Buying records at the mall: Camelot vs. Record Bar

Also, feel free to mention others. lol Tape World.

Only ever had Camelot near me, so it wins. But yes, lol Tape World.

Never heard of Record World so I'm not going to vote, but Camelot was my favorite music store growing up. They were located one town over from me in a downscale mall where my parents wouldn't take me often, but they had a separate section called "College Rock"! I bought Mucky Pup, Bad Religion, and the Sex Pistols from there.

I only ever saw one Tape World, and it was jammed into the tiniest space my hometown mall had to offer I think (smaller than a small studio apartment).

Was Record Bar just a regional/southeast chain? If so, my apologies. I thought they were nationwide.

Oh dang, "The company eventually grew from a single location to 180 stores. One of the largest music retailing chains, located primarily in the Southeastern United States." I guess that rules out Record Bar for a lot of ilxors.

i'm trying to recall the name of Camelot's big mall competitor around the southeast. Musicland? ring a bell?

Camelot wins hands down for its awesome cutout bins. so many tapes from my collection originated there.

My mall had a Camelot and one other one, Musicland sounds kind of right, I think it was fairly generic like that, but not sure.

This came down to Camelot vs. Cats Music in my hometown and Camelot won almost every time. Pretty sure I picked up some Bad Religion from Camelot, too.

Same here. Camelot's cutout bins went on for MILES. I remember when Rough Trade US went under the first time (though I didn't know that was the reason), I stocked up on just about everything I saw that was on Rough Trade proper or was distributed by them.

Musicland and Sam Goody were part of the same company I believe, but I excluded them because they also operated stand-alone stores in addition to their mall locations.

Ugh, Cats Music was awful!

Did anyone else have a Coconuts or Turtles where they lived?

xp. yeah, lots of rough trade. lots of celluloid. good stuff.

Record Bar always boasted a consistently deep selection of catalogue stuff. In the early nineties I bought most of the important Rykodisc reissues of the Bowie catalogue without resorting to Columbia House or whatever.

I bought a lot of non-cutout vinyl at cutout prices at Record Bar when they were clearing out their records to make room for cds right around 1990. Staying up on Sunday nights with 120 Minutes taking notes, and then going to Record Bar and buying what I'd just seen for $2.99 or $3.99 seemed to good to be true.

I remember when Rough Trade US went under the first time (though I didn't know that was the reason), I stocked up on just about everything I saw that was on Rough Trade proper or was distributed by them.

I think I gave everybody Surfer Rosa or II & III on cassette for Christmas that year.

Getting the employee discount on top of the markdown prices made the Rough Trade clearance the greatest score imaginable for us impoverished Tower employees. Even better than the eventual Tower clearance.

Just learned the last remaining record store within five miles of my home, the FYE in Acton, MA, is shutting its doors soon.

I worked at Blockbuster in the summer of '95, after they'd already absorbed Record Bar, Turtles, and whatever else they bought. They had the bright idea of installing the "listening bar," where you could open up and listen to any cd in the store with the assistance of an employee. THAT SHIT SUCKED. No one ever bought anything, and I had to rewrap and restock 200 cds at the end of my shift. Plus, who wants to pay full price for a cd when it's already been opened?

camelot, but there was another chain too in the rochester malls in the '80s/'90s, and i can't remember what it was.

(and fwiw camelot kinda sucked. there were local independent stores that were a lot better.)

I worked at Blockbuster in the summer of '95, after they'd already absorbed Record Bar, Turtles, and whatever else they bought. They had the bright idea of installing the "listening bar," where you could open up and listen to any cd in the store with the assistance of an employee. THAT SHIT SUCKED. No one ever bought anything, and I had to rewrap and restock 200 cds at the end of my shift.

Ha -- yes. Around here we had something called "Sound Warehouse," a megastore that stocked everything. Blockbuster bought it.

Man, I think Camelot was where I bought a bunch of 50 cent/$1 tapes of throbbing gristle, loop and king crimson. and "white light white heat." so i guess i'm voting for that.

Wait maybe that was Coconuts.

I miss the cut-out bin. ;_;

oh i remember one of my friends finding dreams less sweet for a buck at camelot. there was some good stuff in the cut-outs for sure.

Remember right towards the end of Camelot's reign they had a machine with 30 second samples of every record? That thing sucked up hours of my life.

We never had a Camelot.

I remember finding some amazing things in the cut-out and discount bins at the Camelot Records in the Muncie Mall in Muncie, IN: the first two Kraftwerk albums (the ones with the pylons on the covers) and the Beatles white album in its white vinyl reissue for example.

"Ha -- yes. Around here we had something called "Sound Warehouse," a megastore that stocked everything. Blockbuster bought it."

