By Buck Edwards
Music lovers of a certain age get misty-eyed when the subject of record stores comes up in conversation. Now, you readers under 30 will probably roll your eyes at this, but you have very little to contribute to society anyway, so feel free to tune out as usual. To the rest of you: remember that feeling of walking into a really great record store with some cash in your pocket and a vague idea that somewhere in the racks of discs, those caverns of cassettes, those vistas of vinyl—somewhere there was a record that would prove to be the best music you ever bought.
My record-store Valhalla was the Peaches in Greensboro, NC. The store was about 45 minutes from where I grew up, so I didn’t get to go very often, but when I did…glorious. It was huge. It had, seemingly, everything. New releases. Old stand-bys. Special orders. Imports. Rarities. I remember, in high school, tracking down Led Zeppelin’s “Hey Hey What Can I Do” on 45, the B-side of “Immigrant Song.” Later the cut was included on the first CD box set, and thus wasn’t special or scarce anymore, but for a while I was a musical king among my peers. I’d even bought extra copies to sell to my friends, at a markup.
Now everything’s available for download, and both the big chains (remember the awe you felt just hearing about the NYC Tower Records?) and the mom ‘n’ pop stores have closed up shop just about everywhere they once operated, but a few stores are hanging on, and a number of them, including our own CD Central, are participating in the 2011 Record Store Day, on April 16.
What’s so great about Record Store Day? Try limited-edition vinyl from Warner Brothers; I just about shat myself when I saw the five-album Flaming Lips collection on 120-gram stock. Try special releases of all sorts of stuff: live Floyd, rare New York Dolls, a single (!) from Opeth…this is what it used to be like, man! So close the iTunes app and go get your music the way God, by which I mean Buddy Holly, meant for you to get it: live and in person.
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