Closing Shop? Don't Let The Used Record Store Become Extinct

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Closing Shop? Don't Let The Used Record Store Become Extinct
by Nick Law - November 21, 2008

A favorite used record store of mine

I grew up in a town that didn’t have one single used record store. The closest thing we had was a shady discount goods store that just happened to have a music section, which usually consisted of about 4 cases of tapes that were almost 90% Hangin’ Tough by New Kids on the Block and Sports by Huey Lewis and the News. Once I bought 5 copies of each, my town didn’t seem to have much more to offer musically.

You can imagine my surprise when I got to college and started to see how the other half lived. Not only did the university library keep several titles on reserve, but students were actually allowed to purchase discounted albums at many of the city’s used record stores with a valid student ID.

I had to wonder to myself if every college town was like this. I certainly hoped so as many campuses seemed to have a unique mix of personalities. Just walking down the street you could see them traveling in packs. I started to feel like Steve Irwin on my many trips to and from class. Look over there! It’s a group of Goth kids. Crikey, I’ve never seen so many of ‘em this close before. Oy mate, would you have a look at the size of the hippie over there!

As fascinated as I was to always see these cliques sticking with their own kind, it never ceased to amaze me when I walked into the used record store and saw them mingling. That’s what makes a used record store so great. Not only can a college student find cheap, hard to find music all in one place, but the people are being brought together. It sometimes felt like the United Nations, only smaller and with a distinct hint of weed coming from somewhere.

You can imagine my disappointment when I heard one year later that the university had plans of selling land to Wal-Mart for the construction of a brand new super center just outside of town. The new Wal-Mart was going to feature a state of the art entertainment section that would have thousands of new and rare albums at undercutting prices. If you’re a broke college student on a fixed income, where do you think you’ll go?

It’s 6 years later now and the used record store that I once loved has been long out of business. They stopped selling albums during my senior year and tried to sell posters instead. When that plan didn’t work, they decided to sell Halloween costumes and wigs all year long. Still no word on how that plan has panned out.

I’m not going to sit here and say that Wal-Mart is the devil. I believe that retail supermarkets will always have a place so long as there’s a society that needs them. All I’m blaming Wal-Mart and other major retailers for is making what should be hard to find music easily accessible to a general audience that doesn’t appreciate it.

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