Maybe this “holiday” is a cynical attempt by record stores trying to imitate the relative success of Free Comic Book Day. I’m inclined to side with them because this is a celebration for the remaining independent stores. Most of the exclusive big-box music retailers I remember from the Eighties, are gone: Sam Goody’s, Musicland, Radio Doctors, Sound Warehouse, Camelot and Mainstream. When Austin’s Tower Records closed in 2004, I don’t recall anyone shedding a tear.
Unfortunately, this “holiday” draws attention to the problem of declining traditional music sales (CDs, Tapes and Vinyl). My nephews and niece aren’t old enough to have any strong opinions or developed tastes so they aren’t contributing to the dilemma. Personally, I don’t feel they’ll be at such a stage until high school because that’s when it became a big facet of our lives. The definition of “our” would be my brother, personal friends, classmates and me.
Brian and I became serious about our music near the end of 1981 according to my memory. Our loyalty to WLS-AM and WCVS-AM ended after the concept of AM’s fidelity issues took precedence in our pre-teen minds. I think Brian made the switch to FM before me but WDBR sounded so alien. Not only was the signal clear, the music was also weird…for 1981. We adapted rapidly thanks to repetition, curiosity and good ol’ fashioned peer pressure at St. Agnes! I know I was a Police-Genesis-Queen fanatic by Thanksgiving.
(FM radio does dovetail into record stores. Hang in there, I’m going somewhere with this.)
During this cultural awakening (or rite of passage), Mom took me to my first record store (or one I actually wanted to go to), Apple Tree Records in Springfield. We went there to buy Brian a birthday present; Shake It Up by the Cars. It was an odd place in my eyes. The clerks played stuff I didn’t recognize and the shelves were filled with freaky releases from Adam & the Ants and the B-52’s. Despite my rather pedestrian tastes, a trip to Apple Tree Records was always exciting. Right on top of my list with Aladdin’s Castle or Black’s Hardware (best D&D shop in town). If we stayed in Springfield, I think I would have built a better rapport with the place, especially when MTV joined the cable system.
It wasn’t meant to be. We moved on to the Houston suburbs which wasn’t as cozy. This pattern continued for me until college in Milwaukee. Brian’s situation was probably different. He chose to remain in Bloomington, IL and live with Grandma for three years; I think two different high schools during his freshman year was stressful plus he saw what a “freak” the uprooting was making me. Before I was exiled to North Dakota, I remember how elated we were when we discovered Normal’s Apple Tree Records! The Summer of 1985 didn’t end a complete bust.
College is really the time I started to develop an appreciation for the local record stores. Marquette is a few blocks west of Milwaukee’s downtown. If the weather was nice or I lacked bus fare, I walked the 13 blocks to Radio Doctors because students received a 10 percent discount. This place was amazing, especially if you went to the basement floor: 45s of practically every current Top 40 song in all the major genres. Sometimes RD had rarities or imports such as the soundtrack to The Forbidden Zone by the Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo. It was also a distributor to other stores in the state which meant it carried mostly mainstream stuff. Oddly, RD’s main competition was another local chain/distributor called Mainstream.
RD was cool yet it retained the feeling of a Tower Records with a more helpful staff. I quickly learned that the truly “alternative” place in Milwaukee was Atomic Records over on the East Side, the more bohemian part of the city. There I could find the truly obscure or imported Aussie stuff I craved. This place introduced me to Mojo Nixon’s crazy ramblings. The downside of Atomic was its employees, namely WMUR’s jerk music director Dave; hardly a surprise he worked there. (To be fair, this was 20 years ago, he may be a nice person now. I’m not the same.) I have never forgotten my friend Helen’s experience being a deciding factor not to bother with the place any longer. Admittedly, Atomic wasn’t the place to buy the latest Ozzy tape but she wanted to get Paul something he liked. Since the clerks were more judgmental than the characters in High Fidelity, Helen felt their psychic daggers and voluntarily blurted out how it was for her boyfriend. The response was, yeah I figured, you’re more the New Order type. Thankfully, I was spared such elitist wrath purchasing Tim Finn’s Big Canoe…to my face.
Economics became a stronger reason for my Milwaukee business shifting to East Side Disc though. The guy who owned/operated it had recently broken off from Mainstream Records in 1987 (maybe sooner). I only stumbled upon it during the weekend I had to entertain Chris’s Oak Park friends. ESD only carried CDs, a risky proposition in the Eighties. For me, the prices and selection were perfect. Much of my early collection came from there, I can pull out 10 CDs right now to prove it. ESD’s staff were also friendlier, not abrasive. I recall one guy was downright funny; the chuckles we shared over Motley Crue’s drummer having a 360 setup. I became one of their regulars when I started dating Carrie who lived a few blocks away.
I was pretty sad to leave East Side Disc and Radio Doctors behind when I moved away from Milwaukee. Bloomington-Normal really lacked a good store with the right combination for me. There was that Apple Tree Records I mentioned earlier but five years in a larger city had spoiled me. I had become more price conscious, less naive. I don’t really know why I was ambivalent about it. Either the store had changed or I did; I’m not sure which. During my couple years in Central-IL-Hell, my collection gained more through Co-Op Records in Peoria, a local pawn shop, Best Buy and trips to Milwaukee’s The Exclusive Company.
