July 20, 2006
RECORD STORES, PART 8
Matthew Perpetua: "I feel a bit strange when people talk about hostile record store clerks, because in all of my experience (and it's pretty extensive from 1994 up through 2002 or so), it's always been a neutral interaction for me. I've always thought the clerks at the Kim's stores were creeps, but that's really not the same thing as them being hostile toward me. My favorite New York record shop has always been Other Music, and contrary to the experiences may other people report, most of their employees over the years have been really friendly to me. But 95% of the time, it's really just a person sitting there taking your money and you leave. Maybe it's always been easy on me because the only questions I ever ask are along the lines of "is this still in stock? do you maybe have one in the back?" and I rarely engage record store clerks in any sort of conversation that they don't begin themselves.
At this point in my life, I am dealing with a daily (over)flow of CD promos coming my way, and the last thing I want is to actually buy more of them when they clutter up my apartment, and I only listen to music on my computer or on my ipod. I don't even have a stereo. Most of my time spent in record shops is occupied by either browsing for things that I have not heard and want to check to see if they are good enough for my site(s), or selling promo CDs. But I do fondly recall burning regrettable sums of money in record shops when I was a teenager, and things were still new and magical.
I remember the first time I ever went to a real indie record shop. I was taking a weekend art class at Pratt when I was a senior in high school, and I must have asked my classmates if they knew any good shops. This lovely girl named Lucianna brought me to Kim's on Bleecker, and it just blew my mind. I'm fairly certain that I bought The Fall's 'A-Sides' album that day.
Anyway, in terms of bad clerks, record store people tend to be worse than comic shop and book store folks, but definitely not as bad as music gear or video store clerks."
Posted by Sasha at July 20, 2006 04:02 PM | TrackBack