Record Store Retreat

The times they are a Changin'...

A recent article in The New York Times reported on the impending demise of the music store. A focus of the story was that few members of the web-savvy 'Download' generation see the purpose of the music store experience for purchasing packaged music when it is ready and ripe for the digital picking. That left only the remaining more mature customer base, primarily Baby Boomers, those unable to break the emotional connection between music and its package.

As I started to consider what was happening, I began to reflect on what these changes meant to me as a member of that more 'mature' set. I've been buying records for almost as long as I can remember, and conventional wisdom might see me as one who laments the passing of a ''golden age', I wanted to examine if this was indeed true.

Music has always been my passion, it was the first thing in life I realized as being special. Music quickly became my connection with the world, and still holds that power as recently revealed when, waking from a 6 hour heart operation, my first semi-conscious thought was an obscure line from a Tom Waits song. When I was a kid my parents took me to buy 45 RPM records, when I was a teenager I could ride my bike to the chain department store and purchase whatever LP's my limited allowance could provide. When I returned home from the military and got a job my musical tastes were more mature, I had a new stereo, I had disposable income, and I bought LP's with a vengeance. I had a lot of music history to catch up on, and since I had no other major interests, music became my main focus. I listened to the music with new ears, and read everything I could in the music trades. I averaged about 5 LP's a week for about 8 years which culminated in a collection of over 2000 albums that still take up a major portion of one room. I branched into new musical forms, jazz, blues, country, bluegrass, folk, electronic, Avant-Garde, and even a little classical in all their various forms [no opera thank you].

On vacations a major part of the trip was spent looking in the well stocked retailers of the bohemian and major metro areas we visited for the rare and eclectic releases unavailable in our native mid-western locale. On departure our suitcases were well packed with our necessary apparel, but the return trip often saw our clothes and laundry scattered in the back of the car, our precious cargo of records and books secure in our gorilla-proof luggage. A brief decline in music purchases followed my marriage and its adjusted priorities, but as our household income rose so did my CD purchases which now take up a major portion of another room.

Being an artist as well as a music enthusiast, the connection between the music and the package was very special. The link between image and sound is inseparable to most who grew up with that format. Major artists contributed artwork - some became stars in their own right, some labels could be identified by their graphic design - Blue Note, ECM, Prestige. You could spend hours holding that 12 inch square package just looking and listening,reading liner notes and peering into gatefolds which sometimes opened into posters. Some became treasures - a clear plastic sleeve for Captain Beefheart's Clear Spot, or the Stones Warhol cover with a functional zipper, Neon Park's Little Feat covers. But while those packages still hold value for me, the time for sleeve gazing and hours of doing nothing but listening beneath the headphones have long passed, and soon the downsizing of my living space will necessitate parting with all but the most treasured and irreplaceable of my vinyl collection.

So, as I look at the new menu of music formats and distribution, is something missing? Perhaps. I resisted CD's at first, though due more to their increased price and player affordability than esthetics. When I finally made the leap I found it cruelly ironic that the format got smaller as my eyesight got poorer, but I reveled in their quality, and portability. Now that I have several MP3 player's that can transport my entire music collection in my coat pocket, computers that can access music in an instant and an internet that can give me more information on any artist or music release than I ever dreamed possible with the ability to instantly order any CD available from my desk, and satellite radio, I feel amply compensated for any tactile deficiencies in the medium.

I have now come to realize that the only reason music and art were ever really associated were the necessities of the distribution chain. So while I value the memory and pleasure the records, and their packaging have brought me, I appreciate the technological advances and advantages. I will still go to CD stores to satisfy my musical consumerism until new methods of distribution become better established, but I feel content that I will adapt to the next paradigm, and I take comfort in knowing that I probably won't have to wrestle my walker through the security gate of the local retailer.