And while you can take out a large population of musical Russian roulette seekers, that’s not slowing the amount of absolute bullshit people are bringing in to sell to these places-especially after two years of a poor economy. This whole dance is a thing of the past now that people can just pull out their phones and check on the spot-and that’s only a viable scenario if that hypothetical person even buys physical music anymore. This was kind of a symbiotic relationship because you got the thrill of seeing if your aesthetics yielded a reward and the stores could turn over stock. It was a gamble, and I took home some fucking duds over the years, but when you hit gold, it really stuck with you. It’s given me time to reflect on how difficult some of the decisions the shop owners must make simply to keep afloat.Īs a much younger man with disposable income, I loved scouring Vintage’s used bin and just blind buying weird metal and punk records because they looked cool, with the hopes that the art was an adequate reflection of the music within. Having some time away from being behind the counter has given me perspective on more than just the sheer volume of horseshit that comes out of customers mouths, or the mouth-eaten copies of Rumours they lugged in because some asshole on a Pawn Stars said albums were worth a mint. Whenever I travel for work, one of the first things I do is research local record stores, even in the most unlikely of places. I haven’t worked inside a record store in years since I was unceremoniously told to get the fuck out of one before the cops were called, but I have kept up with a lot of people who own such stores and I still do my best to patronize as many of them as possible. And it also made me think about independent record stores and the record-mostly vinyl-industry as a whole. I haven’t lived in New Jersey for years, but the news still made me sad that I couldn’t visit this institution one more time before the vultures pecked it clean. For a lot of people, this was their hub of culture. The CDs, the vinyl, books, assorted other random stuff lke the small stage for in-store performances, artist signings, etc. My friends and I would pile into one of our cars every few weeks to take the two-hour drive to Vintage, not only for the cool shit they brought in, but also for the experience of the store itself. For thousands of people growing up in New Jersey and the surrounding area-that’s not an exaggeration-Vintage Vinyl was that one shining beacon we had in a sea of corporate record store chains in the years before one-click online ordering. It wasn’t because of the effects of the pandemic but rather a shift in the priorities of the store’s ownership-a small consolation in a story that otherwise would have read like a broken toilet that people kept shitting in. Last month the news spread that Vintage Vinyl, the Fords, NJ bastion of independent music, was closing after four decades in the business.
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