Record Stores in/around Salt Lake City

why the trip

as for the stay...dad needs to move in order to ensure further upward mobility on the 'ol corporate ladder and Im staying for the summer to make my mom happy and alternately then be able to say that I did it and have no further obligations to go back, as they wont be there for too long anyway.

i will email you a guide in a week or so

I imagine there will be a lot of anger, all the mormon kids i knew in high school had some serious rage. they were the fiercest towel whippers ever. also, is the prospect of getting laid by these women as much trouble as it sounds like?

The best second-hand used stuff is at Randy's records... which seems to be more of a family-owned Mormon operation, but who cares! They had Aphrodite Child's 666 for three bucks in great condition! They also had boxes and boxes of late 80s/early 90s dance stuff. I felt like a raver kid at christmas! (That's where I got the "Voodoo Ray" 12".)

Also, there are bunch of small stores around town called Greywhale or Graywhale? They are pretty insignificant on their own, but you might find decent used vinyl or CDs at any of them. There's another goth/punk record store a street or so away from Randy's records too.

Take this with a tithe of salt, as I was last there in late 2002. Things could have changed since.

At least directions are REALLY easy in SLC.. the street names are hidden under their direction names like "200 south", "1500 west", which makes it easy for you to drive to any address in the grid-pattern like city.

Also, SLC has the most humongous one-way streets ever, like 8-lane one way side streets.. yet, you barely see cars around. I guess the city designed the streets this way, just waiting...

Surely, Denver is also a good weekend drive away, and has good record stores(?).. I've never been to Denver though.

SLC has some great food options though.. there's an excellent vegan chinese place there.. also a good brunch place. Again, a SUMMER in SLC? I dunno. But I'd gladly go there for a weekend. I'm not down with the private membership thing, but I have to deal with that when I fly to North Carolina in early August for a rock show, anyway... so *shrug*

Boise could be an option for me but staying there might not but giant record stores rule...

Im not yet 21 so bars arent an option anyway, is it private for all venues?

also check out orion's cd in sugarhouse - they have a small selection of vinyl. we used to have this really great record shop called wasatch records, but it closed last year. the graywhale cd exchange shop up by the U of Utah also has a bit of vinyl. aaand the 'goth/punk' record store is called modified and they have also moved up by the U of Utah. they'll meet all your coil, skinny puppy & ministry needs. ;)

the private club thing isn't nearly as imposing as everyone is making it sound. some of the clubs are sticklers and may try to make you actually buy a membership, but most places just offer a 'one-night membership', which is about the same thing as paying a door cover charge. decent bars to see live music - urban lounge, burt's tiki lounge, todd's bar & grill, ego's, & occasionally liquid joe's.

we also have a couple of all-ages venues that get a lot of national acts - lo-fi cafe & kilby court. one of my bands is playing at kilby court w/ xiu xiu on july 2. (shameless plug, ha)

denver is about 7 hours away and boise is about 5-ish.

Well, i did say "seems". I did overhear the owner of the store telling the guy at the counter to put aside "10%", no laughter.. maybe it was subtle joke. But as I said above, and as you say now.. who cares?

I was cursed then. I just wanted to have a drink at this jazz club in downtown, and I was denied, very apologetically, by the doorman. I do remember everyone inside the club staring at me as I was being denied.

Anthony, 6335,
Do you know how long it is from the surrounding mountains to get to town? I am going to be living in an area up there (can't remember the name) and was hoping it wasn't too long of a drive itself.

-- donut debonair (do...), June 7th, 2005.

ha! that's classic. t'was definitely a joke. no biggie, donut..i've lived here my whole life, so i'm a bit oversensitive to those type of statements.

-- donut debonair (do...), June 7th, 2005.

monk's house of jazz, probably? ach, they are/were one of the stickler clubs. that's a bummer. it is a pretty stupid law, honestly...which is why most of the clubs have worked out ways to kind of step around it. monk's is more of an 'upscale' kind of place, so i think they try to milk the money they assume most of their patrons will have by completely enforcing it.

