April 15, 2024

to all the record stores i've loved before

an ode to record stores

I went record shopping by myself last week. I don't do a lot of things on my own, especially when it means driving 25 minutes in the rain. But I was itching for some new music to listen to. I know Spotify and YouTube and Apple Music and Bandcamp are right there, but that doesn't bring me nearly as much joy as going to a record shop and browsing around.

My record store of choice is Looney Tunes Record Store in West Babylon, Long Island. Sure, there are closer shops for me to browse in, but Looney Tunes is truly special. I've seen Kevin Devine and Foxing play on their small stage. I've spent many hundreds of dollars there over the course of time. No one bothers you at Looney Tunes; there are no salespeople on the floor asking if you need help, no one judges you for poring over the REO Speedwagon collection when Roxy Music is right there, no one is trying to make a hard sell of the latest CDs. It's just you and the records and whatever is playing on the store speakers. They have a great collection of new and used vinyl and CDs and while I never know exactly what I'm looking for when I go in there, I always find a treasure.

This particular day I had a bunch of doubles to trade in (I have a tendency to get high and order things I already pre-ordered or own), plus some albums I knew I would never play again (goodbye my collection of the 1975 records). So I had credit to burn and man, was I going to really burn it. I spent a good half hour rifling through the stacks, pulling albums out, reading track listings, contemplating how much I would play them. There's something about trading in albums for store credit that makes me even more careful about what I'm buying. There records I turned in were giving up their space in my home. I had to honor them by replacing them with worthy choices.

A good record store has a very specific smell to it. The second I walk in Looney Tunes I'm assaulted by it, in the best possible way. It brings me back to working at Record World, to shopping at Jimmy's Music World and Uncle Phil's and Mr. Cheapo's. I can't define that smell but I just know it brings me an inner peace, a sense of being home. I'm not usually relaxed when I am out alone; my anxiety keeps me from being comfortable in those situations. But as soon as I walk into a record store, that smell makes me feel like I've entered a sacred place. I breathe deep, take it all in. I am home.

I have no set routine for shopping in a record store. I usually just pick an aisle and start browsing, even if it's in the middle of the alphabet. I look for records that I've heard of but would be a new listen for me. I look for records I owned as a teenager or young adult that need replacing. I look for records I forgot about, records that were suggested to me, records that would complete discographies for me. I take my time, looking through each artists in case I find some hidden gem, flipping through every single album behind the singular letter cards. I never know what I'm looking for to start out with, but just like adopting a dog or a cat, the record chooses you. Like I knew immediately when I saw Siamese Dream that it was something I needed in my collection. It called out to me. It found me.

My first record store was actually just a section in Modell's department store (before it became a sporting goods store). I bought so many cassettes and 45s there. I bought my first music with my own money - a cassette of David Bowie's Young Americans - in Modell's. The record department also had a t-shirt maker and sometimes I would get a good Led Zeppelin iron-on shirt when I bought an album. After Modell's closed, there was Jimmy's, and it was at Jimmy's that I really honed my love of record stores. It was different than Modell's, which was flanked by old ladies in the housewares department and kids rummaging through the toy department. Jimmy's was its own. Anyone in there was there because they wanted to be. I was 16, 17 when I frequented the place, taking my meager minimum wage earnings each week and plopping down some cash for the latest Police or Talking Heads album. But it was about so much more than buying records. Going to Jimmy's was an experience; a holy pilgrimage. It was every high school music fan's dream to have the clerks at Jimmy's talk to them about music, to tell them their musical taste was cool. I would take my purchases to the counter and hope that the cashier would notice what amazing albums I was buying and tell me I have good taste and maybe offer me a job. That never happened, but the idea that it could happen brought me back to Jimmy's weekly.

People talk about their first time hearing certain songs or albums. I talk about buying them. Those are the memories etched in my brain. Lining up in the morning to get a much anticipated new release was just as exciting as lining up for concert tickets. Now I get up at midnight and load up Spotify when I want to hear a new record. That does not have quite the same fanfare to it as walking into a record store at 9am with the record you are intent on buying already blasting on the sound system and everyone running to the same spot on the wall to reach for it. I remember going to Uncle Cheapo's to get Big Lizard in my Backyard or rushing to Uncle Phil's the first time I heard Deftones' White Pony to secure my copy and Phil already had put a copy aside for me because he knew I'd want it, or being in a basement used record shop in Old Sacramento (RIP), finding a great Supersuckers record, and wondering how many albums I could take home on a plane with me.

When I went to work at Record World in Roosevelt Field in 1983, it felt like I had won the lottery. All those nights dreaming about working in a record store, about being the one giving the opinions instead of asking them, and here I was living that dream. It was a great job, I was in my element and excelled at anything they asked me to do. I can pinpoint my four years there as some of the happiest and most fulfilling of my life. I valued that job and took care to be my best at it. And because I had spent so many years trying to get record store clerks to talk to me, I made sure to be approachable to the kids coming in the store. I talked to them about Van Halen and I talked to them about the Circle Jerks. I offered my expertise on new wave records to any customer who would listen. I had customers come back to thank me for introducing them to The Jam or Aztec Camera. I truly treasured and loved working in Record World. It was the culmination of years of readying myself for it by studying the clerks at Jimmy's.

When CDs came around, I adjusted and adapted. Bought a CD player, started stocking up on discs. Just like cassettes and 8-tracks before, records were going to take a backseat to a new format. But I never lost my love for vinyl. There were things a CD couldn't offer me; album covers to hang up in my room, lyric sheets that weren't so small you needed a magnifying glass, those little hisses and pops; the feel of putting the needle down on the grooves. There was a heft to albums that CDs were missing. They just didn't feel as weighty, as important.

I miss shopping weekly at a record store. I probably would still be doing that if I could afford it. It's funny that when I was a kid making minimum wage, I was working strictly to buy albums and cassettes. I couldn't wait until I was older and had more disposable income to buy even more records and tapes and now that I'm here I still don't have "buy records every week" income. If I did, I would replicate both the vinyl and CD collections of my life. If I did I'd be at Looney Tunes every Monday, getting therapy of sorts. Between the smell of vinyl, the friendly faces, the way I feel safe and at home in those aisles, the joy I feel from searching through the stacks, and the moment when a record finds me, my dopamine reserves get replenished and I feel healed and whole. Long live Looney Tunes, long live record stores.