I would go on diggin missions with two friends all around town, and they would always involve stopping at one or more of the various record stores around town. We were looking mostly for hip hop 12's, soul + funk 45s, samples (not to make beats, just to collect the originals), and last but not least B-Boy Breaks. I remember being utterly obsessed with finding a copy of the All The People feat Robert Moore "Cramp Your Style" 45. Good god I love that record.
Krazy Kat was the place I enjoyed the most, just due to the shear number of records in that shop and the fact that you could ALWAYS find something good there. Every time. Unfortunately the shop was way out on the East side of town, so when we did go there we'd stay for hours just hanging out and digging and listening (along with the requisite periodic bowl-smoking in my friend's busted-ass civic, heh).
One day the owner let us look through a bunch of backstock in a locked room in the back of the store. We spent at least 3 hours looking through everything. I bought a bunch of funk 45s from NOLA and a sealed copy of Eddie Kendricks - People... Hold On LP because my friend J*e told me it had "that Rain break on it." To this day it's my favorite soul album.
yes. and Rue's. And Plastic Fantastic for sure. my brother and i would go there every saturday once i had my drivers license. it was a paradise.
and john the crackhead at germantown and chelten, later on at 40th and walnut, but in his germantown days he had everything lined up by the park wall and haggling with him was legendary fun..
John wasnt a damn crackhead!!! just crazy. 40th and walnut!!! thats where i got my first copy of cymande off him.
i hated the plastic fantastic people and that nasty dog they had. yuk.
rue's was the greatest. hes really sick right now.
yes. and Rue's. And Plastic Fantastic for sure. my brother and i would go there every saturday once i had my drivers license. it was a paradise.
and john the crackhead at germantown and chelten, later on at 40th and walnut, but in his germantown days he had everything lined up by the park wall and haggling with him was legendary fun.
also "dark-skinned tony" as people called him, had a small shop above the lucien crump art gallery in germantown too. he had great stuff all the time. i wonder where he is now. and then of course 9th street books and records, love ya, bob. philly was so amazing then.
Yeah it was for sure... I totally forgot about Rue's and couldn't remember Plastic Fantastic's name for the life of me. Remember when Rue's opened up the shop on 3rd Street?
Also, shout to my dude Scott and RedRum on Pine Street - one of the illest, brightest, and shortest-lived stores in history.
Wax Trax on Lincoln Ave. in Chicago. This place had a solid rep of being THEE premier punk/new wave/alt-rock/whatchamacallit store. While I liked a lot of that stuff as well, it wasn't my first priority. I usually headed for the back of the room where the reissues and older records were. One side of reissue albums on labels like Charly and Ace, another side of 45's. For a college kid like myself with a passion for older roots sounds, this is where my money always went during 1986-89, buying countless R&B/soul/garage/rockabilly/surf/etc. discs during that era. A lot of my older singles still have the tell-tale "Wax Trax - 50 cents" sticker on them; I keep the stickers on out of general nostalgia. Every now and then I'll run into Nick, the buyer for the store during those years, and I'll thank him for warping my mind.
Also: the Second Hand Tunes over on 53rd St. near Dorchester (it's now another unrelated shop, Hyde Park Records). This was back when I would listen to Richard Pegue's dusties show on Saturday nights, and then buy some of those same dusties on Monday afternoon from 2HT's 35-cent rack. I was in high school then. I remember finding things like the Soul Sisters'"I Can't Stand It" and Dr. Feelgood & the Interns'"Dr. Feelgood" - fairly common, but they seemed like buried treasure to me at the time. The store lasted all the way into 2003, at which point they became Hyde Park Records. I kept shopping there through the years, but the 1983-85 "Richard Pegue era" was the age of the innocence.
BONUS BEATS: B-Side Records, which was originally on Clark St. a few blocks north of Wrigley Field. I was finding things like Irma Thomas' Take A Look, the Stooges' Fun House, and the debut LP's by Pink Floyd and Ritchie Valens for $1.99. However, the owner was a solid-gold plated asshole and after a couple of years I avoided the place entirely. After he got married to his mail-order bride, he handed the keys over to a guy named Lenny who was much cooler, thus enabling me to shop there again. By this time they'd moved south, up the street from Second Hand Tunes, and he got quite a bit of my business until he closed down sometime around 1997 or so.
