Musings on Record Store Day

Yesterday was Record Store Day, an annual, nationwide, well-intentioned attempt to get people back to record stores – specifically, independent neighborhood stores. Whether it ultimately is successful long-term in stemming the tide of online purchasing and downloading of music, or just a last-gasp effort from a doomed industry, I enjoy RSD and treat it as a holiday of sorts. On this day (it's been going on since 2008), my kids know to leave me alone and let me commune with thousands of pieces of plastic.

They don’t quite understand my fascination with record stores, of course. Being 14 and four, they (well, the older one anyway) get their music from the radio, YouTube, and any number of music-sharing sites. The idea of cracking a cellophane seal, handling a disc, God forbid flipping a platter that had to be removed from not one but two sleeves after 15-20 minutes to hear another 15-20 minutes of music speckled with pops, is as beyond their comprehension as a washboard is to me.

I, too, no antiquated primate, have downloaded plenty of songs from the Internet. It’s faster and cheaper, though the physical space savings are offset by the amount of hard disk space they take up on my computer. Many websites also offer free (and illegal) downloads of albums, as well as bootlegged live recordings you would never find at most reputable record stores.

To offset the allure of sit-on-your-ass music procurement, Record Store Day has become a trigger for the creation of special products to be sold or distributed at RSD-participating stores. These are publicized well in advance and as a result many stores see long lines of collectors (and, unfortunately, eBay resellers) assembling outside hours prior to opening. This means that many of the most coveted items sell out quickly, which is a shame for those of us of a certain age that may be coaching their kid’s soccer game that morning. But from the perspective of a local, independent record store, this is the whole point of RSD and a signal of its success. For that one day, anyway, hordes fill the stores.

Every RSD, I enjoy picking up special sampler discs and other cool stuff. The store I frequent, part of a legendary local chain called Newbury Comics, uses RSD as an excuse to give away piles of promotional materials that have been taking up space in their storeroom. Posters, stickers, magnets, poor-selling or promo-only albums are free for the taking. I’ve often found wonderful treasures in these piles. Just yesterday, I came away with a Beach Boys 78 rpm set that features official and alternate takes of “Good Vibrations” and “Heroes and Villains” over four ten-inch sides on sale for $9.59, the new CD by The Band’s Robbie Robertson on sale for only $7.99, two free jazz CDs, a free t-shirt for a movie I’ve never heard of, and a free promotional poster for Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin. Two years ago, I got a free orange-vinyl single by Brian Wilson so he’s become sort of an RSD totem for me.


Still, no matter how much fun RSD can be, to me the allure of being in a record store is not about the products or the pricing. Rather, it’s the atmosphere, the community. A record store like an archives or a library. There’s history there, and lots and lots to learn. Some of my favorite music-buying experiences have happened in record stores where I was shown something or where I had the opportunity to point something out to someone else. It’s the sharing of information, sharing the passion for music and musicians, that makes record stores indispensable, and no music BBS or Amazon review section can replace the hands-on, face-to-face experience of seeing someone’s eyes light up when a rare album is found or a new, exciting sound is discovered.

If you’ve read the book or seen the movie High Fidelity, you get a sense of what I’m talking about. But here are a couple of examples from my experience of how being in the physical presence of others in a record store helped me to find music of great personal value to me.


1979: I had just gotten into the progressive group Gentle Giant. I was in a now-defunct store called Popcorn, which had a large selection of import LPs. I was looking through the domestic Giant albums, and then looked in the import section. I noticed that there were two albums with the same exact cover art, except that one just said Gentle Giant on the front and the other said Gentle Giant/Three Friends on the front and a list of songs on the back. I was holding the two albums side by side, apparently looking confused, until a salesperson came over and told me that Three Friends was the group’s third album but only the first to be released in the U.S. The other one was the rarer eponymous first album. That’s the one I ended up buying and it contained a song called "Funny Ways" that became very important to me (though a female friend sneeringly calls it "Progboy's Lament") and cemented the group as a favorite.


