What was it like back then.....

kennykenny 1,024 Posts
edited December 2007 in Strut Central
back in your school days in the 80s or early 90s back when you would run to the records stores after school so you could cop that new 12" with the remix that ain't on the album ?? i ask cuz i never went through that phase, obviously cuz i grew up in a totally different culturewho's got some stories to share ? funny stories ? memories of an old friend ? bumped into certain DJ that you looked up to ? parents got mad at you for buying more records and not doing your homework ?i could remember the first time i went to an actual "record store" being in Australia studying my degree, that was only 8-9 years ago. i remember i was looking for Defari's album on CD, but then i saw all these 12" singles so i spent the rest of the day going thru the A - D section and I didn't buy anything cuz i didn't have turntable at that time! but the guy that works there was mad cool and would hip me to all these other 12"s he just got in which were all the Spinna and Fondle Em stuff...he would keep asking me have I heard of this or such and such artist and I would have no idea what they were, damn i didn't even know how to use the turntable at the time! but he would let me go thru all the records and would show me how to use the turntable...that was my uni days basically lol!so yea, anyways...
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  • it was amazing! peace, stein. . .


    p.s. happy new year!

  • DeeRockDeeRock 1,836 Posts
    I remember there was no "RAP" section. If you could even find any it was in the soul/r&B dept. I worked as a domino's pizza delivery driver after school. I would get off work at 10PM when we closed. Tower records was open till midnight! So everynight without failer I would hit up Tower on the way home and spend ALL of my nightly tip money on records. I didn't know much back then but I would always buy stuff if it looked good or was on the Def Jam or Profile records label. I would listen to our one and only rap radio show and write down titles of ill stuff like Roxanne Roxanne, Disco 3, Toddy Tee, Choice MC's, etc.

  • Big_ChanBig_Chan 5,088 Posts
    In the 80s it was all about Penny Lane Records in Lakewood, WA. Dee Rock knows the shop well. The hommie Donald Glaude, who is a BIG house DJ now, ran the shop and always hooked me up with discounts. Shit was dope back then. Walk in the front door of the shop and all the latest Hip-Hop/Soul/R&B vinyl joints were on display. Three turntables with headphones in the back to listen to records with. I would go there every Saturday and buy new albums and 12" singles. Bought ALL kinds of dope stuff there. All the early EPMD singles, Sleeping Bag joints, Profile, Def Jam, Rap-A-Lot, Jive, Mantronix, Mix Master Spade, Toddy Tee, Bought the "NWA and The Posse" EP with 8 ball and Dope Man as soon as it dropped. Those were the days.

  • akoako https://soundcloud.com/a-ko 3,413 Posts
    i was very young during the time period discussed here but i cant stop thinking about it lately.

  • kennykenny 1,024 Posts
    cool.

    yea we used to have Tower out here in Hong Kong too, shame that it shut down and HMV took over. that would have been before I went overseas, Tower had the best music selection I would see Finesse's "Return of the Funky Man" CD and not knowing what it was.

    too late to realise now how much good music were actually around when i was the Chinese kid listening to cantonese-pop lol!

  • kennykenny 1,024 Posts
    so even in the US rap/ rnb 12" weren't as easily accessible, unless you're living in the big cities like NYC or something ?

  • I wasn't really old enough to go out and buy records in the 80s, but I can remember when I used to go to the record store every Tuesday and buy new releases. I was the kid who called and asked for release dates all the time and was the one who made the employees go to the back and get the new release on vinyl (they never seemed to put them out right away at Tower). I worked at a museum and spent all of my money on records every Tuesday.

    Throughout high school I would buy things on new release Tuesdays, either waking up early and going before school or going right after school.

    I'm no longer rushing to the store on Tuesdays.

  • Big_ChanBig_Chan 5,088 Posts
    so even in the US rap/ rnb 12" weren't as easily accessible, unless you're living in the big cities like NYC or something ?

    Nah mayne. I could get lots of hot new joints on 12" in Lakewood, WA hommie! LOL. Unless it was some real regional stuff on smaller independent labels, I could pretty much find everything I was looking for at Penny Lane Records.

  • kennykenny 1,024 Posts
    thats dope.

    its also interesting to know people used to rush to music stores cuz i honestly don't think people ever do that out here in asia, or at least out here in HK they never did anyway...

    i suppose music was never really a big part of the culture here.

