8th St. bridge. Randall was still too drunk to be released from jail, but when he was at 11 a.m., we drove home, vomiting out the open windows while listening to Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark CD, which I must have bought at Double Decker the night before.
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*John Talabot*
Record stores are part of my life. Since I was a teenager, I spent the money my mum gave me for lunch on records. Visiting a record store is a really special moment and every time I go to a new record store I feel a mix of feelings: nervous, anxious, happy. Going to record stores and collecting records has helped me to produce and get different approaches to production, too. It was in a record store where I started my idea of how John Talabot music should sound.
There was a moment that I was DJing as a resident in a club in Barcelona, but it was hard for me to find new 12"s that I wanted to play. I was looking for techno or house stuff with a different sound, so I kept going to record stores to try to find special stuff. Once, I went to a store and found a bunch of cheap white label records with no info, so I put them on the store's record player and it sounded really heavy. Everything was distorted and fat, with really live, deep drums. I was amazed. I didn't know what the records were but I just bought them straight away. But when I played them at home, the records sounded really flat, no heavy kickdrums, no distortion, no deep melodies, no alive drums. I checked and double checked the records, the player, headphones. They weren't the records I listened at the store. So I went back and asked the guy why the records sounded so different in the store compared to my home record player. He showed me the record player in the store and told me that it was broken and the output of the amplifier was distorted. I couldn't believe it. I realized that the sound I was trying to get was in that direction. Maybe that same night I made "Sunshine" with the distorted sound of the record player in my mind.
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Photos by Shawn Brackbill
*Bat for Lashes' Natasha Khan
**Edgeworld; Brighton, England [closed]*
Edgeworld was above a goth/surf shop-- up some narrow creaky stairs-- and had album posters and fliers plastered all over the walls. Colin ran Edgeworld, and he was like the John Peel of Brighton. I would hang out and we'd chat for hours and he'd play me bizarre and wonderful records like Marianne Nowottny and Beck’s really early experimental albums. He was always looking out for things people would like and had impeccable taste. You'd get a biscuit if you were lucky, or be asked to watch the shop while a worker popped to the loo! I sold my first little demos there.
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*Camera Obscura's Gavin Dunbar
**Monorail; Glasgow, Scotland*
I've worked in a variety of record shops over the years: new ones, old ones, shabby second-hand ones, chain stores, and I currently manage a wee charity shop that is half record shop and half arty/vintage boutique. Coming from that background and being a music fan, I was shocked recently to read a statistic that said the average UK person spends less than £60 a year on new records. Most folk I know would spend that in a week, certainly in a month. I guess spending so much time in record shop environments skews your idea of what's normal, but I still think i'm right, and people who only buy around five or six albums a year are wrong.
The sights you see on an average day at a store make the mind boggle-- record shops tend to have their fair share of colourful characters as regulars. Mad geeks that claimed they could tell a record's pressing plant from the smell of the vinyl. We had one customer that would buy every new album out on Monday, and split their bill into half cash and half card so that if their wife found a receipt, she wouldn't know how much they were actually spending on records every week. I've seen people start singing and dancing round the shop along to the music playing, or shoplifters attempting to get out with 20 CDs stuck down each trouser leg (making their trouser legs rectangular, and eminently suspicious). One shop had a "metal" side and an "indie" side. The metal side always tended to smell odiously (we always assumed it was the metal customers rather than the records), almost conjuring up the dust cloud of Pigpen from Peanuts, whilst the indie side was always odor-free. But more than that, it's a mix of people, a community. You get the students, folk in business suits, folk in bands, people with good jobs, people with shit jobs, people with no jobs, everyone comes in to get their new releases, or a great classic record.
Glasgow used to have so many record shops, the West End alone had seven within a 10-minute walk of each other. Now there is one (Fopp). In the city centre we're lucky to have Monorail, which is a fantastic shop, and Love Music, which is a mix of second-hand and new releases. But other than that there are a couple of second-hand shops (Missing is great) and the two chain stores, HMV and Fopp (owned by HMV) that has just come out of administration. It's a sad state to see these great record shops disappearing one by one. The pull of cheap internet retailers with free delivery and bulk buying power, not to mention the ability of folk to download both legally and illegally from the internet, has taken its toll. Hopefully, we're at a position where the shops that are left have enough of a customer base to be stable and keep going for life, not just for Record Store Day.
