THE BURNETT GAZETTE: Record Store Day

Here's a great article on coming to terms with being part of the music business (working in a record store specifically), the state of the business these days and how to handle it. Its good timing too because I've been feeling a little nostalgic recently for a record store in Nanuet, NY, that was my first record store, as well as the first place I ever worked. It was called Tapeville USA. If you're out there Lenny drop me a line.

Thanks to my friend Andy Schwartz for sending along the article.

From the SonicBoomers website: THE BURNETT GAZETTE: Record Store Day

By Bucks Burnett

What can one say on Record Store Day? Another editorial on how and why it all went wrong? A hopeful essay based on reports of teenagers buying stacks of albums at small indie shops, in towns that still have them?

There's a lot to say, a lot to explain, and a lot to hope for. It's still not too late for the music business to somehow survive, in some revised manner. But I won't go on about all that. Someone at Billboard can go on about all that. At the moment I don't care about the survival of the music business or retail or how to get people to buy CDs instead of downloading MP3s. Because I am lost in thought, looking back to the rear of my skull, wondering how this all started, my stupid pathetic love of the record store. I can't tell you what year it was, but I will tell you I was not yet six feet tall.

"Do you have 'Ball Of Confusion?'" "Why, yes we do." I was peering into a box being slid toward me by a lady, in the music department of a store called Sanger Harris. I handed the lady about fifty cents and she handed me a Temptations single. I had heard the song on the radio and had to have it. Now it was in my hands, and for the first time, I was a record owner. My mom bought whatever she bought, came and found me, and took me home. I played the record a few hundred times just to make sure it worked.

That was thousands of records ago, and thousands of dollars and maybe years. Today, I bought the new digipak remaster of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes on CD. It's a beautiful looking thing, and I found it at Good Records, a few miles from my house in Dallas. i think I'll play it a few dozen times, just to make sure it works. It's the same feeling as the Temptations single; life is worth living, because I just bought a cool record. From Sanger Harris to Good Records; forty years of buying stuff at record stores, give or take a fortune. What does it all mean? How do I sum it all up?

I don't sum it all up. I don't know what it all means. All the questions about how to save the record stores are fading, and there is only the record store: the first real record store I ever went to in Dallas, the first one I fell in love with, and the first one I worked at. I am walking into Hit Records and Tapes on Hampton Road in Oak Cliff, the neighborhood where Stevie Ray learned how to play guitar. I am going into Hit Records, and you are going with me.

Hit Records is still alive in my mind. I can still see it perfectly. A tiny shop with diagonal slats of wood on the walls. Black record bins holding about 2,000 LP's, all in shrinkwrap and priced at $3.99. One simple display presents the twenty newest albums, on sale at $2.99. Pick one up; Blood On the Tracks by Bob Dylan. To the right, behind the counter, Charles Boulter, the friendliest guy in town, smiling a smartass grin. "Hello, Alice." Charles likes to call me Alice. Behind him on the wall are a few shelves, each holding matching sets of albums, cassettes and 8 tracks. Bright lime green 8 tracks if it's the new Robin Trower, because he's on Chrysalis, and all their tapes are green.

"Hey, Charles, can I have this Physical Graffiti window when you're through with it? "Sure, just come get it in about a month, I'll be through with it." Swan Song Records are pretty serious about promoting their first release. The cardboard window is three feet tall and two feet wide, and through it are printed all the images from the album cover. "Thanks, I appreciate it."

A few months earlier, I had stormed through the front door of the store, and thrown a baby doll to the floor before kicking it across the room. I was wearing mascera and a Dallas police officer's cap I had stolen at a Black Oak Arkansas concert. "I think we may have our winner!" A guy walked up and introduced himself and handed me a stack of Alice Cooper records. "I already have these -- can I pick out some others?" "Uh, sure. Here, try the new Doobie Brothers." I looked at this guy and realized he was from the record label, and was going to push Warner Bros. product on me. "If you don't mind, I'll pick out the records." "Uh, sure. And congratulations on winning our Alice Cooper Look Alike Contest!" I spent the next half hour picking out a stack of non-Warner LP's, much to the chagrin of the label rep. Charles was very proud of me, and from that day forward I will be Alice to him and his wife, Diana.

On the bathroom ceiling is the biggest poster I have ever seen in my life -- a gigantic illustration of a smiling Captain Beefheart with a bright red background. It is about 5' x 4'. Have not seen one since. Will not see one again. Now it's on the ceiling of my skull.

Shift ahead a few months. After a quick prayer and a deep breath, I ask Charles Boulter for a job. "My dad can bring me here after school and come get me when you close." After a pause he looks at me and says, "Sure." Within a few days I would be successfully hustled by a con artist asking me to change a twenty and then a five and then a ten, and I would fail to summon the courage to ask out a girl who I still can't forget. She was a good looking blonde and she was buying Big Pink and Desire. A quick smile and she was gone, forever. Big Pink and Desire; if ever there was a set...

When Presence came out I sold an 8 track copy to a guy named Scampy who drove a white Camero. He was pretty cool about returning it the next day after it jammed up his deck. Another customer takes me to his house after work and gets me stoned, but kills the buzz by playing Rock Of The Westies by Elton John. Loser! About three months later, I am walking out the door, to go to my new job at Sound Town in Red Bird Mall, and you are going with me. Because Hit Records is closing for the day, and it is 2009, and Sound Town led to Peaches, which led to...a lifetime spent working and living at record stores. I eventually worked at Warner Bros. Records in L.A., and now own a tiny little shop in Dallas called Earotica. The Presence 8 track is $40, and the Robin Trower 8 tracks are still bright green, because they're on Chrysalis. I'm thinking of having an Alice Cooper Look Alike Contest. And I've got vinyl copies of Desire and Big Pink. The song remains the same, indeed.

I still have a business card from Hit Records and Tapes. It is a glossy black card with silver letters. In a small, average looking strip on Hampton Road in Oak Cliff, there is a small space that is still a business. Last time I checked, it was a nail salon. I can take you through that door, too, but the stories won't be the same. Because there is nothing, absolutely nothing, like walking through the door of a record store. A flying baby doll might hit you in the head.

Pundits predict the end of such things. Sales figures offer the proof, that music stores are on the way out. Dude, record stores have always been way out. I'm tired of everybody worrying about what's gonna happen to the music business. Why give up when you can get down? I'm doing every single thing I can to keep my part of it alive and interesting. If you do your part, too, everything is going to work out, in a way we can't predict. I refuse to live on a planet without cool music stores. Get busy, stay with it, use your imagination. Spend some money and put it in the hand of a real person. Stop whining and find a way to help keep this thing going. We all like to snag a bargain on amazon.com, and there's nothing like a cool MP3 in your email. But can you download a hot chick buying Dylan and The Band?