you know you're in a shitty record store when....

1. the "international" section is 80% johnny clegg and savuka LPs
...

Where was this?

2. when you get sent home from a trial shift because you don't know enough about acid jazz and liked Washed Out last summer

The Classical section has any Three Tenors CD

HA! They're are funny things and then they're are really funny things. I'll leave it to you guys to sort out!!! take care guys (or gals!!!!)

coyote browsing the racks

redneck-y client asks his lady how this can be a music store if it doesn't have any Beatles. the clerk escorts him to the Pop section, letter B. "yeah these 5 shelves are very easy to miss; take yer pick."

Limited edition Kings of Leon pigeon shit 12" on the wall behind the counter

middle-aged dudes ask you if you have that John Fogerty album, thinking you're an employee because you're in your early 20s and look sullen and maybe have khakis on.

(I've been mistaken for a record store employee at least 4 times over the years, but I guess I shouldn't place the blame on the stores themselves, i.e. mostly N3wbury C0mics)

middle-aged dudes ask you if you have that John Fogerty album

You know you're in a dece record store imo

Dan Fogelberg is probably closer to the truth, tbh

nearly all 2-disc sets are priced in the $20-$30 range ($18 for a beaten-up copy of Ash's singles collection! $25 for the essential Roy Orbison!) regardless of how chintzy and undesirable, and regardless of the fact that all single CD's are on sale for $9.99 or less. god I hate FYE, avoidable as it is.

many of the used CD's are kept behind the counter, so when you want to buy one, you bring the empty case up to the counter, and the cashier retrieves the disc and pops it into a resurfacing machine for a couple minutes while you wait. it comes out scratch-free and shiny and (probably) playable. I appreciate the transparency of the process, but it's hard not to get a little squicked out imagining just how scratched and filthy the CD looked just before its makeover.

numbers, people, numbers!

also -- i'm not liking nu-nu-nu-nu-nu-ILM

Where was this?

― Shut Up. Kenny G. Etc. (u s steel), Saturday, July 31, 2010 2:14 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

at a shitty record store, duh.

I didn't know there were any shitty record stores left.

I can see 'em surviving.

it's the good record stores that are in real trouble.

...when you walk in and hear the phrase "Welcome to Best Buy!"

11. Copies of R.E.M.'s Monster priced higher than one dollar.

Timely thread, as I've just returned from a trip to the new "record store" in my neighborhood.

12. As you wonder why there's a shelf that is completely stuffed with nothing but George Benson, you realize that the entire store's selection was assembled by winning 7 separate "POP HUGE LOT 1000 Records ANDY WILLIAMS EDDIE MONEY NEIL DIAMOND" auctions on eBay for $39.99 apiece.

13. You inadvertently blurt out "oh COME ON" more than three times.

14. when i pay $$$ for a near mint record and still have to take it home and wet clean it

(I've been mistaken for a record store employee at least 4 times over the years, but I guess I shouldn't place the blame on the stores themselves, i.e. mostly N3wbury C0mics)

think I've been mistaken for an employee two or three times in various N3wbury C0mics stores over the years

I am mistaken for an employee nearly every single time I go into a record store or a bookstore.

When I worked at Blockbuster I would sometimes go to WalMart right after work to pick up a few things and basically have to run from people asking me for help.

Probably deserves its own thread so...

Being mistaken for a record store clerk

Bluegrass section is just Bela Fleck and that Yoyo Ma/Edgar Meyer collabo.

16. the Prefab Sprout album Steve McQueen is filed under M, for McQueen.

(I dutifully moved it to its proper place. no wonder I get mistaken for a clerk all the time!)

17. A sign at the entrance it reads "HMV".

18. Larry the Cable Guy album playing on the sound system.

16. the Prefab Sprout album Steve McQueen is filed under M, for McQueen.

(I dutifully moved it to its proper place. no wonder I get mistaken for a clerk all the time!)

― if you see her, say ayo (unregistered), Saturday, 31 July 2010 19:26 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah I was gonna sort-of do this one - tons of records alphabetised by their album title betraying the fact the owners don't know who they are

17. charley pride in the soul/R&B section

i put all my dan fogelberg records out on the street for free. still there i think. i keep putting hundreds and hundreds of albums outside for free and nobody will take them all. i wish someone would take them all. oh i'm getting rid of some, i just need a good hoarder to drive by in an old hoarding truck who will take them all away.

