Agony Shorthand
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Tuesday, July 18, 2006
"THE GRAYING OF THE RECORD STORE"......
Take a look at this article in Sunday's New York Times (free registration required) and tell me that the death of the record store is not nigh upon us. I give them five years in their current form - if stores like those profiled in this article are still around in 2011, you have my permission to verbally and figuratively flog me for poor prognostication. For those of us for whom such stores have been like temples over our lifetimes, it's kind of a sad story, yet one I don't waste very much time fretting over. The music consumer is now in such an unbelievably rich position that only ill-placed reactionary concern for our pasts keeps us from celebrating the bounty before us. That said, when I would go to cities like Los Angeles, Seattle or New York for the day back in the 80s and early 90s, it was all about hitting as many record stores in that day as possible (before hitting the bars, of course). It recently dawned upon me that I never do that any more, and my half-hearted visits to Kim's Underground and Other Music in NYC in the past year reeked more of nostalgia and "courtesy visits" than anything I got truly excited about pursuing. I haven't thrown in the towel yet & just spent a couple hours poking around Amoeba Music in San Francisco, but hey, I can get just about anything I'm interested in, legally or illegally, digitally or via lightning-quick mailorder, on this here Internet within the next 5 minutes. What about you? Are you still holding on to the dream?
Take a look at this article in Sunday's New York Times (free registration required) and tell me that the death of the record store is not nigh upon us. I give them five years in their current form - if stores like those profiled in this article are still around in 2011, you have my permission to verbally and figuratively flog me for poor prognostication. For those of us for whom such stores have been like temples over our lifetimes, it's kind of a sad story, yet one I don't waste very much time fretting over. The music consumer is now in such an unbelievably rich position that only ill-placed reactionary concern for our pasts keeps us from celebrating the bounty before us. That said, when I would go to cities like Los Angeles, Seattle or New York for the day back in the 80s and early 90s, it was all about hitting as many record stores in that day as possible (before hitting the bars, of course). It recently dawned upon me that I never do that any more, and my half-hearted visits to Kim's Underground and Other Music in NYC in the past year reeked more of nostalgia and "courtesy visits" than anything I got truly excited about pursuing. I haven't thrown in the towel yet & just spent a couple hours poking around Amoeba Music in San Francisco, but hey, I can get just about anything I'm interested in, legally or illegally, digitally or via lightning-quick mailorder, on this here Internet within the next 5 minutes. What about you? Are you still holding on to the dream?
