Death of the record store

[Brian]

A better title for this thread might be "The death of CD's." And these days, even sales of downloaded songs and albums in the mp3 format are way down. Goodbye, iPod.  Most young people, listening to streaming music on their phones with earbuds, don't want to own recordings. And they don't seem to mind the crappy fidelity of almost everything available on the Internet.

I was born in 1958, I worked in a record store in the 1970’s and I still listen to music on what we old folks called stereos. To keep my ears filled over five decades, I've accumulated (or made for myself) copies of every one of my favorite records in every format – 7-inch and 12-inch vinyl, 8-track, cassette and CD, along with their multiple reissues and remasters with bonus tracks.  I'm not trying to be a collector.  I just want to play.

In the early years of the Montrose Peace Vigil message board, established in 2008, I wrote a lot of posts detailing my difficulties finding CD's in record stores -- often blabbing more about my bad retail experiences than discussing the artistic merits of new albums. I used to insist on buying everything in a store, as near to me as possible, so I didn't have to drive to Amoeba in Hollywood. By 2009, I had to give up. I buy two copies of every new Ian Hunter album. The postman brought me "Man Overboard" on the day of its release via Amazon. The guy at the record store in Burbank let me know that he was doing me a big favor to hand me the special order CD days later.

In its first decade on Sunset Boulevard, Amoeba seemed committed to stocking the entire catalogues of my favorite artists like Tim and Neil Finn.  Now there's only one CD representing each of the brothers, both of whom have made appearances at the store.  Rows of new product bins were replaced by CD’s marked down for clearance and new vinyl records that sell for a lot more than their CD counterparts. The nice people who work there could not find “The Anthology – 1964-1971” by the Kinks for me the week it was released, although the computer said that four copies were in stock. I got the box set from Amazon. Despite a huge Rolling Stones section, Amoeba didn’t have the recent “L.A. Forum (Live in 1975)” last April. But Streetlight Records in Santa Cruz had it when I was there last month. I have walked out of Amoeba empty handed, something that used to be unimaginable.

Last weekend, however, I spent more than $100 there for the first time in recent memory on great finds and good bargains by the Rolling Stones, Nina Simone, Mott the Hoople and others. More about that trip in my next post.

[Brian]

My most amazing purchase at Amoeba last month -- and another harbinger of the end of physical recordings -- was "Seven Classic Albums Plus Bonus Tracks" by Nina Simone, her first seven albums on four CD's, for $15.98.  (Amazon sells the package for $21.82, plus shipping.)  Even though I already had the LP's, I had to buy it.  The remastering is excellent.  I had a lot of trouble finding those records in the 1970's and '80's.

"Little Girl Blue," the title song of her 1958 debut album, was published by Rogers and Hart for their musical "Jumbo" in 1935. She sang it when she played at the Midtown Bar in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1954, but Nina made it hers forever when she borrowed the melody of the Christmas carol "Good King Wenceslas." The recording ends quietly. When Nina performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1976, she updated the music and the lyrics and her attitude yet again, as seen in this beautiful You Tube video:

[Brian]

I went back to Amoeba last weekend in search of bargains.  I decided to buy my favorite albums again on CD, even though already own them on LP and cassette and 8-track, before physical music dies altogether.  I just don't feel like listening to music on my many record and cassette players anymore.  I emerged onto Sunset Boulevard with cheap used copies of "This Time Around" by Green on Red and "Big Canoe" by Tim Finn, two of the greatest yet most obscure albums in the last half of the 1980's.

I was glad to see that Amoeba had restocked my July purchase of Nina Simone"s "Seven Classic Albums Plus Bonus Tracks" for $15.98 with two more copies of the box set.  But I still couldn't find the album I really wanted, "Baltimore," from 1978 when I discovered her while acting as manager of the hippie record store in Montrose.  So I searched on Amazon and found multiple prices for that CD, from $4.99 to more than $800.  As the young folks say on the Internets, WTF.  I got mine for $9.78 -- the shipping cost was a dollar less than the CD itself -- and thankfully, Amazon is collecting the sales tax so I don't have to report it on my tax return like a good California resident.

[Oss Rae]

The few CDs I have include the original stage version of Hair (I got a pretty good deal on it at Record Surplus in Santa Monica about a year ago for $12 or less) and John Lennon's Imagine (which I may have ordered through Amazon before Amazon started creeping me out so much).

A lot of the stuff I listen to was transferred from vinyl to audio cassette years ago. Nowadays I transfer stuff from YouTube and other websites onto audio cassette.