I spent a couple of years with this outfit. Sound Warehouse was a decent chain (depending on the location and the buyers that worked there) but turned to shit after the blockbuster buyout. I was around long enough to witness the decline.
Cut out bins were always gold - I think I'd hit up Sam Goody and Camelot to get some pretty great stuff - lots of cheap sst catalog finds...

The Mid-Atlantic and Western PA had National Record Mart. It could be really good depending on the buyers. I remember getting import Clash, Banshees, Wire and a lot of Stiff product on colored vinyl from there. Wal Mart finally killed them dead.

I bought tons of music from Coconuts circa 1990
Discovered Turtles circa 1993
Got a job at Coconuts in 1996

In the Chicago suburbs, I remember Sam Goody, Musicland, Coconuts, and Camelot. I think there was a Tape World at Gurnee Mills or Woodfield maybe. I have never heard of Record Bar.

I bought my entire Roxy Music cassette from the Camelot cutout bin (tapes).

*Roxy Music collection

does anyone else remember this chain called media play, which was basically best buy crossed with borders? there was one in rockford il, one up in wisconsin somewhere, and i remember coming across one in buffalo and another near erie during my drives to and from school back in the day/

I do remember Media Play, which as I'm seeing on wiki was owned by Musicland and began in Rockford. I'm thinking that may have been the store that opened in Champaign for a brief time, but branded as maybe MPE or something slightly different? It wasn't there very long, but it was exactly as you described - a bookstore with a record shop tacked on the back half.

Ha -- yes. Around here we had something called "Sound Warehouse," a megastore that stocked everything. Blockbuster bought it.

If this is what I think it is, we had one up the street from where I now live. The mall it was in is struggling; you can't access the inside anymore, only the outdoor stores. The surrounding neighborhood has never been the greatest. In the mid-90s though, I bought a Gone record and a Husker Du CD single there. It only lasted in that location for a year or two.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

does anyone else remember this chain called media play, which was basically best buy crossed with borders? there was one in rockford il, one up in wisconsin somewhere, and i remember coming across one in buffalo and another near erie during my drives to and from school back in the day/

― you are wrong I'm bone thugs in harmon (omar little), Monday, December 14, 2009 6:34 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

spent many hours at a media play in orem, ut during high school when i was buying brit-pop albums. so psyched when they got some radiohead singles in. that place was such a shithole. at our mall it was sam goody's vs. musicland.

Whoa, yeah, they had a Media Play in Salt Lake City. My grandma lived there & whenever we went to visit I'd beg my mom to take me there. I was from a very small town so it seemed like the coolest place in the world to me.

They don't have a music store at the mall in this town, and I was thinking how weird that was the other day. The only non-department store in town that sells music is called Hastings. They operate in towns with 100,000 people or fewer.

The local mall's stores during the '80s/'90s included Record Town and Tape World (eventually folded/morphed/dissolved into fye, operated by Trans World), Musicland/Sam Goody (worked for them during the early/mid '90s; they were bought by Best Buy around '00/'01, then by Trans World a few years ago), and the presumably defunct JR's (unless memory fails, the cassettes, in the bulkiest anti-theft contraptions I have ever seen in my life, were usually $8.99 when they were typically $9.99/10.49 elsewhere).

This was part of my orientation.

http://blip.tv/file/2807463

Ha! That was awesome.

I found out after I left my job at Blockbuster that I was pretty much the only person on staff who wasn't robbing the store blind.

Did anybody else ever shop at a Planet Music? It was a small chain of HUGE stores in the early to mid 1990s. Memphis had one -- pretty amazing in its first year or two. I spent $500 the first time I went in there.

we had a Camelot and a National Record Mart where I grew up in the Pittsburgh suburbs, and before I discovered Eide's (formerly awesome store in downtown Pittsburgh), that's where I shopped with increasing regularity. the best thing I can recall discovering there was House Hallucinates Vol. 1. and the Best of House Music compilations (this would be around '89 or '90) that took all these other bits of my collection at the time and squished them together to create the thing I had been looking for, but didn't know it.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Cavages!

Record Town!

Tape World!

My memories of Tape World are really dim, probably because they had shit selection and high prices and I hardly ever went there. I seem to remember they resisted stocking cds for as long as possible.

WmC I shopped at the Memphis Planet Music. A friend of mine was inside once when Michael Jackson came in to shop.
I think it was circa Lisa Marie? I don't know. They said he could hug the wall and not make eye contact or leave so he left.

In Massachusetts and New Hampshire, it was Strawberries. From the slowly churning "UNDERGROUND" bin, which usually had about 30 LPs in it, I got my copies of In God We Trust, Inc., Damaged, Zen Arcade, and Let it Be. Had to get into Boston for Minor Threat and Flipper. Then around '85, we got a real indie shop in Nashua, Rockit.