I've always loved music. My earliest memories involve music. I can still remember the first recording I bought. It was The Beatles' "Hey Jude" release...on 8 track. I bought it at a neighbor's garage sale for a princely sum of 50 cents. That was big money for a 5 year old in 1971. I could have bought a can of soda and a candy bar...or two comic books...but something told me to buy this. I liked it...wasn't completely knocked out...but I enjoyed it. Until I hit double digits, all I really wanted to listen to was classical music. I liked the big sounds of full orchestras, the auditorium reverb on solo piano recordings, the odd, pinched sounds of the harpsichord on baroque pieces...it was all about sound. Then I discovered Kiss...and Queen. More big sounds...sounds that still stop me in my tracks, especially Brian May's guitar sounds.
Back in those days, the medium of choice for most music fans was the 12", 33 1/3 rpm vinyl record. These were works of art on many levels. For starters, they were big. You could hold it in your hands and know that you had something important enough that a company put some time, effort and money into it. I'd read up on how records were made and I knew that studios were filled with expensive equipment, "engineers" were involved and this obviously cost money. It was obvious that artists created visual works of art when they created the album covers. You'd slide the record out of the sleeve, place it on the turntable and gingerly place the needle at the edge. You'd hear that vinyl hiss and it was your cue to get ready for music!
Record stores were everywhere. I bought my first records at a department store...yes, most department stores had a record section back then. I'd buy them down at Mr. Wiggs, in the Hollywood shopping plaza near our house. I'd look at the racks and racks of records and wonder what each album sounded like. I wanted them all. Except for the pop stuff...or disco. You could tell just by touching them that they were 'wrong'. They felt cheap in comparison to rock, classical, blues, jazz, etc.
Even in the small town where I grew up, we had two record stores at the local mall. We had The Listening Booth (home of one of my first crushes, Janice) and National Record Mart. God, I loved those stores. Rack after rack of records! The smell of shrink wrap, cardboard and vinyl...it was intoxicating to me! All of those records...just waiting to be heard! It was always a dizzying experience for me.
Once I started to play guitar, my musical addiction only got worse. My whole world became listening to music and creating my own sounds on guitar (I was never very big on copying other people's sounds). A family friend, Bacon, gave me a copy of The Beatles' "Introducing The Beatles" on VeeJay Records and a very worn copy of Jimi Hendrix's "Electric Ladyland". My mind was completely blown. Recorded within a few years of each other (oh yes, I read all of those jacket notes!) I was amazed at the different sounds. To me, that's what music is all about: sounds. The sounds equated to emotions. I could have cared less about lyrics (that came later). It was like all of the great classical music I'd listened to. Big sounds. The juxtaposition of different instruments playing together. The Beatles were more 'proper' sounding. Hendrix just sounded like an explosion at an insane asylum. I loved them both. Kiss started to release crap (really? a disco song?) so I ignored them and concentrated on The Beatles, as they had more records than almost anyone else. Each album was a new adventure. A dozen or so new songs to lose myself in. Anything was better than the reality of being a sickly fat kid with a speech impediment in a small town in Ohio. 
Always a voracious reader, my personal library started to fill up with books on different bands, different musical genres, music history, books about instruments, etc. Oh yeah...it was an obsession. It would have had an impact on my education...except dad offered a deal. A new record for each "A" I got on my report card. School was never difficult for me anyway, so this just sounded like an easy way to get more records. I mowed lawns, shoveled snow, anything to get more records. I would bug our mother to distraction to feed my addiction. I once even sunk as low at to attempt to steal a record. Oh yes...I got in BIG trouble for that episode.
Being a Beatles fan introduced me to a small section in the record stores that most of my friends seemed to ignore: the import section. There were all of these records that were being sold, seemingly, everywhere but the US! There were different covers, different songs, different versions of songs...it was maddening! How could I ever complete my collection??? Why was the British version of "A Hard Day's Night" so much better than the American version? So many questions...so many records...so little time...and money!
By the time I reached high school, record stores were starting to change. Slowly at first, but they were changing. The records themselves were thinner...lower quality. And there were more and more cassette tapes being sold. Sure, they still had 8 tracks too...but really, who wanted those? I always hated them. The track would always change in the middle of a song...pissed me off to no end! No Mr. Walker, they were NOT Dyn-O-Mite!
Our dad bought one of the first Walkmans around. At around $300, it was a pretty amazing, high quality device for reproducing sound. Odd, I thought, as dad usually listened to some real crap. Banjo music, Celtic stomping, bagpipes, all sorts of weird crap (that I now love!). Why would he want or need to hear this in a high quality format? (a lesson I learned later) A year or so later, a lower quality version of the Walkman was readily available for about $20 and everyone had one. I liked the idea, at first. I could listen to music anywhere. I had a giant boom box too...but let's be honest, those were a drag to haul around. I could stick the Walkman in my inside coat pocket, headphones either on my head or wrapped around my neck, and my bookbag filled more with tapes than books. I had everything on cassette by this point. All of my Beatles, Hendrix, Queen, Rolling Stones, Ramones, Sex Pistols, various ska, punk, classical, new wave, you name it...I had it on a tape in that bag.