-- jmeister (jmeiste...), June 7th, 2005.

depends where you live exactly, probably anywhere from about 15 min. to 40 min. the mountains are quite close to downtown, which is one of the main reasons why i love this city so much.

and to pbj, i've been meaning to make the trek to west valley to check out that record store there, do they have a lot of vinyl there?

i live right around the corner from randy's records, FWIW

As others mentioned, Randy's and the Record Exchange may have some surprises as well. I've more or less given up on local record stores, but this probably has more to do with my lack of patience and the convenience of the internet than it does with the quality of the retail establishments.

tell me someone is living here

seems like randy's is the only game in town these days, unless i haven't heard of anything else which is kinda likely since i don't get out much. anyone else live here who still posts/lurks?

like 6335, wonder if he's still round these parts

I love Randy's so much. I haven't lived in SLC for nine years, though.

My little brother gets texts from Grey Whale, which is extra silly bcz he lives in SE Idaho.

DO they still have that gothics/industrial record store? iirc it was on 900 S. too.

haha i was just at the university graywhale a few weeks ago! still lots of cds. bf got a tip on someone who'd unloaded their stephen stapleton and related collection there. salt lake is small enough that he was pretty sure he knew whose it was.

oh man, what was it? mechanized, right? ninth and ninth and sugarhouse have both gone down the new condo shitter.

lol, that's right, mechanized moved out west by the gateway, another urban lifestyle casualty. went in there once and they have a few racks of deep house/techno/rave, looked kinda dodgy tbh. kids with "sideways" baseball caps sheesh

lol was it unloaded by M1tch3ll L03?

I was lucky when I sold off my NWW records in Boise (needed to pay rent), that the employee at the record store there thought they were hot shit & gave me pretty good money for them. I was back there a few months ago and four years after me selling them, they're still sitting on the shelf there. No one wants to pay $20 for a used copy of Thunder Perfect Mind I guess.

i have no idea! probably, since it's totally changed afaict x-post

oh you were talking about the collection. someone else, i think

He was just the only dude I know in SLC who was into that stuff.

Just moved to SLC like a month ago, so I haven't really figured out the record scene (v poor), but hey I live in Salt Lake.

oh hai, welcome

Whoa, en, how do you like it so far?

abbott i know quite a few people from here and utah county who were/are into that stuff but i feel like i'm a generation removed from them somehow. i'm just starting to get into it tbh

I like it a lot, but that has more to do with the fact that I seem to have airdropped into this pre-made social group. xp

That's awesome! I had a hard time making friends there, but it wasn't the town so much as a combo of: 1. extreme shyness that I have since overcome & 2. getting mad at anyone complaining how Mormon the town was, since compared to the town I had moved from in Idaho it was like Rumspringa zone or something.

Yeah, I'd like to buy able to some real beer after 10, but for the most part, the rumors of SLC's lolmormonism have been greatly exaggerated.

I tell people I've moved here and they're all "omg can you buy coffee there?"

be able to buy, obvs

i'm still extremely shy, also put off by the nightlife options. slc can get kinda boring if yer not sure what to do with yourself. xp

it's definitely not as mormon if you stick to < 45th south. it's still a small town though, just not necessarily a mormon small town imo

I'm crashing on a couch in the Aves at the moment and spending most days at a coffee shop and getting drunk with a bunch of arts types, so my view might be skewed as well.

I'm an infrequent poster who lives in the Aves. I also like NWW.

*throws flag up*

been finding a lot of unusual used cds/hole-punched promos, lately. seems that people trade in a lot of desirable? albums in the cd format, at slow train and the university graywhale. slow train's vinyl collection seems limited to albums released in the last five years (of course there are exceptions)

oh yeah: d.i. is awesome, for records and other stuff too. it's one of those utah-only things i'm proud of.

i'm gonna start a new slc thread! for news and events and stuff, or whatever

DI is in Idaho, too, fwiw, and other Mormony places – Mormon owned thrift store. And I always found great records at the one in SLC! I got the first four Pet Shop Boys records at the one in Bountiful.

Actually my best (=most relatively obscure) thrift store find ever was in a DI in Idaho Falls – the following albums on cassette all on the same day, in the same box:
Siouxsie & the Banshees – Juju
Tones on Tail – Everything
Bauhaus – tape that had both volumes of their singles
The Cure – Head On the Door (w/the B-sides on the other side of tape)
John Zorn – Spy vs Spy: The Music of Ornette Coleman (my intro to both Coleman & Zorn)
XTC – Oranges & Lemons

I had only heard the Cure, but I figured I should buy all of them because they all looked cool, maybe they were all as good as The Cure? Why not check for 50¢ each. Thinking about it, this may have been the most fundamental day & event in the history of my musical taste!