[Brian]

Sept 22, 2015 20:37:55 GMT -8 Oss Rae said:

A lot of the stuff I listen to was transferred from vinyl to audio cassette years ago. Nowadays I transfer stuff from YouTube and other websites onto audio cassette.

Oss Rae told me at the Eagle Rock igil-vae on Saturday that he owns two CD players, including the one built in his computer.  I asked because it's all about the hardware if you still want to play physical copies of music.  I admire his ability to skip buying his favorite albums again in the CD format like I've been doing.

When the record companies quit issuing new releases on LP's in the mid-1980's, I chose cassettes instead of CD's.  Remember, most early CD's sounded crappy, while Compact Cassettes had improved immensely since Philips introduced them in 1963.  Like Oss Rae, I taped copies of my favorite albums.  Then in 1999, I couldn't get Tim Finn's new album and Yoko's box set of unreleased John Lennon tracks on cassette, so I bought my first CD player.

Someday, I will be forced to set up high fidelity streaming audio on my computer.  Meanwhile, I'll enjoy "Baltimore" on my Bose CD player instead of listening to an mp3 on You Tube.

[Jeanne]

My cd player is wearing out and skipping. Luckily I have a brand new one in my new car. I can record cd's on my laptop and transfer them to my phone and them play them with a bluetooth speaker. I have boxes of cassettes and no player. if Oss ray or ian bray would like to have any of my old tapes, I'd be happy to.

Nina Simone! I saw a documentary on her on Netflix while I was babysitting Friday after the corner. It was great, although very painful to see her pain.

[Oss Rae]

Yes, I could use audio cassettes!!! The CVS in Silver Lake still carries them, but who knows for how much longer? I need to stock up.

Earlier this year I discovered that audio cassette recorders have disappeared from all stores (Radio Shack, Fry's...). If anyone knows of a place that still sells them, please let me know. The ones I've purchased online have been fairly shoddy, and I've had to return them.


I heard about that Nina Simone movie on Netflix. (It may have even been discussed on Democracy Now.) I need to go add it to my queue. Years ago I heard "Here Comes the Sun" played at someone's funeral. It's also played every week during the opening of a show on KPFK (on Mon. or Tues. afternoon).

[Oss Rae]

Yes, I never got into CDs (obviously, since I can only think of two that I have). Throughout the '80s and '90s I continued to have access to a turntable and audio cassettes, so I had no interest in learning a new medium.

I have a digital recorder, which has incredible quality. I expect I'll be using it more and more, but I'm just not the type of person who likes to keep learning new gadgets.

[Brian]

"Remember" comes from the Greg Kihn Band's best album by far, "Next of Kihn" in 1978.  The CD has long been out of print worldwide.

Updating this thread to report on my recent excursions to the best record stores remaining in California, north and south, both of which are showing signs of life in the CD aisles:

Two weeks ago, Anni and I were back in Santa Cruz for the third time in little more than a year to shop at Streetlight Records.  I'm always pleased when I see that a store has restocked a purchase I made, such as the 40th anniversary edition of 'The Dictators Go Girl Crazy" album.  The ample selection of new releases and the ever surprising replenishment of used CD's tells me that there are still a lot of old guys up there with similar tastes who want to own physical copies of music from the 1960's, '70's and '80's.

Streetlight always supports Bay Area bands.  I bought a used copy of a Beserkley Records retrospective of the Greg Kihn Band containing 21 songs from 1975-84, autographed by Greg, for $9.  Used CD's of his early albums go for wild prices online, so I will continue play my records and cassettes.  The store also loves Steve Earle.  They had several copies of his new album with Shawn Colvin, "Colvin & Earle," so I grabbed one.  Only later did I learn that I would have gotten three extra songs if I had ordered the CD from Amazon.

Sunday night, we drove to Amoeba in Hollywood.  We were happy to see so many people in the store, just like the old days, but perhaps the holiday weekend was responsible.  I caved in and bought Neil Young's new live album with nature sound effects -- "Earth" -- which is frankly much more wonderful than I could have possibly imagined.  I also found a recent CD from Germany of a Green on Red concert broadcast on a San Francisco radio station in 1985, when the band was at its peak.


"Time Ain't Nothing" by Green on Red, as seen on MTV in 1985, includes a brief interview of Chuck Prophet and Dan Stuart.

The bad news is that neither store ordered the massive Kris Kristofferson box set issued on his 80th birthday last month, so I have to buy it from Amazon.