This is a nice blog.  Makes me want to dig into my memory bank to see what I can recall about records stores.:)
 

Since I am WAY older than you, 'shopping for Lps' holds many memories for me. I had a favorite record store in Helena, Montana back in the 70s--God I wish i could remember the name of it. I had come down with Disco Fever at the time and saw a new Thelma Houston Lp called THE DEVIL IN ME. I loved Thelma! but gee the film The Exocist was huge at the time... i bought it anyway.  Talk about a bad title for an album for the time!

Then moving to Minneapolis --I found another most amazing record store.
Aisles and aisles --bins and bins of Lps. deliciousness....The place was fabulous. all natural wood. everywhere. incense and herb floated about...new releases would be featured on the stained wood Lp shelves on the walls....and then there it was..Sarah Vaughan- Brazillian Romance 1987....wow what an album!

After moving to San Francisco---in 88 I found the Tower Records on Bay and Columbus.......By then it was CD only---but this store didn't miss a beat......an amazing collection of CDs highlighted by the best Import section town!--

-thanks for joggin my noggin and asking me to take this trip down musical format memory lane!



 

Hi David my first record store experience was actually buying the old 45"s. One song on front one song on back. My first album gosh thats so long ago but most probably the beatles.  Of course my mom and dad had the heavy duty 78"s.  Now my first 8 track was Schools out by alice cooper. As for my most treasured albums that would be what i call The White  album that tommy wolks family gave me of course carly"s album.  Many blessings david Lori

 

 

My first job was working at 14 yrs old in a record store called Zounds in Sydney Australia..I had so much fun..was into punk in those days..and cranking up Sex Pistols, the Pretenders, Joe Jackson..
 

most definitely my best memory at a record store (Looney Tunes in West Babylon, NY [looneytunescds.com] was my third trip there.  i had actually found it while looking online for ben taylor's deeper than gravity cd.  it was on a list of all independent record stores that had it, and it was the the only one on long island.  i went again and planned on going on one tuesday or wednesday, but ended up not being able to go.  i figured i'd be able to soon, but things changed because it burned down just after midnight a day or two later.  my friend called me to tell me what had happened and told me to check the paper.  after two visits, it was aolready my favorite store.  the owners apparently at first figured it was time to throw in the towel, as indie record stores are  obviously becoming fewer and fewer these days.  but they quickly decided to re-open it, which seemed like an impossible dream with tower records and sam goody etc. having recently gone out on the island.  it's situated right next to an FYE, too, which is pretty funny.  i've heard peple while i was in there say how they were going to fye and saw looney tunes, instead.  anyways, a lot of bands and major record labels sent in memorablilia, gold records, guitars, etc...all signed, some by bands that had played in-stores there (staind once did a hige rooftop set there).  motion city soundtrack even did an autography signing, and if i'm remembering this correctly coheed & cambria did a benefit show for them, too.  i went in there the day after it reopened (only about four months later, despite almost everything, if not everything, destroyed in the fire).  i still remember the day i went back, amazed at how it bounced back from disaster with the help of the community and the pure determination and love of/passion for music by the owners.  it was completely redesigned and they even made a policy (which they still have) of lower prices.  Looney Tune's story is an awesome display of the power of the music industry--the TRUE music industry, not the one created by chain stores and unknowledgable/careless staff.  the staff was always/is friendly & helpful & knows a lot, which makes me love these stores even more.  the continuing survival of these places is inspiring and much needed.
 

hiya david,

i remember saving up my pocket money - i must have been 8  or so at the time - and going into woolies in woking to chose my wonderful first piece of vinyl. i was on my own, and spent hours, literally, going through the layers and layers of shiny back plastic, wrapped in colourful sleeves.

i finally had it down to 2 singles. going underground by the jam, and someones looking at you by the boomtown rats. but i simply couldnt decide which. i rummaged through my pockets and counted my saved pennies and to my delight realised that i could afford BOTH!!!!! i remember feeling so excited and so grown up leaving that shop and taking them home.

then i had to beg my big sister to use her little red and white plastic portable record player, with its little mono speaker, and nothing had ever sounded so great. i sat and played them over and over until i knew every last lyric, and harmony, and drum beat, and could sing along, guitar breaks and all! lol

i have a second amazing memory of vinyl which shaped my future in a huge way. i had gone on holiday with a school friend - by now i was 15 - and we were staying in a rather sleepy, rainy village in scotland. i remember feeling so hard done by, and bored, and just wanting to get home and go out gigging with my punk band!!! anyways, it was a particularly wet afternoon, and my friends uncle was at work - and my friend decided she would do her homework!!!! i was mortified - homework just wasnt my thang! lol

i sat on the lounge floor hoping the ground would swallow me up, and glanced around the room - i noticed a collection of lp's stacked on the floor beside me - and to kill the time started leafing through them. i hadnt heard of any of them!!!! joni mitchell???? rickie lee jones??? james taylor??? who on earth??? so one by one i played them, and one by one i fell in love. the rest of the holiday all i wanted to do was sit in the lounge and play records - what an amazingly rich discovery! i asked my friends uncle later that week to run me into town, and i bought a bunch of blank cassettes, and taped all the lp's to take home with me - and i can honestly say my life changed from that day.......... :D

sorry if i went on a bit, lol - got all excited thinking of it again! good luck with your forthcoming releases - i hope to get to see you play again soon, i loved the gig with ben at salford quays ,

peace love and pinkness, lisa x
 

Hi David -
 

hiya david,

i remember saving up my pocket money - i must have been 8  or so at the time - and going into woolies in woking to chose my wonderful first piece of vinyl. i was on my own, and spent hours, literally, going through the layers and layers of shiny back plastic, wrapped in colourful sleeves.