Austin turned it all around in 1994. I think living near UT’s campus helped. For the first six months, I lived at the private dorm three blocks from West Campus and The Drag. A short walk to Tower Records (thinking it was like what I remembered in the Eighties), Sound Exchange, a CD Warehouse and my favorite, Technophilia. Geography and customer service quickly made me a regular with Technophilia. The staff was the greatest. I eventually became friends with them and when the main owner (whose name rudely escapes me) bought a Mac, I had the good fortune to earn store credit by helping them maintain it. Here is where I would build a solid musical relationship with an employee named Chip. While he was with Technophilia, Chip made sure I was notified of anything imported or rare from Crowded House and Split Enz. We even hung out together to see Matthew Sweet perform at SXSW in 1995. When he was laid off, I was bummed yet I continued to shop there because I didn’t want the place to go under. It didn’t matter. The landlord decided to let entire block be demolished and have it replaced by a Starbucks. Les Amis Cafe was another casualty. Another nice person named Ryan worked there briefly. Currently, I see him from time to time at Apple working in an administrative department.
My annoyance at the loss of Technophila had to take a back seat for it was the Summer of 1997; PowerComputing’s problems and Grandpa’s terminal illness had to take precedence. The crummy result was moving to NC. Not all was lost. Chip landed the job he has today at Waterloo Records!
Getting out of NC and back to Austin became my next primary goal for a year so record-store relationships had to wait again.
When I returned to Austin in 1998, I ran into Chip at the Neil Finn concert. We caught up on the last two years and we’ve been in contact ever since. It’s not like a daily or weekly thing. More like every couple of months one of us shoots an e-mail: I’m looking for something from Australia or Chip has ordered something really cool, would I like a copy?We discuss other things too, it’s not all “business.”
Matters weren’t as great with Technophilia and its new location. Nothing was sour nor unpleasant. Where I lived this time was the problem and it made my favorite used CD store a bi-weekly day trip, not the frequent early evening activity I had grown accustomed to. Eventually Technophilia folded in early 2004 as Drag rent continued to spiral upwards.
Waterloo Records has taken over this role in my life with occasional side expeditions to Cheapo for out-of-print material. I’ve written at great length about Waterloo Records too. The place epitomizes what a great record store is like and what the exclusively music chain stores couldn’t be due to their corporate cultures. I don’t want to repeat myself, click the link to know how awesome Waterloo Records is. I do want to emphasize the staff. To infrequent inexperienced music shoppers, they may seem unfriendly because the public’s opinion has been improperly colored by Jack Black movies, TV shows and other retailers. HA! Whenever you need help or have a question, these people go to great lengths to assist. I remember one telling me I was free to poke through the overstock drawers under the regular shelves, WITHOUT PRIOR PERMISSION. Unlike Atomic, they don’t judge your tastes. I saw a kid buy the latest INXS, the one with the new singer from the reality show. No snide comment. No eye rolling. (Helen, send TJ here in case he turns out to be a New Order type). Personally, I think the staff loves music yet they understand the economics too. Besides, one day the kid may grow up to be a regular like Mark and me, buying a future INXS remaster boxed set.
Why gush on over some “silly” record store in Austin? Because buying CDs or Vinyl at a specialty store should be exciting. Much like travel. I often find it’s important to enjoy the journey as much as the destination. This is the je ne sais quoi Amazon, iTunes and Napster can’t recreate through their online experience. These digital options serve a different purpose instead so I don’t condemn them. The Labels killed the 45 Single, iTunes became the amazing virtual basement of Radio Doctors for me. However, it can’t simulate the hunt, success and elation music geeks like myself receive through impulse buying at Waterloo, Cheapo and the Exclusive Company. Amazon doesn’t have a Chip to personally endorse new releases by Hot Chip, betchadupa or the Subways while I drop by to socialize with him.
It’s a shame that 3100 independent music retailers have closed in five years. I just don’t completely blame digital downloads (a belated full disclosure, I am an Apple employee). My friends from college are better examples about what happened. They got married, they bought houses, they had children, etc. Keeping up with their favorite bands, let alone buying CDs, dropped in priority or altogether. They’ve transformed into my parents! Here the iTunes Store caters toward those casual shoppers like my mother; she liked “Radio Ga Ga” by Queen yet hated the rest of The Works so she felt gypped about having to buy the whole album for one song. (I gladly relieved her of it.) This change in buying habits by my friends was inevitable. It happened to the generations before us. The real dilemma has been the lack of teenagers and college students replacing them year after year. Personally, I think it’s the litigious, short-term mindset of the five remaining major record labels and the dearth of intelligent programming on FM radio. Naysayers point to the iPod, XM-Sirius, computers and so on. They’re missing the point, especially when they lump XM-Sirius into their argument, along with previous gadgets. Radio stations through their staffs were taste makers. This is very true with the development of Rock n’ Roll in the Fifties and early Sixties. It cascades over to the sales of 45s and eventually albums. By their own logic, commercial radio’s decline should’ve begun with the introduction of Sony’s Walkman, cars having 8-Track players or any gadget allowing people to dictate the content. The rise in NPR’s ratings undermines this too.
I’ve pontificated and theorized enough. If you got a chance to enjoy Record Store Day, tell me about it. I plan on preparing for it next time. Otherwise, I’m dying to read anyone else’s stories about their favorite places or tales of horror like Helen’s.