I was sitting down and having a few drinks with the band after a set earlier this evening and we got talking about how great it used to be to go out shopping for music. Now I'm not talking about chain music stores with racks of cd's with little selection other then the most popular bands, I'm talking about those small time, independent music stores you'd find in most any town. A small shop, usually in the bad part of town, that smells like mildew and has every little amazing musical gem you could think of hiding amongst the shelves. Independent artists you've never heard of, rare b-sides, imports, bootlegs, rare live recordings...and more vinyl then you can shake a stick at.
When I was younger I used to spend so much time in these places looking for that one recording I'd always heard of but could never find. I'd gather up a group of friends and we'd head off for the day to scour these shops, section by section we'd brush aside dust too see if that rare live recording of Jaco Pastorius from Miami in '78 might be hiding in the back, keeping an eye out for the usual black and white, photocopied album cover. Or you stumble on an old 45, released only in Europe or Japan with that one song on the b-side you'd always heard was better then anything else the band recorded. You'd pull it out of the jacket, eyeball it for scratches and cracks and then take a deep whiff...the smell was intoxicating. At the end of the day you lug armfuls of records, 45's, cd's, cassettes and 8 tracks back to the car, buy a nice bag of weed, head to somebodies place and settle in for a nice listening party.
Then the internet happened, you could go to ebay or any website that sold music, do a quick search and BAM theres the album all you have to is wait for it to arrive...then along came mp3s, filing sharing, torrents and itunes ushering in the end of the great record scavenger hunt. It almost seemed pointless after awhile to waste time in these out of the way shops when every thing you want is right there at the click of a mouse. Now, in 2010 I rarely see these shops anymore. Here in Nashville, Music City,there are only a couple still lingering in the hipper parts of town and the selection for the most part pretty lousy...and its not just Nashville either, my old haunts in New England are closed down or on the verge of shutting down and I rarely see them when I'm out traveling anymore. It would seem the hobby has nearly been lost to technology and time.
So does anybody here have found memories of record shopping? A favorite store? A really cool find? Maybe a ritual? Still have a ridiculously huge collection, stuffed into milk crates cluttering up your closets? I'd love to hear if anybody else here had the same passion for it I did.
