Record Shopping

So, record shopping is one of my favorite things to do on the planet.

I love record shopping. I love records. I love record shops.

I think New York has the best record shops in the USA (of the places I've been to).

I love shopping for records in Portland OR. Amoeba in LA is great. Chicago used to be great in the 90s but has declined.

There is something about the experience of flipping mindlessly through thousands of records with the possibility of finding a gem that I find very therapeutic. I could do it all day.

I love well organized shops. The more genres, the better. I think the shop managers have a responsibility to know what they are selling and to know music well enough to categorize their stock as best as they can.

I was in a shop last week that was laughable in it's organization. They just had a huge jazz section and a huge pop/rock section and some smaller sections for folk, classical, etc. Their hip-hop section had probably 20 records in it, half of which weren't even hip-hop. I think they had a Fatboy Slim record and a few rock records in there. It was bad.

Places like that I think are just racist, honestly. Especially if they have a bad reggae section to boot. Even if they have a lot of "black jazz" records. They are still old, out of touch and should just throw in the towel.

The same place had an electronic section with the usual Walter Calros, Tangerine Dream, Jarre records and the like. They completely missed the boat on having actual electronic records. The dudes behind the counter were in their 50s, maybe 60s. How do they expect to stay in business? It's really sad. The diagnosis on record shops is bad enough. Why stay in your stubborn, closed off, arrogant place. You'll just go out of business.

Should one bring it to a shop's attention if they need a drastic wake-up call? It makes me want to open a record shop.

I hate shopping for clothes, I fucking hate grocery shopping in supermarkets, my idea of hell really.

Vinyl and beer is the only 2 things I don't mind shopping for lol. And a day doing both round London, with a visit to an Indian curry house, is one of best ways I can think of spending my spare time.

  On 9/13/2011 at 8:42 AM, jefferoo said:

So, record shopping is one of my favorite things to do on the planet.

I love record shopping. I love records. I love record shops.

 

+1

  On 9/13/2011 at 3:12 PM, beerwolf said:

I hate shopping for clothes, I fucking hate grocery shopping in supermarkets, my idea of hell really.

 

Vinyl and beer is the only 2 things I don't mind shopping for lol. And a day doing both round London, with a visit to an Indian curry house, is one of best ways I can think of spending my spare time.

+1

I always go crate digging in Amsterdam, but all the good-quality record shops are disappearing more and more, my favorite being the Boudisque, gone because of the high rent, bad location and less products sold. Last month it was announced that another huge recordshop are closing too because of the same reasons. They just started selling vinyls again a year or two ago, and not just the popular stuff (found Squarepusher, the latest Autechre, Ninja Tune vinyl, etc.), so I was pretty disappointed, I still visit them at least once a month. On the downside, they used to have a big floor for only metal which had very obscure things, but ofcourse it didn't sell enough, so it was recently reduced to a small balcony next to a massive world music collection.

Now I only have 2 shops that are both second-hand and new music, one shop being vinyl only, which is really a great shop, nice people, good service, good categorisation, a lot of different genres with little of the really popular stuff. Also it's so small, half of the crates are on the floor beneath the racks. I actually found Chiastic Slide and alot of Vibert on vinyl there (last week I got Ataride and Chicago, Detroit, Redruth), all new! Those are the good shops I know around here, the rest are crap and alot only have the pop/rock category. If they have more, it's most likely a 'dance' section, which is mostly trance and gabber compilations, it's horrible. It all depends on DVD and game sales there.

Also I was in London (and Cornwall, didn't see one music shop at all) this summer, and I guess I was all in the wrong places for finding good music shops (only had 2 days so almost had no time for music), the only decent ones being two shops in Camden Lock, one of them being also a second-hand vinyl shop. It's getting harder and harder to spend your day just looking through cd's and vinyl, which I also could do all day.

  On 9/13/2011 at 3:12 PM, beerwolf said:

I hate shopping for clothes, I fucking hate grocery shopping in supermarkets, my idea of hell really.

 

Vinyl and beer is the only 2 things I don't mind shopping for lol.

Also, this.

  On 9/13/2011 at 8:42 AM, jefferoo said:

 

I think New York has the best record shops in the USA (of the places I've been to).

 

I am heading to New York in mid October for a few days. What are the best record shops?

Also, which record shops carry the most modern electronic records?

Looking for vinyl mostly, but I still buy cds on occasion as well

Thanks.

Also, wanna give love for Grimey's in Nashville. My personal favorite record store.

Every record store in my city is closed. The only place to buy records left in town are antique stores and thrift shops, with a couple of mainstream reissues found occasionally in Best Buy.

Clothes

Records

Beer

Musical Instruments

  On 9/13/2011 at 5:35 PM, Jenga said:

  On 9/13/2011 at 8:42 AM, jefferoo said:

 

I think New York has the best record shops in the USA (of the places I've been to).

 

 

I am heading to New York in mid October for a few days. What are the best record shops?

Also, which record shops carry the most modern electronic records?

Looking for vinyl mostly, but I still buy cds on occasion as well

Thanks.

It should all be covered in this thread...

http://forum.watmm.com/topic/56807-record-shops-in-nyc/page__hl__record__fromsearch__1

Clothes shopping to me is just about dodging fucking annoying muppets (obviously not aimed at you Dear Chassis). Those shopping and those who work in them.