i finally had it down to 2 singles. going underground by the jam, and someones looking at you by the boomtown rats. but i simply couldnt decide which. i rummaged through my pockets and counted my saved pennies and to my delight realised that i could afford BOTH!!!!! i remember feeling so excited and so grown up leaving that shop and taking them home.

then i had to beg my big sister to use her little red and white plastic portable record player, with its little mono speaker, and nothing had ever sounded so great. i sat and played them over and over until i knew every last lyric, and harmony, and drum beat, and could sing along, guitar breaks and all! lol

i have a second amazing memory of vinyl which shaped my future in a huge way. i had gone on holiday with a school friend - by now i was 15 - and we were staying in a rather sleepy, rainy village in scotland. i remember feeling so hard done by, and bored, and just wanting to get home and go out gigging with my punk band!!! anyways, it was a particularly wet afternoon, and my friends uncle was at work - and my friend decided she would do her homework!!!! i was mortified - homework just wasnt my thang! lol

i sat on the lounge floor hoping the ground would swallow me up, and glanced around the room - i noticed a collection of lp's stacked on the floor beside me - and to kill the time started leafing through them. i hadnt heard of any of them!!!! joni mitchell???? rickie lee jones??? james taylor??? who on earth??? so one by one i played them, and one by one i fell in love. the rest of the holiday all i wanted to do was sit in the lounge and play records - what an amazingly rich discovery! i asked my friends uncle later that week to run me into town, and i bought a bunch of blank cassettes, and taped all the lp's to take home with me - and i can honestly say my life changed from that day.......... :D

sorry if i went on a bit, lol - got all excited thinking of it again! good luck with your forthcoming releases - i hope to get to see you play again soon, i loved the gig with ben at salford quays ,

peace love and pinkness, lisa x

 

hey David...by the time I was 20, my obsession with records had my right hand's middle and forefinger moving so rapidly that I could flip through almost 100 LPS/45's in a minute, haha...like any music loving slave, there was always something I was desperately searching for on any given excursion...(Sometimes a rare Bowie EP, or maybe a Nilsson & Cher 45 produced by Phil Spector...or a mint copy of an early Everly Brothers LP)...My favorite haunt was a NJ record store called MR MUCK's; run by 2 very cool organic couples and their sweet ol' dog~ their dream-store became my heavenly home away from home...Their cut-outs were the best, often asking a mere 99cents for some awesome DJ-Promo by some brand new artist, many of those LPs to become my lifelong favorites.  And yes, there was always music playing through some incredible STEREO...the necessary soundtrack while reading and beholding each 12-inch orphan, often recounting my dough to see how many I could take with me.

I will never forget trading my 1/2 hr lunch break one day for a quick fix at Mr Mucks...and while invading the shelves, heard Dan Folgelberg's SOUVENIRS, for the first time...Those harmoies and melodies hit some bullseye in me...I was besides myself, since at the counter that day was a friend of the owners' manning the store, who looked remarkably similar to the photograph of Dan on the "Now Playing" shelf...I was more than a little shy back then, but worked up the nerve to ask if this was HIS record playing, and told him how much I loved it...Well, you can only imagine how this handsome longhaired dude, some years older than me, grinned the large one... until he had to burst out in uncontrollable laughter at my being so awestruck and younG...then he handed me the very LP that was on the turntable and said , this is some very tasty music...take it home and enjoy it , kid...no charge...you have good ears. Wow.

Some incredible artists became champions to me that way, from walking in a record store and saying, who is this??? to some hipster at a counter...People like Dwight Twilley, Lou Ann Barton, Benny Mardones, Marshall Crenshaw, Bruce Cockburn, BeBop Deluxe, Rachel Sweet, Roderick Falconer, Jimmie Mack, the UK's Chanter Sisters...folks whose music I was turned onto in a big way only by the workers playing these LPs for their own enjoyment, haha...bless them one and all...

I have a sideline preoccupation with the Great American Songbook, and the great singers from the 40s and 50s whose singing was often worlds apart from the rest of what I listened to...Kay Starr, Dinah Washington, Rosemary Clooney, Connie Haines, Helen Forrest, Billy Eckstine...all recorded tons of LPS, rich with unbelieveable vocalizing...far beyond what any of them are now known for from lame cd-compilations...I scoured every record store in NJ and NYC religiously on weekends, as well as any yard sale where some old peeps sat outside, lol...sometimes my treasures would be so rare that the artists themselves would be lucky to own the vinyl of their own work!! Hard for anyone under 25 to imagine what that was like; While the joy of discovering music will always have its wings, the incomparable and precious memories I have of those vinyl hunting years are some of my life's greatest to recall.
 peace & Love to you and all reading....DD