Man...there are plenty of possibilities, but if I had to pick one store, it'd probably be Collectables on the corner of Tate and W. Lee in Greensboro, NC. It was a short walk from my dorm at UNCG, was nice and cheap, and definitely expanded my frame of reference as far as digging went. If only I could've known back then what I know now....
awesome! didnt know you grew up around levittown.
what was in them cutout bins?!
i used to go to shops in philly, 3rd street jazz, green onions,prx,sound of market...but i cant say i was hooked on shit till i was in college. i mucked around in the basement of Record City in Poughkeepsie and rhino records nearby...but i really got cracked out when i worked for 6 months in portland oregon. i went through the phonebook and went to every record store and thrift store in town. there were soooo many records and i know for a fact i flipped past lots of heat i should have copped
i had already formed my addiction, but the stores that got me hooked were Crossroads for sheer infinite volume and Laserwolf's jumpjump cause of the presentation and dan's understanding of a young hiphop heads interest in music. the first time i went, by bus, dan loaned me a bike to go to a supermarket ATM and he made me wear a bike helmet that looked like a giant styrofoam box (if memory serves). i ended up going to jumpjump frequently, to shop but also to check in and say hi to dan and learn. i really appreciated the calmness/coolness of the shops vibe.
i got my favorites in philly, but i never got stuck on one spot. my first rare groove records were bought on the sidewalk (cymande) and in 3rd street jazz dollar bin (westwing) shortly before it closed for good
I don't remember the ATM/helmet story, but sounds just like me.
I bought records every now and then as a kid and a teen, .05c&.10cs and EJ Korvetts (Rockville MD), which was a department store.
More first score was when I was about 13 or 14, my older brother moved out to a commune in Taos leaving behind a box of records. Folk, blues and psych.
In 1979, the girl I had followed across country dumped me.
I took most that weeks pay check and bought a big stack of records at Park Ave Records.
The original Park Ave was on Park Ave in Portland where the Fox Tower now is. When it moved to Seattle Crocodile Records took over the site.
That stack had a Cab Calloway double collection, Best Of Sam Cook, James Brown Greatest Hits and I forget what else.
Leaving the store I met a friend who said oh cool you bought a bunch of records. We went for a drink where I cried about being dumped.
She invited me over to check out her records.
I had about a hundred (now a hundred and twenty) she had about 400.
She played me Howard Tate, Meters, Wild Tchoupitoulas...
From then on a chunk of my pay check every week went to Park Ave, Django's and Bird Suite.
Django's was one of the first real used record shops in the country I believe.
Leopold's in Berkeley, no question. It wasn't what launched me into "collecting" in terms of what that means to me now, but it was the first record store where I felt compelled to visit often. By the time they closed, I had switched my allegiance to Amoeba's but no doubt, Leopold's was a fucking institution and deserves all praises due. I recall that their basement, where they eventually moved their hip-hop vinyl 12"s, was called the Vinyl Resting Place (that was Leopold's, right?)
Amoeba was where I first started hunting for used records - I never liked Rasputin's, way too surly - and I have found memories of the shark feedings that awaited when Matthew put out a batch of just-priced hip-hop records or when my man Omar at the bag check would keep an eye out for shit for me. Amoeba (all locations) were never that good for me on anything but hip-hop but no complaints.
But I have very fond memories of any number of other stores that were "formative" in their own way: Zebra Records (SF), Groove Yard (Oakland/Berkeley), and of course, Village Music in Mill Valley. That store is still probably my platonic ideal of what a great record store should look and feel like (RIP).
quite a few have mentioned Joe's Record Paradise, and that was part of me getting hooked, but VINYL INK in Silver Spring was even bigger for me. At the same time as interests in soul and psych were budding, I was really into punk, indie, noise, etc. Vinyl Ink's 7" selection was the shit, so many imports from Europe and Japan and other releases unique to the vinyl format that got me hooked on *records* after years of just being a music junkie with no format preference.
A weekend trip to Vinyl Ink, Joe's, and Phantasmagoria (and maybe also, um, Tower) was all it took to make me happy back in the early-mid '90s.