*Next: More stories from Sharon Van Etten, Zola Jesus, Liars, and others.*
Photo by Dusdin Condren
*Sharon Van Etten
**Feeding Tube Records; Northampton, MA*
A couple of years ago, I played a show in Northampton at The Iron Horse with Lady Lamb the Beekeeper. We went on a walk around the town, came across Feeding Tube Records, and immediately dove in. I remember seeing a Tim Buckley record I've been wanting for a long time and I was in the mood to take a plunge. I asked the man working behind the counter if he had heard anything lately that blew his mind. I wanted to hear something new. He told me about the new Ed Askew record that had just been reissued. I didn't know much about Askew before, but I trusted the man's taste. When I got back from tour, I sorted out my loot and put the record on. It absolutely crushed me. So good. I have had it on heavy rotation ever since. And randomly, not too far after, I got to see him play in Brooklyn. It was one of the most heartbreaking and beautiful performances I have ever seen. And then, soon after that, I was asked to sing on his new record. I couldn't have been more thrilled. I found out later that Ted Lee was the man who turned me on to Ed Askew, and that Byron Coley does the curating at the store. I love how small the world is. Thank you, Ted! Imperfiction will forever be one of my favorite records and moments in time.
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*Superchunk's Jim Wilbur
**Mystic Disc; Mystic, CT*
It’s been at least 25 years since I shopped there regularly, but Mystic Disc remains one of the biggest influences on my Life in Rock. It was through this store that I had my first exposure to punk, where I picked up my first issues of Flipside and Maximum Rock N Roll, and where, in the space of just a few months toward the end of 1984, that I bought Husker Du’s Zen Arcade, Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime, and the Replacements Let It Be. It was a great time to be alive (despite the perceived threat of nuclear war and Ronald Reagan’s ongoing presidency).
The store’s owner, Dan Curland, was an avowed and outspoken product of the 60s, but he kept the store eclectically stocked with all the then-current hardcore, punk, goth, new wave, and indie (which I don’t think was even a common term at the time). I recall listening to him talk on the phone behind the front counter one day, telling someone on the other end of the line that he was fed up with people asking him to play Leonard Cohen on his WCNI radio show. “That guy’s music is too depressing,” he said. “People only want to kill themselves after hearing him.” I remember wondering who the hell this Leonard Cohen dude was, filing the name away for future research, and then debating whether I should buy the record in my hand called Amerika by a band called Stark Raving Mad. This is the store’s 25th year in business. Here’s to 25 more!
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*Photo by David Black
*FIDLAR's Elvis Kuehn
**Goodwill; Los Angeles, CA*
One time when I was in high school, my brother and I stopped by Goodwill after a day at the beach. We would always flip through the records there and either leave empty-handed or with some weird children's records to sample. There wasn't a good independent record store very close to where we grew up in Culver City, so the Goodwill on Venice Blvd. and National was always the place to go when we started getting into vinyl. So we started looking through the records and I immediately saw Black Flag's Jealous Again EP. It's a huge rush when you find a record like that sandwiched between Barbra Streisand and Herp Albert's Tijuana Brass records. Once you see one good record at a thrift store, it can go one of two ways: either that's the only good record in the store, which is commonly the case, or it's a piece of somebody's record collection that was donated. Luckily, we experienced the latter and found a handful of awesome records for a dollar each, like the Dead Kennedy's 12" single "Holiday in Cambodia" b/w "Police Truck". My brother picked up Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True and The Specials. There were also the Dickies' records Dawn of the Dickies and Stukas Over Disneyland. Right after we cherry-picked through the stacks, a fellow thrifter walked up and saw what we found and started complaining and cussing under his breath-- beating himself up that he hadn't arrived five minutes earlier. To this day, those are the best records I've ever found at a thrift store. Who knows if it will ever happen again.
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*Metz
**Record Runner and Birdman Sound; Ottawa, Ontario*
Alex Edkins: Growing up in the Ottawa suburbs, the closest record store was about an hour drive away and there was no public transit. I used to catch a ride with my Dad at 7:30 a.m. when he was heading to work downtown. I would wait for Record Runner to open and then spend the whole day there until my Dad was done working. I ended up working at Record Runner for several years, too.
Hayden Menzies: Birdman Sound was a full sensory experience. There were classic show posters on every inch of the walls, incense billowing from the door, records of all types playing on the turntable and, of course, the owner, John Westhaver, who was always available for recommendations, history lessons, and rants. I learned a lot of swear words at that store.
