Some musings on the record store

It’s 2024, and I like going to the record store because I like seeing these physical objects, feeling them in my hands, flipping through them. There's something deeply nostalgic about that for me despite growing up in the era of cassettes & CDs.

As a teenager, some of the best times I remember having spent with my Dad were the trips we took to Tower Records to wander around for an hour or two browsing through everything. And prior to that, just going to Sam Goody or the used bookstore or whatever, seeing all the albums, thinking about all the different possibilities, the different experiences I could have that were waiting in any of those albums.

I was fortunate to get a job stocking shelves at Tower several years later, in the twilight of its existence, and to this day, that minimum wage job (that I got fired from) was some of the most fulfilling work I’ve ever done.

My daughter giving the Kinks a spin

The flattening of that discovery experience into yet another thing that I just scroll and click through, staring into the glowing glass, alone - it leaves too much out. Too much of the sensory essence is missing.

So that's part of why I still buy records, I guess. It's like paying for the pleasure of feeling like a kid again. Listening to them feels more like how it used to when I’d buy a tape or a CD and bring it home. It was just the thing - the music - there wasn't anything else stuck to it.

I think what I wanted to get at, in writing this reflection, is what kinds of records am I buying these days, and why? I could loosely group them into a couple categories…

There’s newer music that I'm just beginning to love, or learned to love in the post-CD era, that I've never had a 'physical' connection with, and that I want to cement my relationship with, for lack of a better concept. (For me this is stuff like Foals and Khruangbin, RTJ, Bonobo, IDLES, Tame Impala, etc.)

Then there's the nostalgic impulse - albums that I once loved in a different format, and want to continue my relationship with - records I want to 'grow old' with, perhaps - Hot Water Music and the Appleseed Cast, Beastie Boys and the Pharcyde. There are so many potentials for this category that I am kind of careful about adding to it - if I tried to buy every CD I ever bought again on vinyl, I wouldn't quite run out of funding, but the guilt would start to overwhelm me - always knowing in the back of my mind that this is not a utilitarian purchase, that I could just listen to the shit on Spotify for 'free.'

The last category I think is music that kind of pre-dates me as a listener, but which occupies such an exalted place in popular music or personal history that I am coming around to finally hearing it and appreciating it and wanting to get to know it deeply - Billie Holliday, Jimmy Buffet, Coltrane, and all the old records passed on by my Dad.

So. That’s some of the reasons why I’m still buying records, in 2024.

Support your local record store!