When I started out in the late 80s it was all about garage sales, school gala sales & flea markets. There were a couple of big weekly markets in the Tauranga area & my grandparent would go to sell each week. I would go along with them most weeks & hunt for 78s, 45s & LPs. There were always good records, metal, classic rock, rock & roll etc. As far as stores went, most of the stores like K Mart were carrying new & cut out LPs still & the normal new music stores still had selections (ever dwindling though) of vinyl. The first real used record store I frequented was in Tauranga & called Record Roundabout. I probably started going there in the very early 90s, they had what I thought was a lot of stock at the time, with a lot of imports as well as local used vinyl. It changed hands & later closed in the late 90s. There was also a junk shop in Te Puke that had a pretty good used LP selection, I pulled a lot of punk & metal stuff out of there for cheap in the early 90s too. A lot of my stuff at this time was mailorder off punk/hardcore lists/labels from overseas though. My 78 collection wasn't bad though because that stuff was kinda easy picking at the time. I moved to Hamilton in the late 90s & frequented places like Vic St Rec Exchange, Hindsight, Music Box, Bigtones, the one in Garden Place (I forget the name) & the one in the little arcade off Vic St that I don't remember the name either. All those stores are gone now.
Moved to Auckland in the early 2000s, places like Crawlspace, K Rd Exchange, whatever the one opposite it on K Rd was called, that shop in New Lynn, the one in papatoetoe, Conch & Real Groovy.
These days it is down to Conch & Real Groovy. I try to travel overseas to buy at least once a year because it's pretty slow here.
yes. and Rue's. And Plastic Fantastic for sure. my brother and i would go there every saturday once i had my drivers license. it was a paradise.
and john the crackhead at germantown and chelten, later on at 40th and walnut, but in his germantown days he had everything lined up by the park wall and haggling with him was legendary fun..
John wasnt a damn crackhead!!! just crazy. 40th and walnut!!! thats where i got my first copy of cymande off him.
i hated the plastic fantastic people and that nasty dog they had. yuk.
rue's was the greatest. hes really sick right now.
Too bad about Rue... and yeah about 40th & Walnut right at the Library. I remember COMING UP there many times.
And I totally forgot about Green Onions that place was AWESOME. What was the name of tehe comic store that was there in the same spot?
ALSO: Remember WOODEN SHOE in Philly? That place had so much heat. But it smelled ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE in there... I guess since it was run by anarchists and all... But what's up with anarchists and body odor?
And I totally forgot about Green Onions that place was AWESOME. What was the name of tehe comic store that was there in the same spot?
ALSO: Remember WOODEN SHOE in Philly? That place had so much heat. But it smelled ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE in there... I guess since it was run by anarchists and all... But what's up with anarchists and body odor?
green onions old both comics and records...there was a brief 14-15 year old period where i would pick up both. i never even went into wooden shoe until i came back from college, and they definitely werent holding any good records. and i think the smell has someting to do with not paying to have hot water in the crib/squatting/or just not trying to be the one clean person in a crew of dirty people?
Kermits "Dolls Rapid Creation" East Cleveland, Ohio (rip)
Record Rendezvous Cleveland, Ohio (rip)
Record Den Cleveland Hts, Ohio (rip)
Filmore East Cleveland, Ohio (rip)
Bibbs Records and Tapes East Cleveland, Ohio (rip)
Record Revolution Cleveland Hts, Ohio (on it's last leg)
The Roach Clip Cleveland, Ohio (rip)
Leopold's in Berkeley, no question. It wasn't what launched me into "collecting" in terms of what that means to me now, but it was the first record store where I felt compelled to visit often. By the time they closed, I had switched my allegiance to Amoeba's but no doubt, Leopold's was a fucking institution and deserves all praises due. I recall that their basement, where they eventually moved their hip-hop vinyl 12"s, was called the Vinyl Resting Place (that was Leopold's, right?)
Amoeba was where I first started hunting for used records - I never liked Rasputin's, way too surly - and I have found memories of the shark feedings that awaited when Matthew put out a batch of just-priced hip-hop records or when my man Omar at the bag check would keep an eye out for shit for me. Amoeba (all locations) were never that good for me on anything but hip-hop but no complaints.