  • I used to do the Tower after work run too! So many records, the 12" section was LARGE!

  • Big_ChanBig_Chan 5,088 Posts
    I used to work at Tower Records in Tacoma, WA. I started there in the early 90s, so the vinyl was all gone. It was just CDs and tapes at our location.

  • Big_ChanBig_Chan 5,088 Posts
    thats dope.

    its also interesting to know people used to rush to music stores cuz i honestly don't think people ever do that out here in asia, or at least out here in HK they never did anyway...

    Girls never ran to the music store when Jacky Cheung or Leon Lai dropped a new CD? LOL!

  • spelunkspelunk 3,400 Posts
    i was very young during the time period discussed here but i cant stop thinking about it lately.

    Yeah, I can't even imagine how much insane stuff you could find on 45 back then, or all the insane private records to be had for cheap. I want a time machine.

  • $4.44

  • In the 80s it was all about Penny Lane Records in Lakewood, WA. Dee Rock knows the shop well. The hommie Donald Glaude, who is a BIG house DJ now, ran the shop and always hooked me up with discounts. Shit was dope back then.

    That's fresh... I saw Donald G play a big party out here around '95...he dropped all kinds of crazy shit in a big room, afrofunk and disco joints in with the house...he was pretty off the hook. Plus at the end of the night I found 100 bucks on the floor!

  • Big_ChanBig_Chan 5,088 Posts
    In the 80s it was all about Penny Lane Records in Lakewood, WA. Dee Rock knows the shop well. The hommie Donald Glaude, who is a BIG house DJ now, ran the shop and always hooked me up with discounts. Shit was dope back then.

    That's fresh... I saw Donald G play a big party out here around '95...he dropped all kinds of crazy shit in a big room, afrofunk and disco joints in with the house...he was pretty off the hook. Plus at the end of the night I found 100 bucks on the floor!

    He is a great DJ and a really nice guy. We used to wild out on KUPS radio in Tacoma, WA in the 80s. I bought my first drum machine from Donalad. The Korg DDD-1. Old School......


  • i used to cut this lady's grass for 5 bucks every week...just enough to get a 12"..i started with the prince singles "let's go crazy", then i moved on to get every bdp 12" i could find...i used to play the fuck out of the i'm still number 1 remix until my dad yelled at me to stop playing that "talking music"...i remember picking up the peachfuzz 12" and being the cool guy on the block with the dope records....

    even though i've picked up/replaced those singles over the years, i really wish i appreciated vinyl back then....as for the 90's...i didn't really get back into vinyl until i started working at rasputin's music in the late 90's....old school records were available pretty cheap...i didn't see a surge in prices (well rasputin prices) unti like 2004-2005...seeing all the early 90's mid 90's 12" for like 8-10 bucks was a trip...cuz i was buyin that shit up for like 1.95 when i first started

  • but i did cop hella tapes...black moon, redman, wu....my boy had this uncanny knack for picking dope shit just by looking at the cover...he discovered black moon that way (cassingle with the original nervous logo on it!)...me on the other hand....bleh...i "discovered" capital tax....like where the fuck are those guys now?

  • DrWuDrWu 4,021 Posts
    I wasn't in to rare records in high school (83-87) but I did pick up some decent reggae, particularly in the African Dub series. Shit was hard to find here, with no immigrant community to speak of. I cringe thinking about what I could have found in the pre-rap era vis-a-vis jazz, funk and soul.

    In the early 90s, when I got into more obscure stuff, I could go to the record shows and hit the 45 box of every dealer and none of the good soul/funk would have been touched no matter how late in the day. All of the crusty beatles/rockabilly/doowop guys would sell any black music later than 63 for $2. I found tons of killer shit at almost every show. Mint copies of Ron Buford, Cookin' Bag, The Counts, The Intrepretations on jubilee, etc.

  • Remember how good a record store full of NEW records and tapes smelled?

    I was buying records way before I thought about DJing.

  • It was all about Starship records & Tapes! I was around 12 or 13 and I bought the EAZY E record 'EaZY Duz it". The record had an explicit lyrics sticker so it was difficult for me to buy so what I did was remove the price sticker and place it back on the cover to where it was covering the parental advisory warning.My brother gets the record and starts playing the damn thing all loud one day. My comes in the room yellin" "Don't play that, your little brother doesn't need to hear all that"!!! My bro's response was" "But mom this isn't mine, this is Tony's record"!!! My parents held that record hostage until I was 15. I guess they felt I was too young for all that shit at the time.

