Life in A. Minor: The Death of the Record Store

By Broadside Style Columnist Andy Minor
Photo courtesy of Broadside

It's no secret that the way we listen to music is changing. From Amazon.com to iTunes to Internet piracy, there are more and more reasons to find the music you want at your computer than at your local Tower Records. The chief reason being that all the Tower Records locations have been closed, defeated miserably by the Internet monster. The only record stores I go to now are independent ones that have somehow managed to survive based on the hipster following that they generate.

Long gone are the days of me blowing an entire paycheck in those glorious $6 bargain bins where I could get everything from Pearl Jam to Miles Davis to James Brown to DEVO to Elvis. I long to recall the feeling of piling into my car with an armful of CDs, unwrapping all that shrink wrap, dealing with those painful stickers that held them closed and finally getting to the point where I could ride home, 10 miles over the speed limit, enjoying the brand new sounds that filled my ears.

About 350 CDs into my collection, I found out that my beloved Tower was closing. I recalled my feelings of loss and hopelessness when I heard the news. Later on, I somberly walked past the old store and peered in at its vacant shelves. While staring at the empty rows that once held a lifetime's worth of music, I wondered where people were going to get their music.

Some would argue that it doesn't matter where the music I listen to comes from as long as I get to listen to it. This holds some truth, seeing as how the overall objective is the listening itself, but without the actual sound, there'd be no process to discover and obtain it. Why should the process suffer simply because there are shortcuts to achieving the overall goal? I fail to see how going on iTunes and surfing around has the same sensation as browsing around Tower for three hours and actually holding the CD you are about to purchase.

I remember one afternoon when I stumbled upon a CD simply titled, The Datsuns, at my local Tower. The guys on the cover all had long hair; the band was named after a classic car, and when I turned it over, I noticed a song entitled, “Harmonic Generator.” This triggered an impulse to spend one-sixth of my measly high school working kid's paycheck on it and when I popped it in my Sony Discman, I was blown away.

The CD was incredible and it was a completely blind purchase on a whim. This isn't to say that I haven't been bitten (save yourself the trouble and never, ever purchase the entire In-a-gadda-da-vita album) by a few impulses. In fact, I probably have a losing record in the good bands to bad spending ratio, but every single one of those random discoveries was worth it. Would it have been easier to go onto iTunes, listen to samples, decide to buy it and never come into contact with a hard copy? Probably. Would it have elicited the same swell of emotion when I found out that the band was actually fantastic? No. There is no thrill in the Internet route.

Maybe you're not in it for the thrill. Maybe you want to make sure that all the music you listen to is good before you hear it. Maybe you read Rolling Stone and think the Billboard charts decide what's good or maybe you really hate shopping. Whatever the reason, nothing on the Internet compares to actually holding an album in your hand, staring at the cover and deciding how good the album might be. Not to mention actually possessing the CD upon purchase, rather then waiting five business days for the mail to bring it, is in itself a wonderful sensation. This sensation is doubled when you take a step back and observe the stacks and stacks of jewel cases that weigh down the shelves in my room.

Somehow, I don't think that looking at your 14.68 gig iTunes folder is quite as impressive. There's still a way, however, to relive my nostalgia at Best Buy and Borders, but no one offers music the same way as an actual record store. A store where its main focus is selling music will always have better selection than any book or electronic store. The prices will generally be a little bit better as well. I still rarely see any CD that I'd want for $6 at a mainstream record-buying store. Tower always had five or six bins full of classic albums that were on sale, offering a steroid boost for any CD collection.

Being old fashioned at the ripe old age of 20 is a hard thing to deal with. Heck, I still listen to vinyl and have never bought a song on iTunes, but I refuse to stop reminiscing about browsing around my record store for three or more hours every week. Imagine if the Internet killed Starbucks and you were forced to buy your coffee online and have it delivered to your house. Where would you go to hang out with your hipster friends? The despair and loss you'd feel are things I live with every payday when I have nowhere to spend my hard earned cash.

Musical discovery is now a much harder process for me seeing as how I've had to alter my methods to browsing the Internet rather then just going to one building where all the music I could ever want was kept. When I bought it, I could actually hold the CD, browse the cover art and put one more trophy on the growing stack that was my collection. There was a joy there that I was accustomed to having nearly every week when I was growing up. Now, I seldom feel it at all. I know it's a bit pretentious and I shouldn't speak for everybody, but when it comes to music, I'm tired of everybody speaking for me.