I’ve listed here some cool sites/articles I’ve seen in my travels about record stores.
Ben Sisario wrote a great article originally in the NY Times
and later published and updated on his blog Crime’s Against Music
which tracked New York record stores as of 2008 listing which had gone out of business and which were still open with a map that tracked their locations.
A link to a list of used record stores throughout the world by Piero Scaruffi.
the Vinyl District provides a free app that lets you find the record store nearest to you.
Link to Record World commercial, circa 1978. Can’t find a picture of the store (still looking) but in the meantime this ad will have to do.
The NY Times reports that vinyl is making a comeback … “Turntables, those once arcane machines for playing records, have staged a big comeback as hipster essentials … If you need a gift for someone who stays ahead of the trends, what could be better than some vinyl with a high cool factor?” NY Times, The Secrets of a High Quality Vinyl Records, May 31, 2012.
The Vancouver Sun similarly reports that vinyl sales are up, with numbers to back it up. In an article titled What Goes Around Comes Around: Vinyl records spin higher sales by Misty Harris, the Sun reports that album sales rose from 857,000 units in 2005 to 3,868,000 units in 2011, and are climbing yet again in 2012. This article originally appeared in the Vancouver Sun, and now appears on the website O.Canada.com
Turntabling is a blog that contains a section titled Vinyl Road Rage, where the authors report (complete with pictures) on their tour of independent record stores throughout the country. You can also find a link in my Blog roll.
40 sad portraits of closed record stores from BuzzFeed.
List Of Dead Indie Record Stores courtsey of the blog GoJohnnyGo, has a long list of closed record stores mainly in the mid west, with some pictures mostly of adversting materials.
And what list of Record Store links would be complete without a link to High Fidelity John Cusack’s 2000 movie about a record store owner and his loves. Great scenes inside the record store, featuring in addition to John Cusack, Jack Black as one of the two store clerks.
Bill Kelly Teenage Wasteland . If you want to learn more about 60s garage/punk, or revivalist bands that continue to play music with the same spirit ( or the occasional 60s girl group) then Bill Kelly is your man. Bill has long dj’d a weekly 2 hour show on WFMU that is graciously available on the Internet, including archives of past shows and set lists. A great place to listen and learn from one of the best. The link will take you to archives of the radio program.
Unoffical Guide To Music in Greenwich Village and More: March 1995 by Bob Garjarsky features an extended listing of record stores in Greenwich Village and elsewhere, including Hoboken, with a description of each store and its offerings, all circa 1995/1996.
The World’s Largest Record Collection is displayed in this YouTube video by Rocketboom/Sean Dunne. Belonging to Paul Mawhinney, former owner of Record Rama, it features over 1 Million albums and 1.5 million singles, including what he claims is the first ever flat disc, from 1881.
Here’s a fun link to a You Tube video commemorating The Free People’s Store complete with store jingle. Quite hilarious, the video features ads of a record store that operated in Pittsburgh circa 1969 – 1973,