1984: Early in the days of CDs, I was not particularly eager to buy digital versions of LPs I already owned and listened to. Instead, I saw CDs as a way to fill gaps in my collection. I’d decided I needed some Pat Metheny because while I was unfamiliar with his music, I understood him to be an artist whom the musically literate must possess works of. I went to a local store and stood next to someone who was browsing through the Metheny section. When he moved on, I took over. It was hard to choose since I had no frame of reference but one recording stood out: As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls, featuring the 20-minute title track. The fellow whose spot I now occupied saw me scrutinizing the disc and asked me if I was familiar with it. I said no, in fact I don’t know any of his albums but I want to buy one. “That’s a great album,” he said, “but it’s not for everyone. It’s very atmospheric and there isn’t really a rhythm section.” Sounds interesting, I said. “You just have to know that it’s pretty different from his other stuff," he continued. "It’s good, but it’s different.” It almost seemed as if he was trying to warn me away from it, but I was only getting more and more intrigued. I thanked him for the information and proceeded to buy it. It’s now a desert-island album of mine.


In truth, I don’t spend much time in record stores anymore, either because I’m chasing my kids through malls or because I don’t have the expendable cash flow to allow me to buy music as I once did (in high school, I would spend $50 a week at a used record store where most of what I bought was priced from $2.99 to $7.99). But whenever I do have the opportunity to visit one, I always feel a sense of belonging, a feeling of being home. I especially like used record stores, where every bin holds a potential surprise, and the smell of old vinyl and cardboard brings back happy memories of my adolescence.

I salute the record stores, past and present, that I have frequented in my life, sources of soul-enriching sounds and sympathetic seekers of musical treasure. Some of these are dead or dying, but some are still around. Thank you Nuggets, Disc Diggers, Looney Tunes, In Your Ear, Popcorn, Good Vibrations, Stereo Jack’s, Cheapo Records, Salem Record Exchange, Main Street Records, Newbury Comics, Tower Records, HMV, Midland Records, and others whose names I can’t remember. I also want to mention the Newton Centre Music Shop, where I made my first music purchase on my own, a 45 rpm single of Andy Kim’s “Rock Me Gently” back in 1972.

Update to earlier post: Brian Wilson and Me

Happened to be on the Facebook page today for Newbury Comics, the CD store I most frequently frequent, and the location of a Brian Wilson signing event last November, as detailed in this blog post. I noticed they had photo albums for their various in-store events, and sure enough they had 11 photos from the Wilson event. As I browsed the photos, I was very pleasantly surprised to find that ninth in the series was one of me getting my CDs signed by Brian! So I just added it to the post. You can read or reread the whole post here, or just enjoy the pic below.

Brian Wilson Day-Night Double-Header - Part I

Brian Wilson is in Boston today. Frequent or occasional readers probably know that Brian Wilson is my greatest living hero and musical idol. (My greatest non-living hero is Abraham Lincoln, whom I'm led to understand couldn't carry a tune.) In fact, the title of this here blog, "Dove Nested Towers" is a phrase that appears in Brian's most masterful composition, in my opinion, "Surf's Up." Originally composed in 1966, finally released by the Beach Boys in 1971, and recorded under his own name in 2004, "Surf's Up" is a four-minute epic in which a concert audience takes in the fall of civilizations and the emerging world-weariness of post-JFK America. And yet, at the end, there's a hopeful note, a brighter future, and it's in the form of what? A medical marvel? An advanced computer? The words of a statesman or the weapon of a soldier?

No. It's a children's song. The way forward will come from innocence, simplicity, and youthful optimism. That was Brian Wilson's way forward, too.

Surf's Up
Brian Wilson/Van Dyke Parks

A diamond necklace played the pawn
Hand in hand some drummed along
To a handsome mannered baton
A blind class aristocracy
Back through the opera glass you see
The pit and the pendulum drawn

Columnated ruins domino
Canvass the town and brush the backdrop
Are you sleeping?

