Nostalgia for Rabbit Trails in Record Stores
A few days ago, I was talking with a friend of mine when he recommended a particular cd to me. He didn't just out and out start the conversation with the name of the band/cd (Liquid Tension Experiment 2, by the way), but it came from a conversation about the bass player Tony Levin who plays on that cd. That made me somewhat nostalgic for record stores.
When I was in my teens, the local mall had two record shops, one of which was a national chain called The Record Bar. There was also the new kid on the block, Cat's Records, Tapes, and CDs which showed up in town about the same time as the all new Blockbuster movie rental store. What I was nostalgic for wasn't so much the stores themselves, though I do miss them, but the conversations at the stores.
Before the Internet, one of the great ways to learn information with the same level of reliability as the Internet was to talk to people.
"Hey, when is Pink Floyd going to put out a new album?"
"Well, I heard...." or "Well, there was an article in Rolling Stone..." or "There was a thing on MTV about that last week..."
It may have sounded speculative, but it didn't have the contrived sense of omniscience that one finds today. That conversation would be like this:
"Hey, when is Pink Floyd going to put out a new album?"
"Well, let me see," and then they proceed to pull out their phone and check Google. "Next month." End of conversation.
In the old record stores, after the talk of when the new cd was going to come out, something else would happen. The person behind the counter or walking the aisles would then offer a suggestion or a tangent. "You like Pink Floyd? Did you hear David Gilmour's new one? Did you hear about Roger Waters?" etc. That conversation would lead to different cds and more information about the band in general than you may have expected. It also connected you to the person that worked there. Especially if you were a return customer. The next time you came in: "Hey, just heard about that new Pink Floyd cd..."
It was connectivity in a pre-online age. And it worked pretty well.
Now in the age of pseudo-omniscience, we miss the rabbit trails of natural conversation. Big box stores don't connect. If they can't find the cd you want, too bad. Try again on Tuesday when the trucks come in.
I miss those stores and I miss those rabbit trails. Because they could often lead to great new discoveries.
When I was in my teens, the local mall had two record shops, one of which was a national chain called The Record Bar. There was also the new kid on the block, Cat's Records, Tapes, and CDs which showed up in town about the same time as the all new Blockbuster movie rental store. What I was nostalgic for wasn't so much the stores themselves, though I do miss them, but the conversations at the stores.
Before the Internet, one of the great ways to learn information with the same level of reliability as the Internet was to talk to people.
"Hey, when is Pink Floyd going to put out a new album?"
"Well, I heard...." or "Well, there was an article in Rolling Stone..." or "There was a thing on MTV about that last week..."
It may have sounded speculative, but it didn't have the contrived sense of omniscience that one finds today. That conversation would be like this:
"Hey, when is Pink Floyd going to put out a new album?"
"Well, let me see," and then they proceed to pull out their phone and check Google. "Next month." End of conversation.
In the old record stores, after the talk of when the new cd was going to come out, something else would happen. The person behind the counter or walking the aisles would then offer a suggestion or a tangent. "You like Pink Floyd? Did you hear David Gilmour's new one? Did you hear about Roger Waters?" etc. That conversation would lead to different cds and more information about the band in general than you may have expected. It also connected you to the person that worked there. Especially if you were a return customer. The next time you came in: "Hey, just heard about that new Pink Floyd cd..."
It was connectivity in a pre-online age. And it worked pretty well.
Now in the age of pseudo-omniscience, we miss the rabbit trails of natural conversation. Big box stores don't connect. If they can't find the cd you want, too bad. Try again on Tuesday when the trucks come in.
I miss those stores and I miss those rabbit trails. Because they could often lead to great new discoveries.
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