Thankfully the net is my saviour and it's only trousers I really have to go and try on. If I went clothes shopping with a few hundred quid I would just abandon the whole thing and come staggering home drunk with a wheelbarrow of records. And no new clothes

I have a few record stores I like to visit around town. The one I used to work at (The Beat) still gets some interesting stuff. Interesting things I've picked up there includes but is not limited to Steve Roach, Stars of the Lid, Autechre, and some dub vinyl, along with quite a lot of great jazz records. The prices are a bit expensive but I still get an employee discount so that's cool. Another one I like to go to (called "Records") is one of the messiest, least organized record stores I've seen. The employees there smoke a lot of weed and are really chill and friendly. I've met quite a few really nice people over there. You need to dig a lot, but I've found all sorts of stuff like Environments LPs, Pole 2 (the one with the red cover), a rare Muddy Waters record, and a great space-themed record of library music. One of my favorite record-shopping experiences went like this: shopping at Records with a few of my best friends, eating delicious Thai food right next door, and seeing the Tribe Called Quest documentary at the movie theater half a block away.

I've gotten into the habit of picking up an armful of interesting-looking records and listening to them on the customer record-player. I used to just buy things without listening to them first.

What's up with record shops that don't have turntable listening stations?

Discuss.

  On 9/13/2011 at 10:34 PM, jefferoo said:

What's up with record shops that don't have turntable listening stations?

 

Discuss.

i hate this. a listening station is pretty necessary.

it's like: so you don't want me to know whether this record is something i want or not and you don't want me to know if it plays well.

maybe they know their records are shit and they don't want anyone else to know.

it's so much fun to take a stack of records you haven't heard before and give them a good listen too.

Hahaha @ the record store called "Records"

Well said, everything in this thread. I'm a bit addicted to record shopping. There's a "lame" music chain here in New England called Newbury Comics that nevertheless stocks a ton of great electronic stuff, if you know where to find it. For a while they were getting pretty much every new Warp, Mu, Rephlex, Kompakt, r-n, Soul Jazz, etc, release. Like… on release day. It was amazing to be able to walk a block from work and browse that kinda shit.

Anyone from around here "into" music will pooh-pooh that store, but compared to the rest of the USA it sounds like a dream come true. I still go there at least once a week. Aside from that, Goodwill (& etc) for used records is where it's at.

  On 9/14/2011 at 4:57 AM, Bubz said:

  On 9/13/2011 at 10:34 PM, jefferoo said:

What's up with record shops that don't have turntable listening stations?

 

Discuss.

i hate this. a listening station is pretty necessary.

it's like: so you don't want me to know whether this record is something i want or not and you don't want me to know if it plays well.

maybe they know their records are shit and they don't want anyone else to know.

it's so much fun to take a stack of records you haven't heard before and give them a good listen too.

Especially if there are a ton of 12" white labels.

This is where you can find me very often. It's a few blocks from work - very convenient for checking the new arrivals section. I also spend half my lunch time there occasionally.

There's not much electronic music (a copy of Incunabula has been on the shelf for a few years), and not much hip hop.

But lordy, lordy, lordy the amount of quality soul, funk, disco, boogie, jazz and random oddities I've purchased here.

I don't think I could survive in a town without a record store. I hope this place lasts forever. I have a horrible vinyl habit that has only gotten worse since I started DJing.

Man. I was just here the other day.

I've been there before, but this time, I found a ton fo great shit.

*Note to those of you who live in/near Portland, OR*

If you are into abrassive late 90s and early 00s electronica, there is a used dance/techno section under the main record shelf that is in the middle, far-left side of the strore (when you walk in) that has many gems. I couldn't grab it all. They have a ton of Techno Animal, DHR, Position Chrome (even some Current Value), Warp, Rephlex, Hymen, Skam, Low Res... you name it.

I couldn't keep it to myself. I'm no longer in town, so please someone go in and raid the shit out of that shit.

My favorite record store in my city, Mammoth, went out of business 4 or 5 years ago.
The first time I ever went there was right after I moved here in June 2000. I bought AFX's SAW 85-92 and Autechre's Chiastic Slide. The shop has moved locations twice since then, before folding altogether. I think I bought Untilted there as well in 2005.

My last legit record shop experience was five years ago in Sapporo, at a small indie record shop where I bought Gescom's A1D1. But I've purchased all of my music exclusively online since then.

I went to Brighton a few months ago which had a plethora of record shops, sadly since my last visit the awesome Edge World (or summat like that) has closed down. What an awesome little room of vinyl that was and I was quite gutted it had gone, had all the shit we ike here on watmm (Kranky, Warp, stoner, IDM, experimental etc)

you lucky bastards, the closest record shop to my isolated region would be 8 hours away, fuckin' Winnipeg too!

I went to Crossroads in Potland a while back.

The selection was so good I pretty much short-circuited and didn't buy too much in the end.

For me, just one Amoeba could take all of the record stores in Brooklyn and Manhattan foot for square foot (except the Berkeley one). My favorite places in London were the Exchanges (Notting Hill/Berwick St/Greenwich). Everything I bought, I got from those.

  On 1/1/2013 at 4:40 AM, SPD² said:

For me, just one Amoeba could take all of the record stores in Brooklyn and Manhattan foot for square foot (except the Berkeley one).

same, I scoured NY for record stores that were even remotely similar to Amoeba and came up empty handed.

between the one in LA, SF and berkeley there isn't much competition in the united states for California record shopping

Truth.

ebay and discogs

Found this record http://www.discogs.com/Kid606-vs-D%C3%A4lek-Ruin-It-EP/release/96630 in a dollar bin. Super score.