19. All the albums in the store are made of play-doh

wait what was 18

20. every time you make a purchase the clerk kicks you in the nuts

oh there it is...what happened i am confused

21. they don't have m&ms/skittles/runts dispensers near the entrance

22. sections for too many artists contains only a) their final album, b) three best-of's, and c) a string quartet tribute

^the only record store in town for a very long time

and 23. any vinyl even remotely recognizable to DB college students=$20 regardless of anything

i just need a good hoarder to drive by in an old hoarding truck who will take them all away.

He will bring them back the next day and try to sell them to you. I work at a store now and we have people picking shit out of our garbage and trying to sell it back to us. It's amazing.

24. Store lacks a sassy quipping robot who dispenses fresh fruit from a compartment near its "crotch"

i mean, nothing says record shopping like a nice, steel-tasting nectarine

25. store used to be cool then gets franchised by a shitty chain, suddenly 3/4 full of tchotkes and dvds, music section razed, only Pop & Country and 5 large 'bargain' bins full of Candlebox and Martina McBride

(that was the music store in my hometown.

Who would turn down Dan Fogelberg records?!?

26. Lack of a plum vending machine (UK-specific)

27. there's no shelf for letter X (sadly, that's about every record shop I remember)

28. It has a collection of used jazz mags for sale, and I don't mean 'Straight No Chaser'.

29. When they complain about a lack of business due to internet sales without realizing they need to change their business model where all new items are 16.99 and above (making 2 - 3 dollars on when sold). Instead, focus on your used items. I don't get why more stores don't realize this solution.

yea i did the Best Buy tour too and that was mostly it -- while "farming" CDs (aka, reordering them after dick customers make a whole mess of the system), it makes it go by real quick just glancing at the tops.

>Cleveland had some good stuff (before Bent Crayon went under)

???? Still alive and kicking as of this morning.

― Jeff Wright, Wednesday, August 4, 2010 2:57 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark

And there's Music Saves on the east side, anyway.

xp - I guess RTEast might be livelier during the weekend, I've only ever been there on a weekday. Whenever I'm in London I prefer to hang out in Sounds of the Universe and Honest Jon's and always buy something there; I completely agree with the idea of supporting stores you like and want to see continue even if they're not the absolute cheapest, but for me RT isn't one of those stores (RT Covent Garden used to be).

okay, i checked and these are the beach boys albums i have for sale in my store:

endless summer
best of vol.2
made in u.s.a.
beach boys (s/t from 1985)
concert
best of (on scepter)
little deuce coupe
surfin' usa
greatest hits (wand)
all summer long
m.i.u.
light album
holland

i always have to scramble up more cuz someone will come in and buy five at once. same with dylan. in one shot someone will wipe out my stock. not that i'm complaining.

okay, just put out a copy of 15 big ones.

all summer long

I approve!

I've still never heard Holland. You don't see that one much, it seems.
Though I am rarely looking for Beach Boys records.

I like the record stores that have their Used sections sected off by genre as well, because in those I have found some absolute shockers for cheap.

with that said I know that's a huge pain in the ass

I remember seeing Holland quite a bit in CA, usually in awful shape. That and Surf's Up for some reason always were beat up to hell and back.

I love when there are giant stacks of records unsorted except by genre or by letter--that's where all the good stuff is.

So today I found myself running an errand just down the street from the Vintage Vinyl store I moaned about earlier in the thread and thought I'd duck in to see if anything has changed. Of course not, in fact, I think the prices have gone up! They were selling some of the latter day Amon Duul II reissues on CD for $29.99 and $39.99 each! One of which I had just bought at another store in town for $18.99. Ridiculous. I flipped through the Neil Young section and saw they had the audacity to be asking $109.99 for a three-disc bootleg compilation of International Harvester Tour stuff. I mean, who the fuck pays for this stuff??

But the icing on the cake was the new vinyl section. Copies of fairly new and easy to find stuff for insane, insane prices. New Ariel Pink record on vinyl? $24.99. The one that pushed me over the edge and caused me to actually laugh out loud at the prices, however, was the $39.99 for a Wilco vinyl.

jesus

Oh! Almost forgot the Velvet Underground bootleg compilation that was $149.99!!!!