By this point, I had a number of friends at the record stores...including my beloved Janice. 10 years older than me and still made my heart skip a beat. AND SHE WORKED IN A RECORD STORE! How cool was that? Anyhoo, my friends at the record stores would often make my day or week by GIVING me promotional copies of new records...for free. FREE! Remember, this was small town Ohio...the Violent Femmes were NOT going to sell many copies there. At least once a week, I'd come home with a stack of new records. This was no small feat as I walked everywhere...and it was a few miles from our house to the mall...and there were hills. Still, I carried those records all the way home, gave them a spin on the turntable and dubbed the tracks I liked onto a cassette for future listening on the Walkman. The the unthinkable happened. The records, slowly, started to vanish. In their place were shelves and shelves of cassette tapes. I was OK with this...but was already missing the records. And I still hadn't found the "Beatles For Sale" record yet! My sister and one brother had both been suckered into the Columbia Record House catalogue mess. 8 records for 80 cents, or something like it, provided you read the small print and had to buy X number of records at the regular price. I scoured the Columbia House catalogue for "Beatles For Sale" to no avail. I did buy a couple of records through my sister's account: one of them being The Rutles record. I always hated ordering records through the mail. They were usually scratched when you got them.
Around 1983 or so, my buddy Harry at National Record Mart introduced me to a new medium: the compact disc. He played me a Rolling Stones record on CD, and damn if didn't sound like they were right there in the room with you. But, at $20 a pop, compared to $8-10 for a record or $5-10 for a cassette, there was no way they were going to catch on...no matter how good they sounded. I knew then that the average listener didn't want quality...they wanted convenience. Some things haven't changed.
Cassettes were the norm for the next 10 years or so. Sure, some folks bought into the CD fad, and they eventually came down in price. By the time I finally got a CD player in 1998, I had a stack of discs that people had given me. Friends in other bands, friends at record companies, and of course the friends who worked at the so-called record stores (that no longer sold vinyl records)...I had quite a collection of music that I'd never listened to...because I couldn't.
When I started listening to these CDs, I liked the quality...but missed the warmth (and even the hiss) of vinyl. Music had completely gone from a collector's market to a convenience market...and the awful music being promoted by the major labels had only gotten worse. While the digital medium is easier to record and mix in, it loses a lot of the sound. I don't care what any of the great Google experts have to say on the subject, nothing sounds as good as a quality slab of deep-grooved vinyl played on a good turntable with a good stylus and decent-good speakers or headphones.
Record stores, for all intents and purposes had died. Gone were the racks of record albums. Even the shelves of cassettes were gone. It was all CDs...and they too started to die off. The download became king. I recall a commercial for an internet provider and there was an attractive Asian girl saying "Now I can finally download music...like everyone else". That was the death knell to me. "Everyone else". Music was no longer special.
People were downloading everything they could get their hands on...usually for free. Napster, SoulSeek, you name it...there was a way to get it for free. The musicians, songwriters, and even the labels cried foul! But the masses ignored them. Laws were passed. A few people went to court. Yet the downloads continued. The people killed music. Plain and simple. Music died at the hands of those who claimed to love it.
Record stores have been experiencing a small resurgence. Don't get too excited. Most of what they're selling is old records. Sure, there's millions of hours of great stuff out there to be heard and bought. The prices are generally pretty good too. One trip to Jerry's in Squirrel Hill and you can drop $100 and come home with a good 10 or 20 new (to you) records. But the new releases are still few and far between. Even the indie bands are hit or miss on this resurgence. It's just cheaper to record digitally. Transferring from digital to vinyl is costly and requires a good engineer who knows his/her stuff. And why bother? Anyone can still just download the same song for free. Not a whole lot of incentive out there for the musician, aside from ego. (and yes, that's still intact)
Long gone are the old record stores. Lord knows where Janice is...but I can guarantee you she ain't selling records. She knew her business. She knew all about the records. She could recommend new stuff, old stuff, imported stuff. She was like a friendly drug dealer in a way. Sure, there are folks still selling records...but again, it's old stuff for the most part. It's more like an antique store. There's no cut out bin where you can find some cheap, weird record that no one wants. The whole store is a cut out bin. Imports? Who cares. If you can't find it in the record store, you can download it. For free. It's not special. People feel they deserve it for free. It's dead.
I still haven't bought "Beatles For Sale". I have all of the songs that were on it. I could easily buy a used copy. It just wouldn't be the same. I've had a recurring dream over the years. In the dream, Janice calls me from the old Listening Booth to tell me she found me a mint, unopened copy of "BFS". I run to the store and she gives it to me...and not just the record! Music carries memories with it...or at least it should. Good luck with that today kids. I'm sure you'll have fond memories of that first pirated bootleg you downloaded.
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