Friday 11 April 2008

The Apparent Death of the Record Store

In summer last year i was visiting the new, spacious, quite lovely (in a nerdy way) Rough Trade East store on Bricklane. Its pretty swank, but I haven't really been back since then... I'm buying records online now or getting my fix through blogs and the like... anyway as i was flipping through the CDs i was surprised to find Chris Crouch from Melbourne's Polyester Records lurking in the aisle over. He was in town on holiday, and was excited about this new store and told me he was also set to open his second Polyester store in Melbourne. I was a little dumbfounded at his logic, especially with the drop in physical CD sales worldwide and the growth in downloads etc, but sure enough it is now open (at 288 Flinders Lane Melbourne) and is hopefully doing a roaring trade, in spite of my skepticism.

So anyway, I remembered all this as i was reading NPR's Monitor Mix blog written by ex-Sleater Kinny guitar-slinger Carrie Brownstein. She's always onto something awesome, and this recent post was talking up Record Store Day which takes place on April 19th in the US. She then goes on to lament the loss of a couple of her fave stores which brought up my own memories of the long lost Au Go Go Records which strangely enough still has an online presence. Its where i first bought records by Spiderbait, Dirty Three, Tortoise, Mogwai, The Dirtbombs and more. Plus fanzines like Spunk (which is now one of Australia's biggest indie labels) and rare 7" records from Kyuss and Pavement. Damn, i'm getting sentimental! So check out her post, and leave your own comment if you're on a "lets remember the good ol' days" trip too.

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