Tomorrow is the 2010 edition of Record Store Day, and I was going to go on about all the cool swag that you can pick up in the United States and in the United Kingdom tomorrow at your local independent shop. However, it dawned on me that I have never talked about record stores in terms of the thing that has developed my love of music more than anything else in my adult life: my time as a music store employee/manager.
Music store employees are a mixed bag of society, but they usually fall into three categories: students who are looking for money to go out and hang with friends, but who really don’t care where they work; people who have another interest in life, but really like music, and have a p/t record store job to feed their hobby; and the music geeks, who sometimes go as far as never holding any other job besides stocking and alphabetizing CDs. If you could make a living wage doing so, I would still be in the last category. Scratch that…if you could make a living wage and also enjoy the holidays, I would still be in that last category.
My first record store job was while I was in college at Record Theatre, which is still alive and kicking in Buffalo, although the stores I knew in Syracuse and Rochester have been closed for years. I helped open one of the stores in Syracuse in 1988, right around the time that CDs were just starting to get a hold on the market. One of my first vivid memories was cutting boxes open and stacking them at the front of the store in preparation for Christmas shoppers with titles like REM and Anita Baker. Anyone remember CD longboxes? They may have been an environmental disaster, but they were great for merchandising CDs.
One cool thing about record stores is that each store either attracts an army of fans of one type of music, or it attracts one fan of each genre. If you look at the title of this blog, you’ll see where my knowledge lays. People were pretty stunned that a 19-year-old kid had such a knowledge of not only current pop music, but of music dating back into the 60s. (Mom, if I’ve never thanked you for that, thanks.) I quickly became the go-to guy for singles, and I felt like I had found my calling. However, life (and school) took me out of town, and left that job.
Once I got out of school, my mission was to find a job in radio, but retail management called to pay the bills until then. There was a new Record Town/Saturday Matinee store in the mall I worked at, and I hounded them mercilessly to let me work at least part-time. About a year later, I got my chance, and took on a third-key management position. That started a 7 year run as a store manager for Record Town first, and then Camelot Music (which was then purchased by Record Town’s parent company). In fact, my first store of my own was a hole-in-the-wall Tape World in the Camillus Mall outside of Syracuse. It was more like Tape Alley than World, but it was mine. These stores were opened by the same company as Record Town in order to have a stronger presence within the same mall, and while I hated having such a small store, it set me up for bigger things within the company.
One great thing about my music management days is that they lead to me moving around a bit, and I got to see parts of the country that I didn’t even know that I wanted to see. I fell in love with western North Carolina and Asheville after having been in Greensboro for two years, I DIDN’T fall in love with Miami after having been stationed there for a mere seven months, and I met some of my most enduring friends during my two years living in Atlanta. I even had a false start in moving to Denver as a manager of a Blockbuster Music, but at the last minute I turned down the offer.
Anyone remember Blockbuster Music? Yeah…they’re gone, just like Camelot, Record Town, and Tape World. The remaining stores are now called FYE, and they are closing at least 100 of them a year, although they continue to hang in there, selling video games, DVDs, and any pop culture crap you can think of. That’s why Record Store Day is so important to me. These folks respect the music, and it is much more than a business. Believe me, if they were in it for the money, they wouldn’t be doing this. They do it for the love, and I respect that more than I can ever fully express. So get out and patronize your local music stores today and regularly. You never know what you will find. (I will be reporting back on my finds later today)
Stumble It!
Yay for the nostalgic post! You and music have an intimate past together. I always wanted to work in a record store, but Blockbuster Video was the closest I came to that. I spent a lot of time in Turtle’s Records and Tapes back in the day. Half my paycheck was spent there!
It’s a crying shame that there are no indie record shops within 50 miles of where I live. Sure, we have FYE and Wallie World but that ain’t the same. It makes me very sad to know there is not a place where I can go and flip through the back catalogues of artists from back in the day. Digital is great and all that, but it’s just not the same.
John, what a wonderful essay about record stores! There are sadly so few now. Other than Best Buy and bookstores like Borders, the only record store I know of in DC is Melody Records in Dupont Circle. Your post brought up lots of memories for me. My favorite record store as a kid was Tower Records and there was one near my house in the Beaverton Mall. The first time I ever bought CDs–after getting a CD player for my birthday in 1993–was the only time I ever bought them in longboxes. I guess that was the year they went away. I saved the one for Annie Lennox’s Diva, cut it open, and hung it on the wall. I do remember Blockbuster Music in the mid ’90s. I remember it was innovative for having lots of options for listening to music in the store, which other stores replicated later. I used to have a birthday ritual of treating myself to a shopping spree in a music store. The last time I did it was in 2002 at Tower Records near GW in DC. As much as I love iTunes, the experience is quite different, and I do miss the joy of the record store experience.
Ooops I missed this post the other day – loved this! I did not know you were in all those places! Where did you work/live in ATL? That’s where I grew up (Marietta).
I still shop as much as I can at the store ww_adh mentions, Melody. You’d love that store. V good.
GA also had Turtle’s which Jason mentioned. That was the place for good prices back in the day. I think they also had a good cutout bin, where I got stuff like Tusk for CHEAP.
I lived up in Smyrna, so up toward your hood.
Thank you for the great article. I am heavily concidering opening an independent record store, any suggestions?
I have a large, indie store in the southeast. If you know of a really good, experienced manager that might be willing to re-locate to a great market, please have them send a resume.
Thanks