RIP Record Stores...

I should’ve known sooner that this happened, but a requiem is due for Spaceboy Records, an incredible place where I spent way too much money and unnecessary time. If you ask anyone that frequented the place, as soon as they moved to the new location, something was missing. Their old spot, directly next to Zipperhead, the Philadelphia punk gear mainstay, was a better place – long CD racks lining the walls of a thin store, with a bit more expansive upstairs featuring copious vinyl and used discs. Regardless of the address, I’ll always miss the curmudgeonly clerks, the glorious and painful decision making process and the strange sounds popping out of the soundsystem. (Sample conversation – Me: “Hey, this is nice, who is this?” Clerk: obviously doing noting “Pfffff. Uh, Supersystem” Me: face reddening “Oh.”) It’s a tragic loss for South Street, a once booming area for music, obviously taken over by a less corporeal, much more anonymous setting – the internet.

Not only that, file-sharing can count Tower Records another victim as all 70 stores are now up sale. Say what you will about their stores, but Tower, to me, always had superior selection and a great atmosphere to buy music. I bought all my Archers of Loaf CDs there in eighth grade, found out about great magazines like the Wire, and some great Jazz stuff I didn’t know where else to find.

It’s an unfortunate thing for the (nostalgic) collector, as the physical reminder is being replaced by gigs and drives. No longer do we have a smell, feel or look to a record, a depiction of what may or may not lie inside. Rather, you have a flat page of iTunes, listing everything alphabetically and by play count popularity. It’s really not important but only underscores the fact that music is and always has been ubiquitous and, recently, marketing driven. Now we’ve just taken the pointless stuff away – the artist, the packaging, etc. – to focus on the one thing that matters: the music.

But, damn am I gonna miss the quaintness of Spaceboy.