But I have very fond memories of any number of other stores that were "formative" in their own way: Zebra Records (SF), Groove Yard (Oakland/Berkeley), and of course, Village Music in Mill Valley. That store is still probably my platonic ideal of what a great record store should look and feel like (RIP).
Cheapo in Cambridge was the first record store to hook me in, i remeber going there the first time and buying 2 David Porter records cause i always saw his name along w/ Issac Hayes on various 45's etc........ from that day on i would go there once a week and just buy stuff, sometimes it would be a waste of money (5-10 dollars for countless cool looking rock records that yielded no breaks ) sometimes i would think i got over on them (Melvin Van Peebles lp's for 1.99) but it was always a learning expirience. I learned about all the private lp's w/ breaks and loops from the area, i "discovered" the Incredible Two Man Band lp, the "Truth Of Truths" lp, "Because I Am", Superior Elevation, Gregg Jackson and countless others. I started talking to one of the younger dudes working there named Brett, we hit it off and became good friends, he taught me about David Mcallum and Lyn Christopher, he sold me copies of Sir Joe Quarterman and Eddie Kendricks "People Hold On" for next to nothing. If he found doubles of a certain record it was always thrown my way, i returned the favor by putting him up on the little bit of stuff i knew that he didn't.
I used to hit the sealed stock section (3 copies for 5 bucks!) for the disco/modern soul lp's i'd see in n.y (T Boy Ross/Greg Perry/elaine Brown) so that i could flip em in n.y and buy my copies of Les Demerlle and whatnot, great times.. They started me towards my love for deep gospel as well, plus i have maintained friendships w/ 2 other employees there for over 10 years (wayne/rob) and i still hit them up twice a month (at least) and i still score things i see nowhere else.
Mystery Train (Amherst,Ma) I started going there shortly after Cheapo, i learned everything i know about Modern Soul lp's here one summer, they had bought a huge disco collection and put most of them in a free box (wtf???) i found Leo's Sunship/Don Blackman/Tommy Stewart in there, meanwhile they had the re-issues of these lp's in their soul bins for 10 dollars, weird. I bought many psych lp's there through the years as well as countless 12's, there 2 dollar wall was insane once upon a time, it yielded crazy shit everytime i'd comb through it, i remeber a few days after i'd gone through it all (probably not 100 percent) jonny told me he found a Rainbow Brown lp in there (doh). I still go here as well, i don't find as much as i used to, i don't know if it's cause the stock isn't as great or because i was younger and more willing to learn about new things, or maybe ebay's a bigger factor.........theres still heat being pulled here though.
I used to hit 12" Dance when they were in B-More. They pulled out like '90, '91.
Matter of fact the 2nd fire that happened the other day, here in B-more, was the building that 12" Dance was in back then. Now it's Donna's Cafe.
Comments
I used to go to that Drive-In all the time......carload for six bucks.
(Albuquerque, NM)
I would go on diggin missions with two friends all around town, and they would always involve stopping at one or more of the various record stores around town. We were looking mostly for hip hop 12's, soul + funk 45s, samples (not to make beats, just to collect the originals), and last but not least B-Boy Breaks. I remember being utterly obsessed with finding a copy of the All The People feat Robert Moore "Cramp Your Style" 45. Good god I love that record.
Krazy Kat was the place I enjoyed the most, just due to the shear number of records in that shop and the fact that you could ALWAYS find something good there. Every time. Unfortunately the shop was way out on the East side of town, so when we did go there we'd stay for hours just hanging out and digging and listening (along with the requisite periodic bowl-smoking in my friend's busted-ass civic, heh).
One day the owner let us look through a bunch of backstock in a locked room in the back of the store. We spent at least 3 hours looking through everything. I bought a bunch of funk 45s from NOLA and a sealed copy of Eddie Kendricks - People... Hold On LP because my friend J*e told me it had "that Rain break on it." To this day it's my favorite soul album.
John wasnt a damn crackhead!!! just crazy. 40th and walnut!!! thats where i got my first copy of cymande off him.
i hated the plastic fantastic people and that nasty dog they had. yuk.
rue's was the greatest. hes really sick right now.
