Then you neither helping keeping independent record stores in business or helping the bands you like by actually purchasing their CDs.Wino you know wrote:There are 4 or 5 independent record stores in the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City area, but since Best Buy sells the same C.D.s for about $4.00 less, and the fact that I'm a cheapskate, I shop at BEST BUY.
either that, or I get someone to burn me a copy of whatever C.D. I want.
Independent Record Stores Are A Dying Breed
Moderator: SMLCHNG
-
Wino you know
- God's Own Drunk
- Posts: 21467
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I gotcha and believe me, I've faced the same dilemma. The only thing is, I don't have an independent store in my town to chose from. If I did, I wouldn't hesitate to give them my money over Best Buy or Circuit Shitty any day. Unfortnately the big box stores have made it next to impossible for the indies to even exist around here.Wino you know wrote:What part of "I'M A CHEAPSKATE" didn't you understand?Jahfin wrote:Then you neither helping keeping independent record stores in business or helping the bands you like by actually purchasing their CDs.
-
Wino you know
- God's Own Drunk
- Posts: 21467
- Joined: February 5, 2002 7:00 pm
- Favorite Buffett Song: Far Side of the World & Somewhere Over China
- Number of Concerts: 105
- Favorite Boat Drink: Beaujalais Villages French Burgundy
- Location: Plowin' straight ahead, come what may
Wino you know wrote:Best Buy prices aren't too bad. There's not a Circut City store close by. (Nearest one is in the Quad Cities, about 70 miles away).
No, they're not but I still try to support the independent stores when I can.
If you do that it pretty much makes you a thief. Speaking just for myself, I'd much rather see the money go to the artists who worked very hard to make the music rather than steal from them.Wino you know wrote:Still, it's nice to know people who can make me copies of C.D.s & DVDs.
Mourning Blacksburg's loss of downtown music
New River Journal (Roanoke Times)
By Ralph Berrier Jr.
My friend Madelyn e-mailed last week to share her sadness over the
announcement that The Record Exchange in downtown Blacksburg is closing.
"Have been reminiscing w/ rec x alums about the days when the lines for
new cds at a midnight sale circled the block downtown," she wrote with
palpable melancholy.
The Record Exchange, the independent record chain that got its start in
Roanoke, became a guiding light for the music lovers, college DJs and
underground bands that populated the Blacksburg in-crowd.
Madelyn, a former reporter and editor for this newspaper, and her
husband, Butch, were part of that crowd. For them and their friends, The
Record Exchange wasn't just a place to find the latest chart-topping
effort from Madonna or Guns N' Roses, it was a treasure chest of
hipness. Real music-heads flipped through new and used albums (then
cassettes, then compact discs) searching for the cool stuff that flew
under the cultural radar of the bland, mainstream music establishment.
Like all good record stores, The Record Exchange was owned, managed and
staffed by confirmed music lovers. They weren't deadbeat shopping-mall
clerks counting the seconds until they could get out from under the
fluorescent lights of a soulless conglomerate.
Many of them played in bands or booked shows at local clubs. They knew
the best bands and could point you to a great album that made you feel
like you really were a member of the inner circle of coolness, even if
you were some college-boy jerk in unlaced Nike hightops who hadn't been
out with a girl since a class outing to the Circle M Zoo in the fifth grade.
Anybody who has read "High Fidelity" or seen the movie version knows
what I'm talking about. There's just something inescapable and
indescribable about the relationship between real music lovers and the
record store clerks (and I'm not saying that just because Madelyn and
Butch met at The Record Exchange). Differences dissolved. Class,
education, family background and all sorts of social conventions melted
away when music was the common language.
Truthfully, I was always more of a devotee of Books Strings & Things,
the magnificent Blacksburg music and books emporium that would've turned
40 last month. It vanished long ago. Now, having absorbed the 1-2 punch
of The Record Exchange demise and the news that Crossroads Music is
leaving Main Street for a shopping center, downtown Blacksburg is
without a record store for the first time since ... the 1960s? Who
woulda thunk it? BS&T, Ripcord, Smack Records, Mike's Music and now The
Record Exchange and Crossroads, all gone from downtown.
The death of the locally owned record store is not breaking news.
Downloading, legal and otherwise, has whacked the music industry at the
knees. CD sales have dropped more than 20 percent the past five years.
But while the corporate bosses of the music business have found ways to
survive by getting into the download business, those methods do nothing
to save the friendly neighborhood record store.
Going to The Record Exchange in recent years was like visiting an aging
relative in his final days. The selection was bare, the future clearly
bleak. People who had shopped their for 20 years often left depressed
about the store's plight.
To be sure, the music industry is an accomplice to the forces that have
wounded it. CDs were overpriced for far too long, only to be brought
down to earth by the likes of Napster and Kazaa. I cannot help but think
that if the record companies had done a better job of keeping CDs
affordable, the castle would not have been stormed. I understand that
the days of $6.99 R.E.M. LPs at BS&T vanished long ago, but the days of
$18 Bush CDs only hastened the demise of record sales.
