Article Disclaimer: I don't care if a store sells CDs, LPs, or some combination of the two, I still call them record stores. If a store only sells CDs, I call it a record store. They have always been record stores, and they always will be record stores. I used to work in a CD/LP hybrid store. But I called it a record store. Now that we are up to speed, today's article can begin.
Sometimes I miss working at the record store. What do I miss most? The bad hours? The bad pay? The teenagers who couldn't count change correctly? The people complaining about how our prices were higher than the local electronics superstore? While I do miss all of those things and more, the thing I miss most is the following conversation.
Customer: (Holding up a current release) "Have you heard this?"
Me: "Yeah, we play it all the time, it's pretty good."
Customer: "Do you own it?"
Me: "Oh. I don't have a CD player."
Customer: (Blank stare.) "But you work in a CD store."
Me: "Well, yeah. But I buy records."
Customer: "Vinyl records?"
Me: "Yep."
And here is where the conversation could take a couple of different paths. The really fabulous customers would reply, "Okay. If you had a CD player, would you buy this?" I would usually say yes, just because I had already recommended the CD. Technically, if I had a CD player, I probably wouldn't buy it, because I listened to it every day at work, and therefore I had it mentally filed in the "at work" music category instead of the "listen for pleasure" music category. But, I was in the business of selling CDs, so I would say yes.
Those customers were okay. But then there were the other customers. "You can still buy records?" Um, yes...the last aisle of the store was my domain, where I ruled with an iron fist. The vinyl aisle. (I hate referring to records as "vinyl." I think it is way too pretentious. I usually just call them "records" or "vinyls." I like to add the "s" to "vinyl" because I think that by adding poor grammar it makes me less pompous.) Those customers gave me nervous breakdowns. They were the people who would take their kids down the record aisle and explain how they were "big CDs." Aargh!
These were the people who could not understand how I could function in the world without a CD player. It's not that difficult. Most new releases do come out on LP, you just have to know where to shop. And since I live in 1977, it's not really an issue anyway. But the last time I did buy a new release, I bought it on LP. (It was Andrew W.K., if you are aching to know.)
I'm not an insane LP purist. Okay, I am. But I don't have any of the normal purist arguments. I am not going to go into a diatribe about how they sound so much better. Or that have better artwork, or any of the other typical arguments. I don't know why I like 'em better, I just do.
Maybe I do know. For one thing, when CD players came out, they were expensive. So were CDs. I didn't have a job, man. I was in middle school! And new releases still came out on vinyl. I already had a record player. So why upgrade? I didn't have a job! Nor did I have any desire for a CD player. My record player worked just fine.
Then records got hard to find. So I would buy stuff on cassette. I already had a cassette deck! It was right there under the turntable! I wasn't going to go buy a CD player! That is an unnecessary expense! I had a job, but was saving for a car! I mean, I hated cassettes because they weren't LPs, but there was no way I was going to waste money on a CD player. I didn't need one.
Second of all, have you ever seen those stickers on old records? I am talking about the ones that the record companies used to put on releases stating that "Records Are Your Best Entertainment Value." You've seen those, right? Well, even if you haven't, now you know that they exist. I see them all the time on records from the fifties through the seventies. I don't quite know why the record companies were trying to convince people that records are the best entertainment value. There wasn't another format choice! Maybe they were trying to keep people out of movie theaters and in record stores, I don't know.
But for me, records really are the best entertainment value. Let's say I decide to have a Steve Miller Band phase. Imagine that I hear Fly Like An Eagle for the ten thousandth time and finally snap. I decide I need to buy that album and buy it now! I can go to any of my local used record shops and find it for between two and four dollars. I can then run home and listen to Fly Like An Eagle until my ears bleed. If I went out and bought the CD, it would run between ten and fifteen dollars, depending on where I bought it. That is five times what I would pay for an LP.
And what if, as I play my brand new Fly Like An Eagle album, or the Greatest Hits album, whichever I happened to end up with, what if I discover that the Steve Miller Band is the greatest rock and roll combo ever and I didn't even know? I can run out and buy three or four more albums, all for cheap. I'm all about value, and if I decide to rush headlong into a phase, I can get five albums instead of only one CD. Then when I realize that maybe, just maybe, that the Steve Miller Band isn't that great after all, I can enter my next phase, and spend another fifteen bucks on another five records, instead of fifteen bucks on one CD. Value!
And then there is the thrill of the treasure hunt. When I discovered that Queen was the only band I could ever really love, it took many, many trips to the record store to complete my collection. There was the day I ended up owning a copy of their Greatest Hits (the real one from 1981, not those terrible collections on Hollywood Records) because I woke up that morning, and realized I could not go another day without a studio version of Fat Bottomed Girls to call my own. I went to the store, but they didn't have Jazz. Only the Greatest Hits. Which is fine, I needed it for the collection anyway.
And how could I forget the beautiful December day there was a blizzard, and I went to the record store, and I found both Queen II and the Flash Gordon soundtrack. The last two records I needed to complete the collection in one afternoon! Beautiful. There is the fun of going to a record store, flipping through the recent arrivals and finding something that I didn't even know that I needed until I saw it.
And let's not forget the out-of-print factor. There are tons, mega-tons even, of things that came out on LP and never got re-issued on CD. The Boys Are Out Tonight by Scott Baio? Do you think that ever came out on CD? What about Can't Explain by Leif Garrett? Sure, everyone knows about that album from his Behind The Music, Leif Garrett sings The Who! But is there really enough interest to merit issuing that on CD? I really don't think so. (If, by chance, either of these ever did come out on CD, I stand corrected. But I think the odds are in my favor here.)
The great thing about these out-of-print treats is that they are all cheap! I can afford to buy a Scott Baio record and not feel bad about the money spent, because it was three dollars! I just went to the record store with the Pirate, and got a record by The Kazoos Brothers. It's called Plate Full Of Kazoos and it's from 1979. It is the most wonderful takeoff on the Blues Brothers ever. The liner notes made us both laugh until we just about cried and it only cost me $5.67 to hear four classic soul songs played on the kazoo. I am serious.
A phone call:
Dragon: "I listened to The Kazoos Brothers and it rules!"
Pirate: "Rules in the good way, or the very bad way?"
Dragon: "The good way!"
Pirate: "What is it like?"
Dragon: "It's like the jacket said. It's guys playing soul songs on kazoos."
Pirate: (Huge quantities of giggling.) "That rules!"
Yes, yes it does rule, and if I didn't have a turntable I would have missed out. You might ask me, why can't I have both formats? Lots of people buy both CDs and LPs. Yes, but, what did I just tell you? I'm stingy! I like value! I like records! I like seventies teen idols! I mean, what if I had bought a CD player and been broke the day I found the Phil Austin In Roller Maidens From Outer Space album? I would have missed out, and as you can imagine, in my world, missing out on an album called Phil Austin In Roller Maidens From Outer Space constitutes a tragedy. Viva vinyls!