Yeah it was for sure... I totally forgot about Rue's and couldn't remember Plastic Fantastic's name for the life of me. Remember when Rue's opened up the shop on 3rd Street?
Also, shout to my dude Scott and RedRum on Pine Street - one of the illest, brightest, and shortest-lived stores in history.
For me, the beginning, middle and end.
Wax Trax on Lincoln Ave. in Chicago. This place had a solid rep of being THEE premier punk/new wave/alt-rock/whatchamacallit store. While I liked a lot of that stuff as well, it wasn't my first priority. I usually headed for the back of the room where the reissues and older records were. One side of reissue albums on labels like Charly and Ace, another side of 45's. For a college kid like myself with a passion for older roots sounds, this is where my money always went during 1986-89, buying countless R&B/soul/garage/rockabilly/surf/etc. discs during that era. A lot of my older singles still have the tell-tale "Wax Trax - 50 cents" sticker on them; I keep the stickers on out of general nostalgia. Every now and then I'll run into Nick, the buyer for the store during those years, and I'll thank him for warping my mind.
Also: the Second Hand Tunes over on 53rd St. near Dorchester (it's now another unrelated shop, Hyde Park Records). This was back when I would listen to Richard Pegue's dusties show on Saturday nights, and then buy some of those same dusties on Monday afternoon from 2HT's 35-cent rack. I was in high school then. I remember finding things like the Soul Sisters'"I Can't Stand It" and Dr. Feelgood & the Interns'"Dr. Feelgood" - fairly common, but they seemed like buried treasure to me at the time. The store lasted all the way into 2003, at which point they became Hyde Park Records. I kept shopping there through the years, but the 1983-85 "Richard Pegue era" was the age of the innocence.
BONUS BEATS: B-Side Records, which was originally on Clark St. a few blocks north of Wrigley Field. I was finding things like Irma Thomas' Take A Look, the Stooges' Fun House, and the debut LP's by Pink Floyd and Ritchie Valens for $1.99. However, the owner was a solid-gold plated asshole and after a couple of years I avoided the place entirely. After he got married to his mail-order bride, he handed the keys over to a guy named Lenny who was much cooler, thus enabling me to shop there again. By this time they'd moved south, up the street from Second Hand Tunes, and he got quite a bit of my business until he closed down sometime around 1997 or so.
Wish I could remember.
I don't remember the ATM/helmet story, but sounds just like me.
I bought records every now and then as a kid and a teen, .05c&.10cs and EJ Korvetts (Rockville MD), which was a department store.
More first score was when I was about 13 or 14, my older brother moved out to a commune in Taos leaving behind a box of records. Folk, blues and psych.
In 1979, the girl I had followed across country dumped me.
I took most that weeks pay check and bought a big stack of records at Park Ave Records.
The original Park Ave was on Park Ave in Portland where the Fox Tower now is. When it moved to Seattle Crocodile Records took over the site.
That stack had a Cab Calloway double collection, Best Of Sam Cook, James Brown Greatest Hits and I forget what else.
Leaving the store I met a friend who said oh cool you bought a bunch of records. We went for a drink where I cried about being dumped.
She invited me over to check out her records.
I had about a hundred (now a hundred and twenty) she had about 400.
She played me Howard Tate, Meters, Wild Tchoupitoulas...
From then on a chunk of my pay check every week went to Park Ave, Django's and Bird Suite.
Django's was one of the first real used record shops in the country I believe.
Leopold's in Berkeley, no question. It wasn't what launched me into "collecting" in terms of what that means to me now, but it was the first record store where I felt compelled to visit often. By the time they closed, I had switched my allegiance to Amoeba's but no doubt, Leopold's was a fucking institution and deserves all praises due. I recall that their basement, where they eventually moved their hip-hop vinyl 12"s, was called the Vinyl Resting Place (that was Leopold's, right?)
Amoeba was where I first started hunting for used records - I never liked Rasputin's, way too surly - and I have found memories of the shark feedings that awaited when Matthew put out a batch of just-priced hip-hop records or when my man Omar at the bag check would keep an eye out for shit for me. Amoeba (all locations) were never that good for me on anything but hip-hop but no complaints.