Really, we can talk all day about where the music industry went wrong
and why the plummeting sales numbers are a fitting consequence to their
business practices, but none of it changes the fact that the eventual
impact upon local record stores is a sad result.
Maybe all the cool kids don't need record-store know-it-alls to tell 'em
what's hot. Maybe they can learn about new bands at myspace or from
iTunes, but it ain't the same. That's just so passive. A click here and
there and, boom, you've got four dozen songs on your hard drive that
you'll never know anything about, never know who they were produced or
written by and probably never listen to. That'll be $48, please.
These are the last days of the local record store. Music is just another
online commodity now, like shoes or cans of gourmet peanuts. All you
young bands out there writing songs and recording them, I wish you luck.
You're going to need it.
Ralph Berrier Jr. has been with The Roanoke Times since 1993.
New River Journal (Roanoke Times)
By Ralph Berrier Jr.
My friend Madelyn e-mailed last week to share her sadness over the
announcement that The Record Exchange in downtown Blacksburg is closing.
"Have been reminiscing w/ rec x alums about the days when the lines for
new cds at a midnight sale circled the block downtown," she wrote with
palpable melancholy.
The Record Exchange, the independent record chain that got its start in
Roanoke, became a guiding light for the music lovers, college DJs and
underground bands that populated the Blacksburg in-crowd.
Madelyn, a former reporter and editor for this newspaper, and her
husband, Butch, were part of that crowd. For them and their friends, The
Record Exchange wasn't just a place to find the latest chart-topping
effort from Madonna or Guns N' Roses, it was a treasure chest of
hipness. Real music-heads flipped through new and used albums (then
cassettes, then compact discs) searching for the cool stuff that flew
under the cultural radar of the bland, mainstream music establishment.
Like all good record stores, The Record Exchange was owned, managed and
staffed by confirmed music lovers. They weren't deadbeat shopping-mall
clerks counting the seconds until they could get out from under the
fluorescent lights of a soulless conglomerate.
Many of them played in bands or booked shows at local clubs. They knew
the best bands and could point you to a great album that made you feel
like you really were a member of the inner circle of coolness, even if
you were some college-boy jerk in unlaced Nike hightops who hadn't been
out with a girl since a class outing to the Circle M Zoo in the fifth grade.
Anybody who has read "High Fidelity" or seen the movie version knows
what I'm talking about. There's just something inescapable and
indescribable about the relationship between real music lovers and the
record store clerks (and I'm not saying that just because Madelyn and
Butch met at The Record Exchange). Differences dissolved. Class,
education, family background and all sorts of social conventions melted
away when music was the common language.
Truthfully, I was always more of a devotee of Books Strings & Things,
the magnificent Blacksburg music and books emporium that would've turned
40 last month. It vanished long ago. Now, having absorbed the 1-2 punch
of The Record Exchange demise and the news that Crossroads Music is
leaving Main Street for a shopping center, downtown Blacksburg is
without a record store for the first time since ... the 1960s? Who
woulda thunk it? BS&T, Ripcord, Smack Records, Mike's Music and now The
Record Exchange and Crossroads, all gone from downtown.
The death of the locally owned record store is not breaking news.
Downloading, legal and otherwise, has whacked the music industry at the
knees. CD sales have dropped more than 20 percent the past five years.
But while the corporate bosses of the music business have found ways to
survive by getting into the download business, those methods do nothing
to save the friendly neighborhood record store.
Going to The Record Exchange in recent years was like visiting an aging
relative in his final days. The selection was bare, the future clearly
bleak. People who had shopped their for 20 years often left depressed
about the store's plight.
To be sure, the music industry is an accomplice to the forces that have
wounded it. CDs were overpriced for far too long, only to be brought
down to earth by the likes of Napster and Kazaa. I cannot help but think
that if the record companies had done a better job of keeping CDs
affordable, the castle would not have been stormed. I understand that
the days of $6.99 R.E.M. LPs at BS&T vanished long ago, but the days of
$18 Bush CDs only hastened the demise of record sales.
Really, we can talk all day about where the music industry went wrong
and why the plummeting sales numbers are a fitting consequence to their
business practices, but none of it changes the fact that the eventual
impact upon local record stores is a sad result.
Maybe all the cool kids don't need record-store know-it-alls to tell 'em
what's hot. Maybe they can learn about new bands at myspace or from
iTunes, but it ain't the same. That's just so passive. A click here and
there and, boom, you've got four dozen songs on your hard drive that
you'll never know anything about, never know who they were produced or
written by and probably never listen to. That'll be $48, please.
These are the last days of the local record store. Music is just another
online commodity now, like shoes or cans of gourmet peanuts. All you
young bands out there writing songs and recording them, I wish you luck.
You're going to need it.
Ralph Berrier Jr. has been with The Roanoke Times since 1993.