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*Bleached
**Headline Records; Hollywood, CA*
Jessie Clavin: The first record store I ever went to was Headline Records. I was living in the Valley but going to Hollywood High School, so it was really easy for me to get to Headline. I remember asking a friend to ditch with me and take the bus down to Headline, where I bought my first Crass record! I ended up working at Amoeba in the warehouse for about two years. I met a lot of really awesome people there, everyone knew so much about music it really blew my mind! The best part about working there was seeing all the new, used, and rare records before they went down to the floor!
Jennifer Clavin: I remember we used to go to Headline Records forever. They even used to have shows there and it would be super bright and some really punk band would be playing, so it would be kinda awkward. But then one day we were walking down Sunset and I saw Amoeba being built and I was like wtf is this place? I was annoyed at first because I just assumed it could never be as cool as Headline. But now it's my favorite place to go.
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*Photo by Jean-Baptiste Toussaint
*Thee Oh Sees' John Dwyer*
*1. Mississippi Records; Portland, OR*: I buy so much from them whenever I'm in Portland that I have to skip dinner that night. A great selection of tasteful old LPs. And then there's the label, which does reissues mostly-- guaranteed a good record for 10 clams. I try to buy all of it, but they release a lot so it's a tough job.
*2. Amoeba; San Francisco, CA*: I know it can seem like a big overwhelming joint, but they have killer LPs always. They even have a cassette section (oh hell no)-- I'm always leaving there with an armful.
*3. Aquarius Records; San Francisco, CA*: They seem to lean towards CDs, but it's another joint that has intricate taste-- experimental and metal and reissues abound. And if you're super lucky, you might get to see that little sprite "the Horrocks" jamming some hammer-ons in the back room with a furrowed brow.
*4. Armageddon; Providence, RI*: All things heavy and heavy are here. A great shop with tons of silk screened posters that scream "Rhode Island."
*5. Jerry's; Pittsburgh, PA*: It's fucking massive. You have to really dig, but in there are some gems. Bring a dust mask.
*6. Explorist International; San Francisco, CA*: It's small, and so is the handsome man who runs it, Chris Dixon, who has been in several great SF bands. They have great jazz, experimental, psych, and world music. And Chris just had a baby so go see him and give him your wampum.
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*Julia Holter
**Amoeba; Los Angeles, CA*
Amoeba opened when I was 15, right at the height of my excitement digging through used classical sections. And they had a big one. Also, I remember buying my first John Cage CD at the Wherehouse Records at the Beverly Connection mall.
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*Yo La Tengo's James McNew*
*In Your Ear Records; Providence, RI*
I worked at In Your Ear from 1990-1991 and loved the job and everyone I worked with and for. It was a hell of a great shop. CDs were still pretty new, and I thought the best, most practical example of the format was the Residents' Commercial Album (which I bought at the shop in hopes of someday getting a CD player). Turned out I was right!
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*Zola Jesus' Nika Roza Danilova
**Record Collector; Los Angeles, CA*
There is something magical about Record Collector, which is stocked in a floor-to-ceiling labyrinth with the rarest in jazz and classical and employed with only those who can maintain an encyclopedic knowledge of the inventory down to the last disc. It's the kind of place where you can't ever look too excited about finding an out-of-print Luciano Berio album since they price the records based on how bad you want it. But it's great to know these gems still exist, where the pride in the vinyl format is still so alive. You can stumble across something that hasn't been pressed since 1960 yet it still plays like it's brand new.
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*Wavves' Stephen Pope
**Goner Records; Memphis, TN*
Goner Records has had a huge impact on my life. When I was a teenager I'd go in at least once a week to go through their selection and talk with the staff. I got introduced to tons of new music because the owners, Eric and Zac, would always recommend their current favorites. They also act as a record label and have put out different singles and albums by my former bands. Every year they put on a festival called Gonerfest that gets the best garage-y stuff going around. The first year of Gonerfest, I saw Black Lips and the King Khan and BBQ Show play one of the most memorable shows I've ever been to. I went and bought We Did Not Know the Forest Spirit Made the Flowers Grow and the self-titled King Khan and BBQ Show record the next day at Goner and they're still some of my favorite records today.
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*Liars' Aaron Hemphill*
Besides some of us having worked at them and the lists of misadventures and schemes born and executed within their walls, what sticks out most to me now is the fact that Liars were born in a record store. I worked at an establishment (which I will leave a mystery) when a mutual friend introduced Angus and I. They were starting a band and needed another person. I was given their list of amazing and impossible influences and reference points and was so excited at the odd combinations they mentioned that we practiced that night. Angus and I bought a four-track and it was the beginning of our newfound focus and love: making songs. We have yet to look up or take a break. Reported by Pitchfork 7 hours ago.