Groove Merchant. The next level. I've already waxed rhapsodic about this though: https://www.ubiquityrecords.com/shop/products/VARIOUS-ARTISTS---GROOVE-MERCHANT-20.html
Those would be the holy trinity.
But I have very fond memories of any number of other stores that were "formative" in their own way: Zebra Records (SF), Groove Yard (Oakland/Berkeley), and of course, Village Music in Mill Valley. That store is still probably my platonic ideal of what a great record store should look and feel like (RIP).
Is that a new store front for them? or their old store front? I haven't been there in years - used to have to go downstairs to get in there.
A weekend trip to Vinyl Ink, Joe's, and Phantasmagoria (and maybe also, um, Tower) was all it took to make me happy back in the early-mid '90s.
You're thinking of their old location. This is the new spot???still only a couple of blocks away in Central Square on the other side of the street.
Moved to Auckland in the early 2000s, places like Crawlspace, K Rd Exchange, whatever the one opposite it on K Rd was called, that shop in New Lynn, the one in papatoetoe, Conch & Real Groovy.
These days it is down to Conch & Real Groovy. I try to travel overseas to buy at least once a year because it's pretty slow here.
Too bad about Rue... and yeah about 40th & Walnut right at the Library. I remember COMING UP there many times.
And I totally forgot about Green Onions that place was AWESOME. What was the name of tehe comic store that was there in the same spot?
ALSO: Remember WOODEN SHOE in Philly? That place had so much heat. But it smelled ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE in there... I guess since it was run by anarchists and all... But what's up with anarchists and body odor?
http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:sSpl-MxYacdwTM:http://media.avclub.com/images/venues/venue/50497/ElectricFetus_EXT01_jpg_595x325_crop_upscale_q85.jpg&t=1
green onions old both comics and records...there was a brief 14-15 year old period where i would pick up both. i never even went into wooden shoe until i came back from college, and they definitely werent holding any good records. and i think the smell has someting to do with not paying to have hot water in the crib/squatting/or just not trying to be the one clean person in a crew of dirty people?
Record Rendezvous Cleveland, Ohio (rip)
Record Den Cleveland Hts, Ohio (rip)
Filmore East Cleveland, Ohio (rip)
Bibbs Records and Tapes East Cleveland, Ohio (rip)
Record Revolution Cleveland Hts, Ohio (on it's last leg)
The Roach Clip Cleveland, Ohio (rip)
WHAT, NO FUNKY RIDDM'Z????????????
I kid, but you are right. I really can't deny that spot, easy a target as it may be.
I used to hit the sealed stock section (3 copies for 5 bucks!) for the disco/modern soul lp's i'd see in n.y (T Boy Ross/Greg Perry/elaine Brown) so that i could flip em in n.y and buy my copies of Les Demerlle and whatnot, great times.. They started me towards my love for deep gospel as well, plus i have maintained friendships w/ 2 other employees there for over 10 years (wayne/rob) and i still hit them up twice a month (at least) and i still score things i see nowhere else.
Mystery Train (Amherst,Ma) I started going there shortly after Cheapo, i learned everything i know about Modern Soul lp's here one summer, they had bought a huge disco collection and put most of them in a free box (wtf???) i found Leo's Sunship/Don Blackman/Tommy Stewart in there, meanwhile they had the re-issues of these lp's in their soul bins for 10 dollars, weird. I bought many psych lp's there through the years as well as countless 12's, there 2 dollar wall was insane once upon a time, it yielded crazy shit everytime i'd comb through it, i remeber a few days after i'd gone through it all (probably not 100 percent) jonny told me he found a Rainbow Brown lp in there (doh). I still go here as well, i don't find as much as i used to, i don't know if it's cause the stock isn't as great or because i was younger and more willing to learn about new things, or maybe ebay's a bigger factor.........theres still heat being pulled here though.
peace,xavier
I used to hit 12" Dance when they were in B-More. They pulled out like '90, '91.
Matter of fact the 2nd fire that happened the other day, here in B-more, was the building that 12" Dance was in back then. Now it's Donna's Cafe.