I just cannot fathom how this place is still in business. I mean, anyone that is savvy enough to know about Velvet Underground and Neil Young bootlegs in 2010 can figure out how to use fucking Google and save a hundred dollars.

i was late for work once when i was living in evanston, missed my metra train so i went to the vintage vinyl while waiting for the next one & this was right before 'zwan' broke up. billy corgan was shopping there w/ his niece. he was wearing a bucket hat & he let me take a picture of him while doing the devil horns

I suppose he could afford to shop there, yeah. I think he also showed up there during Record Store Day a couple years ago.

I went to Permanent this weekend. Lovely, lovely place with super-nice people and a beautiful kitty. I found a Milton Babbitt LP for $3.

permanent is very nice & very rarely has music i want to buy

r u in chicago?

None of you know anything about horribly mismanaged CD stores until you walk into Rainbow Music two stores up from the new Kim's location in NYC. Holy shit. It is a tiny place with stacks of CDs and records floor to ceiling, literally, on top of everything. If you can peer between the towers you can see they sit on old racks with layers of dust on new copies of pretty much unsellable titles (for full price) like Heart. Basically merchandise hasn't moved at all, but the old man who runs it keeps acquiring CDs and stacking them, and stacking them. Totally mind-blowing to walk in there. Not even the slightest bit different than this:

http://collegehunksblog.com/images/hoarder.jpg

Though the piles went all the way up.

r u in chicago?

― albino python on cocaine (corey), Monday, August 16, 2010 10:45 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes

the owner typed up a little list of "rolling stone's 500 top albums" or something from the '90s, printed them out, and has them at the front counter... for $0.99.

I thought you meant he was selling each of the 500 top albums for $0.99 and was wondering why you balked at such a great deal. But actually you meant....no....really? Wow that's just sad.

Just want to add 2c that Tunes in Hoboken is such a pleasure to shop in, and very well priced. No, not friends with anyone involved.

Evan - got a feeling that dude will have a going out of business sale sooner than later.....

x. a dry-erase board over the vinyl section asking "does vinyl sound better?" and spelling out the "depends" for us.

I was in a Toronto store called She Said Boom! yesterday, and while most of the vinyl was (to my mind) overpriced, they didn't seem to care much about doo-wop. I got perfectly conditioned compilations by the Channels and the Jacks for $6 and $7, and also a Barry Mann compilation for $7. (They'd clearly given up on this stuff, as there were older, more expensive price tags underneath the current ones.)

I went to Permanent this weekend. Lovely, lovely place with super-nice people and a beautiful kitty. I found a Milton Babbitt LP for $3.

Love love love love this place. Miss living several blocks from Permanent, but of course probably better for my wallet in the long run. Used to spend tons of time in there talking with that couple about Oneida and Southern Lord stuff. Strikes me now that I never even knew their names, for as much as I talk to them. Funny side story, I was in Lawrence for a wedding and stopped at the awesome Love Garden (where I scored a very reasonably priced Chronic Town vinyl). When hearing I was from Chicago, he immediately asked if I knew the Permanent peeps because he thought they were the "best couple ever".

Liz and Lance, great folks.

Ok I definitely did know she was Liz!

They were both managers at S1ackers here in Mid-Missouri before moving up to Chicago.
Really glad to see how well they have done for themselves. The in-house label is pretty stellar, too, in my maybe somewhat biased opinion.

Just want to add 2c that Tunes in Hoboken is such a pleasure to shop in, and very well priced. No, not friends with anyone involved.

― paulhw, Tuesday, August 17, 2010 4:39 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Thanks paulhw! :)

Evan - got a feeling that dude will have a going out of business sale sooner than later.....

― plate of dinosaurs (San Te), Tuesday, August 17, 2010 4:47 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

You'd think! Have you seen that show "Hoarders"? Yeah.

I was at a popular Toronto flea market this morning, and slowly but surely, more and more vendors are putting out vinyl. One guy had it right, and I bought a few things, perfect condition, at $1 and $2. (Including two LPs by Pure Prairie League; I think I may have crossed some symbolic barrier there from which there's no coming back.) Another guy, though--much more typical--I wanted to slap him upside the head. Three boxes of stuff, all of it $10-plus. Thriller: $25. The LP that Tina Turner made after her big one: $10. What is this guy, and all the other guys just like him, thinking? The thing that they don't get is that people like me who go to flea markets to rummage through vinyl already have thousands of LPs. We already have Thriller. What we don't have, like the Pure Prairie League and second-tier Tina Turner albums, we don't have because we decided long ago that we didn't need to have it; if you want us to take it off your hands, put the record guide away and put it out for one or two dollars. That 17-year-old kid who doesn't already have Thriller? He hasn't spent $25 on music in his entire lifetime, and he won't be turning up at your flea market anytime soon. He doesn't even know what a flea market is.

