( 11:28 PM )
I’m still in shock that Fantastic Records, an independent music store here in Rochester, NY, is closing its doors after twenty-two years in business. Everything is 30% off. Sure record stores are closing all around the country and Tower Records has filed for bankruptcy, but this hits way too close to home for me. It’s like Cheers closing, or at the end of the flick Mask, when that mute biker dude stutters out “I...love…you Rock-y,” or like when Kyle took a bullet for JB. Yes, very sad.
Worse yet are the unfortunate closings of Manifest Discs and Tapes stores in the Carolinas. They were the Amoeba Music of the east coast. Manifest had it all; access to most anything, competitive prices, organized stores, great staffs and management. My summertime road trips to NC weren’t complete until I spent a couple hours shopping at the Wilmington store.
But it’s not so much the downloading that’s dulled Independents sales; it’s the margins and limited availability of product to them. It makes little sense to compete with retail giants using cheap CD’s as chum to lure shoppers into the TV/Video area.
So where will I now buy my music? Circuit City? Best Buy? Egads, Wal-Mart? From a dickhead wearing a plastic nametag on loan from the computer department? No offense there, computer dweeb-- I just like my salespeople to know music, that’s all. Kiss good-bye the trading and buying of used CD’s, special orders, and counter-culture ambience.
Anyway, at Fantastic, it was like vultures circling a kill; hoarders waited in line with armfuls of stuff, while streams of both kids and adults briskly combed the aisles. I noticed that all the new Doors, Stones, and Zeppelin CD’s were gone, but there was an abundance of Courtney Hole’s new CD’s available. The point—people are plenty willing to buy CD’s at cheap prices—they just don’t care where. Oh yeah, and they still hate you Courtney.
It’s a freakin mystery why it’s cheaper to buy a copy of Wonderland on DVD in 2004 (complete with actual crime scene footage) than it is to buy a CD copy of Van Halen’s Fair Warning – a thirty-minute album released in 1981.
When the music’s over turn out the lights.
( 9:26 PM )
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