Record Stores

So...online music is great and iTunes has changed everything but...I miss record stores. I know I am dating myself even more but I really miss browsing different record stores to see what I could find. Record stores...records are an anchronism. Some old people like me have turn tables but the only other people who have them are elitists and bands seem to put out some things on vinyl primarily just to prove how cool they are. So when I say I miss record stores what I mean is I miss records AND CD stores. I don’t have any problem with CD’s other then the tiny liner notes that my old eyes do not handle allthe tiny liner notes all that well.



Growing up there used to be all kinds of St. Louis record store options. A lot of small shops and department stores all had record departments. This was back when their were 45’s but they held on into the Album era and then the record stores came in. There was the Peaches chain and no one in town was really cool unless they were keeping their albums in a Peaches crate. It was as big as a super market with aisles and ailes of music and if it was out there to be found they normally had it. They were bought out while i was in college by the much larger Sound Warehouse chain and things kind of went to hell after that.

Streetside records reigned for a long time. They had a hip Webster location and a hipper U-City location and as they expanded the chain they seemed to hire knowledgable people and were good places to shop. In expanding the chain they brough a lot of convenience and they held on till the late nineties before compressing back into what I believe are only two stores left. One in St. Louis, one in Columbia. Sadly at this point in time they do not even have a web site and other then for hip hop music in St. Louis have faded into irrelevence. I could not even find one of their logos on line.



Sometime during their reign Best Buy and Circuit City starting selling music and Circuit City stunk but there was a hay day where you could find all kinds of obscure stuff and imports at the Best Buy on Watson. There was was some great stuff there for a few years I assume because they had a musichead manager.

That came to an end and about that time Barnes and Noble and Borders started to really get into the music business and you started to be able to get stuff on line. A few smaller stores survice but both selection and service are eclectic and can be somewhat annoying at places like "Now Hear This." We do still have the hallowed Vintage Vinyl store on the loop and Euclid Records in Webster. Those are places where you can hear something obscure being played when you shop and get into an annoying discussion with the staff about what was REALLY the best album by the band "Soul Coughing." But those kind of discussions are few and far between and the people at barnes and Noble and BordersBetween file sharing with Napster and the others before they became legalized and with Limeware and Soulseek afterwords. iTunes we discussed above but there are a lot of places to buy music online, sometimes fromt he record companies directly and sometimes from the artist site directly I cannot say enough times...online changed everything