  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,955 Posts
    Locally we used to spend school dinner times walking into the town to play pool/video games and kids would pick up The Jam singles on day-of-issue to make sure they all went into the UK chart at #1. If you wanted more exotic stuff, it was Warrington or Liverpool. I think Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" was the first 7" I copped with my own money.

    There were a couple of shops in Liverpool that I used to hang out in all day on a Saturday. One was called Cheverton, who had a downstairs section with a load of Jap-import heat like the Kazu Matsui Project, and a great 12" section where I first copped Paul Hardcastle's "Rainforest" on Bluebird and the like. This would be like 82 or 83, like Dee says, there wasn't a dedicated Rap or Hip-Hop section - it was all Soul or R&B

    When Cheverton closed there was a Penny Lane Records in Liverpool too, who were OK, good for fusion and P-Funk, and Stax or Motown classics but poor Trechcoat Soul 12" selection - you had to hit HMV up for that.

    Then it all went CD... I think I was big into Roy Ayers and Mtume at that point.

  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
    Locally we used to spend school dinner times walking into the town to play pool/video games and kids would pick up The Jam singles on day-of-issue to make sure they all went into the UK chart at #1. If you wanted more exotic stuff, it was Warrington or Liverpool. I think Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" was the first 7" I copped with my own money.

    There were a couple of shops in Liverpool that I used to hang out in all day on a Saturday. One was called Cheverton, who had a downstairs section with a load of Jap-import heat like the Kazu Matsui Project, and a great 12" section where I first copped Paul Hardcastle's "Rainforest" on Bluebird and the like. This would be like 82 or 83, like Dee says, there wasn't a dedicated Rap or Hip-Hop section - it was all Soul or R&B

    When Cheverton closed there was a Penny Lane Records in Liverpool too, who were OK, good for fusion and P-Funk, and Stax or Motown classics but poor Trechcoat Soul 12" selection - you had to hit HMV up for that.

    Then it all went CD... I think I was big into Roy Ayers and Mtume at that point.

    Weird ??? I was just about to mention Cheverton! It used to be on that little walk-through between Williamson Square and Whitechapel, on the way to the o.g. Probe shop on Button Street. Basically, this was the spot where I discovered rap beyond "Rapper's Delight". I remember buying Kurtis Blow???s debut album on import from there in about 1980 and, in the shout-outs, there was a mention for Grandmaster Flash. I thought this was such a cool name that, when I came across 12???s of ???Freedom??? and ???The Birthday Party??? in Cheverton a few months later (as well as that Great Rap Hits compilation), I bought them on spec. I figured that if they were anything like ???The Breaks???, they???d be great, and they were. What followed was a period of buying anything I could find on Sugarhill or Enjoy, anything with ???rap??? in the title, or anything which looked as if it might be a rap record. At one point, I was even taking trips down to London to visit Groove Records on Greek Street in Soho (back when Soho was still pretty gully) because I???d heard that it was the only place in London that sold rap singles at the time. I remember copping a bunch of stuff down there, including a copy of ???Rappin??? and Rockin??? The House??? by Funky 4 Plus One More (as I think they were still calling themselves then).

  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    Moreso than has been reflected here...the 80's was about cassettes.[/b]

    I remember my dad returning home from a prolonged business trip to Japan in like '82 and he brought home 2 Walkmans. One was only a radio and the other had both a radio and a cassette player. I was one the first kids in my neighborhood to have access to a Walkman...and once I bought a copy of Rick James' Street Songs, I was pretty much in my own world from then on.

    Even before that though, it was all about boom boxes and the cassettes you'd play in them. I already had records before I ever touched a cassette, but the functionality and portability of cassettes was really where it was at back then for your average everyday music listener.

  • In the 80s it was all about Penny Lane Records in Lakewood, WA.

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------



    That's fresh... I saw Donald G play a big party out here around '95...he dropped all kinds of crazy shit in a big room, afrofunk and disco joints in with the house...he was pretty off the hook. Plus at the end of the night I found 100 bucks on the floor!

