A few random thoughts on records and record stores, in no particular order.
No, this isn’t a blog entry from 1978. According to the Financial Press, sales of vinyl records – which are making a tiny comeback – doubled in the first week of 2009.
Note: If you’re under 30, records are round and black, like a giant CD. Only they sound much better.
I don’t see records replacing CDs or MP3 downloads anytime soon, but it does give hope to we nostalgic folks who are slowly approaching “crusty old fart-hood”, reminding us that vinyl is alive and well. Or at least not going away completely without a decent struggle.
Which is more than I can saw about record STORES. It’s easy to jump on the bandwagon and bash AC/DC or Bruce Springsteen for selling their latest in Wal-Mart. But the sadder reality is that there are no NEW record stores to find these in anymore. Scott Holbrook of the Sacramento Press recently addressed this nicely this in a piece titled “Slow Death of the Record Store”. Holbrook explains his quest for a copy of Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” medley in Auburn, CA. After discovering the dearth of used record stores, the author went to every local local retail store that carried a smattering of CDs and found a copy in a Borders Books.
Fact is that you can only find new CDs in your local Target or Borders. (And forget records…unless you’re in proximity to a specialty store or a used record/CD store – which are also becoming less in number.) Control freak that I am, I can name the where and when of purchasing my own milestone albums from favorite stores back in the day (like the Ramones “Rocket to Russia” from Record Factory in Watsonville, circa 1979 and The Kinks “Low Budget” from Rainbow Records in downtown Santa Cruz, probably in 1980.)
I doubt my nieces (ages 13 and 16) will be just as nostalgic about the songs they downloaded from the web to their iPods – if Apple could only package the smell of a real record store.
But there’s hope. During the holidays we three were in downtown Santa Cruz, meeting my wife for dinner. Instead of parking next to the restaraunt, I purposely parked two blocks away and had us walk through Logo’s (MY favorite used record store). I could tell that Dani and Regi had never set foot in a used CD or record store. After they were done with their teenage grimmacing, they noticed the selection. And the prices. I turned ’em loose, with a big smile on my face, and hoped that maybe the used record store won’t go away completely without a reasonable fight, either.