Hung velvet overtaken me
Dim chandelier awaken me
To a song dissolved in the dawn
The music hall a costly bow
The music all is lost for now
To a muted trumpeter swan

Columnated ruins domino
Canvass the town and brush the backdrop
Are you sleeping, Brother John?

Dove nested towers the hour was
Strike the street quicksilver moon
Carriage across the fog
Two-step to lamp lights cellar tune
The laughs come hard in Auld Lang Syne

The glass was raised, the fired-roast
The fullness of the wine, the dim last toasting
While at port adieu or die
A choke of grief heart hardened I
Beyond belief a broken man too tough to cry

Surf's Up
Aboard a tidal wave
Come about hard and join
The young and often spring you gave
I heard the word
Wonderful thing
A children's song

A children's song
Have you listened as they played
Their song is love
And the children know the way


Brian Wilson fell as surely as did any ancient civilization, in a swirl of drugs, mental illness, obesity, and neglect. Yet today he is fit, clean (except for prescribed psychotropics), musically and physically active, and productive, having released his 10th solo album (including one album credited to Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks) earlier this year, called That Lucky Old Sun.



So today, Brian appeared at Newbury Comics in Faneuil Hall to sign autographs at noon, and tonight he performs the album in its entirety (in addition to the usual supercatalog of hits) at the Orpheum Theatre. Faneuil Hall is a lovely tourist spot to walk around on a summer day, but not the easiest place to get to when you're coming from 12 miles north of the city and have to drop your oldest daughter off at school probably an equal distance west of the city. There's no parking and in addition, the temperature was in the 20s with a wind chill that made it feel like 0.

The plan was that Newbury Comics were allowing people to line up as early as 7am, then they would open their doors at 8am so people could come in, buy the new album, and get a wristband for the autograph session. Then we had to wait outside until noon. I knew I'd be lucky to get there much before 9am, so I was stressed and worried that the wristbands would be gone before I arrived. I weighed various options, including parking near my daughter's school and taking a bus, but I'd probably get a ticket; parking in a garage near Faneuil Hall, which would be very expensive; or parking at work (Boston's South End) and hustling to take any combination of bus and train that would get me to Faneul Hall ASAP. I opted for the latter approach. I missed the bus that would take me quickly and warmly to a subway station, so I walked fast and ran, the cold air burning my lungs, got on a train, got off nearby, and ran through traffic to get to Newbury Comics. I did, in fact, arrive before 9am. But was I lucky?

As it turned out, the weather (or ungenerous employers) kept a lot of Brian fans away in the early morning hours, so I was actually 10th in line. That was wonderful. Waiting in the cold was not. Fortunately, however, the Newbury Comics staff were very kind and they worked out a way that most of us could wait inside if we kept to certain places along the walls that didn't obstruct fire exits or other businesses. We passed the time talking about our lives with Brian.

There was a time, early in Brian's reemergence a remarkable 20 years ago now, when I would hold my breath whenever he appeared on TV, at a book signing, or in concert. I feared he would fail somehow, that the pressure or the unpredictability would set him off or shut him down. But he has always been a remarkably strong and committed trouper. I've seen him blow lines but he went on like the seasoned pro that he is. At this point, I'm sure he's done more live shows as a solo artist than he did with the Beach Boys. It's OK now. If I'm breathless at a Brian Wilson show now, it's because of the music, not because of my paternal concern for his well-being.

Brian was in a wonderful mood this morning. He smiled, said hi to people, even sang along a little to the new album, which was playing in the store. There were fairly strict rules about what he would sign and what we could and couldn't do (we could take photos in line but not stand next to him or touch him), and as soon as our stuff was signed we were whisked back out to the freezing street. But before I took my freshly autographed items off the table, I said, "Thank you, Brian. Your music really means a lot to me."

And really, what was cool about this morning, this day of meeting Brian ever so briefly, was not what I got but what I felt. Gratitude. And for the first time in a long time, the sense that I was lucky.