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    I used to cop that next ish at Penny Lane too. I remeber sweating dude, week after week, to get me the Tim Dock "F*ck Compton & the AMG "B*tch Betta Have My Money" tape singles. I think Donald used to have a different name back then. He was called DJ Dominator[/b]. And he played at this club on the Ave in the U district where the new Tower is. He played hip-hop, hip-house(lol), disco, breaks, house ... pretty much everything... He was dddope..

  • CosmoCosmo 9,768 Posts
    Yeah I spun with Donald Glaude in Long Beach back in 1999. I was playing some Baltimore club and he was tripping out on that shit. But dude was dope, shouting and screaming in the mix.

  • Big_StacksBig_Stacks "I don't worry about hittin' power, cause I don't give 'em nuttin' to hit." 4,670 Posts
    Hey,

    For me, it was all about Paradise Music (big up Fayetteville, NC) after-school on Tuesday afternoons. As Dee Rock said, this was the era before there was a rap section for records. I was up at Paradise Music like clockwork to pick up the new releases. This is where I picked up the one and only Kaos LP, "Court's in Session." I also copped their "Kaos Era" single, which I first heard on the "Rap it Up" radio show. This is also the show on which I first heard "Plug Tunin'" and "Step Up Front." Like Harvey said, I was also big on cassettes, ridin' around pumpin' in dad's Nissan truck (then the '79 Pinto I bought). At Paradise, I also found my Bill Deal and the Rhondels joint with "Tuck's Theme" on it, and a bunch of other joints that I've sampled from over the years. I would also hit up Record Bar, Record Exchange, and Camelot Music for new 12"s. I was also DJin' house parties back then and I just started making beats on this:



    I later got into sampling and bought a Cascio SK-1 then upgraded to a Cascio SK-5. I would speed up the records super fast with my hand so that I could catch enough of a sample (2-bar loops) to make beats. Around this time, I also bought Ultimate Breaks & Beats, Super Disco Breaks, and Drum Drops on a trip up to NYC, hanging out with Mister Cee at Music Factory. Eventually I copped the mighty Ensoniq ASR-10 which I roll with to this very day. The big thing was for my homies from NYC to bring down KYS-FM or WBLS mixtapes with the new exclusive shit and promos on 'em. This is around the time I heard shit like "My Mic is on Fire," "They Call Me Puma," and "Ego Trippin'". This was a great time because there was some much great hip-hop on the airwaves and on white-label 12"s like "Classic Concepts."

    I was also diggin' real hard at "Muzik Hut" in the flea-market mall in Fayetteville, "Nice Price Music," "Reader's Corner," and that guy that sold LPs in Dorton Arena in Raleigh, and "The Record Hole" in Chapel Hill, NC. I also found some funky joints up in Greensboro hangin' out with Ski and Roland from Payroll Records. I miss these days!!!

    Peace,

    Big Stacks from Kakalak

  • I was in high school in the early eighties, and even though there was somewhat of a soul revival going on (the Motown 25 TV special, several Stax and Motown records being reissued), it was MILD compared to the one going on today. So here I was, going to Second Hand Tunes in Chicago on 53rd St. (now Hyde Park Records) after school, looking through the unsleeved 35-cent singles and getting a Soul 101 education, bringing home singles by Lee Dorsey, the Soul Sisters, Dr. Feelgood & the Interns (who were really more R&B), Erma Franklin, etc. Most of these purchases were based on something I'd read or something I'd heard (on Richard Pegue's weekend dusties show). It really wasn't until the year I graduated that I started really going for broke and buying singles where I didn't know the title/artist/label, but it LOOKED right. And that's when thangs really started getting interesting...

  • billbradleybillbradley You want BBQ sauce? Get the fuck out of my house. 2,905 Posts
    Back in the early to mid-90's it was all about the faxes. All of the DJs would line up at the record store to mark what they wanted to order on the faxes from the record distributors each week. Record pools were cool too. We'd have 20+ DJs buying together to get discounts. All of that may still be going on. I'm disconnected from the DJ world for the most part these days.

  • tower records, music menu, cellophane square, some spot in lake city, even the fred meyer music department was hot. you could go in and buy a rap record and there was a 99% chance it was fresh and you could be sure that if you bought something on def jam or a few other labels, it was bound to be worth it. these days i have to hear that shit first before dropping $7 or more on it. and damn, didn't 12 inches cost like $3.50 back then?
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