Aaaah, nostalgia. During my conversation with Brian Hughes, the subject of record stores came up. It was a job we both had during our musically formative years. Music junkie kids who spent their after-school hours going through the bins trying to figure out what was really worthy of our allowance and lunch money are the ones who eventually got hired by the stores where they spent so much time. These stores were staffed with people who were experts in their section of musical turf. They would take the new kid under their wings and start playing music for them, telling them who and what was important to listen to. The jazz guy would tell you to listen to this, the woman who did the classical section would tell such fascinating stories about the composers that you would forget how you squirmed through that class where they made you listen to it. The customer who seemed to have secret connections and always knew what the next really important album was going to be would come in on release day and hold a listening party right there in the store. Of course as you absorbed and explored all this music you would pass it on to other customers. "Hey, you've gotta hear this!" you would say and just take out whatever was playing and put that one on. Then, inevitably, someone else would come up and go, "What is that?" and buy it.
Record stores were different then. They were big rooms full of bins of albums alphabetized and categorized often by stream of consciousness randomization. Posters taped to the walls alerted you to new releases or at least to which artists the people who worked there liked. Whoever was working behind the counter controlled what got played in the store. If you were a regular then, to steal a phrase from TV's favorite neighborhood bar, everybody knew your name. The record store where I hung out was even called Record Bar. It was a block or so away from the actual bar where some of the guys who would become southern rock legends were starting to jam. They would wander over to browse the bins and hang out, sometimes even bringing guitars and sitting on the counter for impromptu jams. We, the musically astute but underage, would spend hours in that store listening, hanging out and sometimes even actually buying something. I took it one step further in college... I actually lived in the record store where I worked. My starving-student budget was not enough to pay tuition, books, rent, and support my music habit so I slept in the back office and showered at friend's houses. Life was good!
By the late 80s the chains had taken over. A lot of them began with one store and were still owned by the person who started that first store so these stores still had one foot in their quirky origins. The look and some of the procedures were standardized but managers were chosen as much for their knowledge as their administrative skills. They set the tone as much as the home office did.
I hit pay dirt. In a feeble attempt at getting out of radio I got a job with a chain that was opening several stores in an experimental format. Instead of being a hole-in-the-mall that carried only bestsellers and big names, these were large freestanding stores that would carry deep stock across all types of music. We were dreaming big and the company was behind us. If the home office buyers didn't provide the titles we needed, we could order from other distributors. We were the on-site retailer for all the big music festivals and did tie-ins with the symphony, public radio and TV stations, and the local academic music programs. Record companies were big on display contests and we won a lot of them. They sent the materials and we had big windows where we could go to town creatively. Of course we got to choose the music we played in the store. We had a five CD changer and each person got to pick one CD. Then we hit random. Customers bought what they heard. On weekends they would come in just to browse and discover new music. When the first listening stations went up, each of the music specialists got to take charge of one. We chose the CDs and made flyers with mini-reviews, artist and new release info and anything else that might lure the listener into purchasing what they were hearing. We had smooth jazz, singer-songwriter, and "obscure" alt-rock titles that were outselling the pop superstars to the point that the home office thought the sales tracking software had a glitch. But it didn't. We were just carrying on the tradition of music retail stores as music fan hangouts. A bit more high gloss, but the spirit was the same, and it still worked.
Our store was closed. Sales were declining, and new technologies were starting to take chunks of disposable income that used to go to prerecorded music. The big stores cost too much to operate. The chain filed for bankruptcy and reorganized, keeping only their smaller mall stores. Other retailers were going through the same crises. Over the next few years a lot of stores closed. Some chains merged, then folded, and some were bought out. The ones that were left sold the hits to mall-roaming teenagers and little else. Bookstores like Borders and Barnes and Noble saw a niche and jumped in to fill it, offering musical diversity and even eccentricity, but in a setting specified by the home office down to the last detail. Record companies pay for placement on listening stations or in little displays by the cash register. In-store play is usually a promotional consideration too. There are a few music-driven mega-stores hanging on, but they are cavernous and can be intimidating to the casual fan. So we go online and end up at one of the dotcoms shopping around while we sit at home in our jammies. The home pages are frontloaded with hype for the big name, big budget releases but click on one of those, or go to the CD you intend to buy and there are reviews written by people just like you. Some of them have even made lists - if you like this, then try this. Click on one of the lists and you have a whole group of new CDs to sample. Go to one of those CDs and you find more lists. You can hang out for hours listening to music, reading what other people are saying about it, following one thread into another tangent, typing up a few little raves and rants of your own along the way, and still finding and sharing music just like before. The face-to-face factor isn't missing. It has just shifted from behind the counter into your hands. When you find something wonderful play it for other people, and if they love it encourage them to buy it and share it too.
- Shannon West |