Not even sure how to describe the place I dropped into yesterday...a mostly abandoned mall, with just a grocery store and a partitioned space with six small shops crammed in where there used to be one store. The section way at the back sold records. Fair amount of inventory, but the prices were absurd. Once example that you may have to be Canadian to fully appreciate: a sealed copy of the first Glass Tiger LP (they did make more than one) for $20.

there are few sadder feelings than that of plastic name tab after plastic name tab bumping against one another in a conga-line of empty sections.

Used vinyl, overpriced, shrink wrapped, with "mint" scribbled on it in black marker.

I've bitched at length in this very thread about Vintage Vinyl in Evanston before, but I have to chime in again because I think its even worse now. Why was I there? My dentist's office is literally right around the corner and I have 15 minutes to kill for my appointment, so I figured I'd head in for a much needed laugh.

Jesus. Want the recent reissue of The Cure's The Top on vinyl? $49.99. A used copy of Neil Young's Journey Through The Past? I shit you not, $179.99. I bought a copy in better shape from a thrift store in Michigan for $8. The Revisted Records reissue of Amon Duul II's Yeti? $49.99 (Just FYI, you can order it from Aquarius for $18).

The icing on the cake? There was a stack of five or six records laid over the 'kraut' bin, so I shifted them out of the way to look and dude nearly leaped over the counter literally screaming, "DON'T TOUCH THOSE! I'LL MOVE THEM!" and proceeded to huff and puff at me. I just laughed and walked back out.

I mean, obviously fuck this dude, but it just pains me to see good, quality record stores run by wonderful people close down all over the place, but this fucking clown is still in business.

I've been going there off and on since I was a kid. I bought a handful of records over the years which were probably overpriced at the time but not so much in retrospect (promo copy of Kick Out The Jams for $15...in 1985). But every time I'm back there and poke my head in, it's just a mindnumblingly baffling experience. I don't know why I bother; I haven't actually bought anything there in 20 years.

2nd Hand Tunes is still around, right? That place was amazing. I'd literally find stuff there for 1/3rd the price of what VV was charging.

no wonder he's an asshole, Billy Corgan loves him and his store :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk7qoHa_S-Q

correlation or causation?

I'll grant that the VV guy is pretty knowledgeable about certain things. Unfortunately, said knowledge does not carry over to bootleg sound quality (e.g., "It sounds great! It's soundboard!" = it doesn't, and it's fucking not).

And ugh, fucking Corgan. What an embarrassment to Chicago music. Makes Kevin Cronin look like Howlin' Wolf.

ha!

its funny cuz its true.

there are few sadder feelings than that of plastic name tab after plastic name tab bumping against one another in a conga-line of empty sections.

― i don't believe in zimmerman (Hurting 2), Monday, April 2, 2012 5:29 PM (11 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^
THIS

That could be a shitty record store or just a struggling one! I guess they could remove those things though.

Anyway, Soundfix in Brooklyn is closing, finally. Not because I'm sure of any reason why it should except for the fact that nobody was ever there when I walked in! Not sure why, since it is better than Earwax for example in every way except location. Is that really all it took? I guess I remember it being much busier when it was literally a block away but on Bedford.

Anyone else have any clue?

2nd Hand Tunes is still around, right? That place was amazing. I'd literally find stuff there for 1/3rd the price of what VV was charging.

Yeah, thankfully they're still around. Such great dudes that work there. My only minor gripe is that they are really, really weird about what new releases they do and don't get. Been shopping there for 8 years now and still haven't wrapped my head around what they think will sell.

If your store don't have Mojo Nixon your store needs fixin'.

I'm far from a Smashing Pumpkins fan, but I think Corgan comes across well in that interview, especially seeing as he's just out looking for records and somebody sticks a microphone in his face.

The store itself does sound like a nightmare, though.