If there’s one thrill comparable to hearing music, lots of music fans will tell you, it’s shopping for music. There’s something about those endless racks of records and CDs—that sense of new and colorful and different possibilities—that draws people into a record store. Perhaps that’s why, for so many vinyl (and digital) junkies, a vacation jaunt to an urban center or college town always involves a search for cool, off-the-beaten-path record retailers.
The shopping-out-of-town phenomenon is especially true for local consumers, who have limited options when it comes to record buying. Nashville has no shortage of intriguing used record shops, from The Great Escape’s two locations to Phonoluxe on Nolensville Road, as well as thrift stores and junk shops that might have a Martin Denny record stashed away among a box of Guy Lombardo discards. But these stores’ stock is limited to what customers bring in each day. For new records, we’re left largely with chain stores and mall outlets—retailers that are often too large and generalized to keep up with street-level shifts in taste or interest.
There are exceptions, of course. Ernest Tubb and Lawrence Bros. continue to flourish on Lower Broad selling country albums to tourists, and the past few years have brought a promising wave of small record stores specializing in hip-hop and Latin music. But the sad truth is that Nashville—one of the world’s centers of music performance and production—doesn’t have a single independent record shop with an in-depth selection of underground rock, pop, jazz, and world music.
It might seem like a minor point, but for lots of Nashvillians, it’s a major disappointment. After all, our city is steeped in musical culture—it’s called “Music City,” for crying out loud. Yet without a strong independent record store, the city lacks not only an outlet for unusual and adventurous sounds, but also a place where the city’s musicians and music fans can exchange ideas about music—or about life in general, for that matter. As New York Times writer Ben Ratliff pointed out in a May 7 article about independent vinyl and CD retailers in New York City, record stores serve “as kiosks of information, as places where you can learn about style, slang, art, and sound.”
Examples of these abound throughout the country. At the Jazz Record Mart in Chicago, the staff tells beginners which Ella Fitzgerald CD they’d enjoy most, while record hunters browse through bins of obscurities. Midnight Records in New York City, Waterloo Records in Austin, Music Millennium in Portland, Ore.—these stores are destinations in themselves for tourists and local shoppers. Others are so knowledgeable and influential that they shape tastes, not to mention trends.
It’s not that Nashville hasn’t had treasures like these before. At various times over the years, the city has been home to several notable independently owned record shops: Ernie’s Record Mart, the flagship for blues label Excello Records; Discount Records on Elliston Place; Cat’s Records, legendary for its parking-lot concerts; and, most recently, Lucy’s Record Shop, still operating under new ownership and a new name, Indienet.
Anyone who came of age in the ’80s can attest to the fact that Cat’s Records’ import section was the place where you not only picked up strange and wonderful new sounds, it was a place where you intersected with people whose tastes might influence your own. The same was even truer of Lucy’s Record Shop in the ’90s—a store that encouraged all kinds of interaction through music, film, art, writing, and, of course, simple conversation. At both places, you could meet people of all ages, from different parts of town or different parts of the country.
No disrespect to the Tower Records, Media Plays, and Wherehouse Musics of the world—there’s no argument that these chain stores have a relatively large and diverse selection. Nor would anyone argue that Tower Records on West End, as much as anywhere in this town, serves as a nexus for music fans. But our city also desperately needs a strong, independently owned outlet, and right now, it doesn’t really have one.
The problem is hardly limited to Nashville. The small record shop with music freaks behind the counter and crate after crate of obscure goodies is going the way of the mom-and-pop hardware store, the neighborhood market, and the locally owned bookstore. That doesn’t make its loss any less devastating. True, you can get some of the same perks from online retailers like Dusty Groove and Forced Exposure, whose informed, detailed descriptions are the next best thing to a bearded former deejay at the front counter.
But even the best online service can’t provide the intangible benefits of a cool local record store: The exchange of ideas, the feeling of community, or the satisfaction of pulling up at 8 p.m. on a Thursday night and finding a familiar clerk, a few buddies, or even a fellow music lover you’ve never met picking through the racks. ’Cause you can have a record store, and you can have a place where people hang out, but when you combine the two, it’s a potent combination indeed. There’s something about musical recordings that sparks the imagination—some combination of sounds and sights so neatly assembled into flat little packages that contain untold depths.
It’d be great if some visionary music fan with lots of disposable cash decided to set up shop somewhere in town—in 12South, or Hillsboro Village, or along West End. But it seems unlikely that’ll happen. Instead, on the edges of the city, small independent record retailers are struggling to stay in business, either serving a small constituency or desperately trying to feed the tastes of people who tend to get lured into bigger, better advertised stores. Give these folks your business, and you might even help build a better community.
Better shop around
After searching across town, we found a handful of niche stores that we’d consider first-rate establishments in their chosen field of expertise. In each case, the record vendor focuses on a specific kind of music, serving listeners whose tastes and cultural backgrounds don’t fit squarely into the dominant culture.
One great thing about such places is that they’re eager to order selections that aren’t already on their shelves. Customers often become de facto stockers, thanks to owners and managers who are always on the lookout for titles that might have escaped their attention. And in addition to compact discs and cassettes, all of these stores sell videos, magazines, and periodicals.
A modest little shop tucked away near the intersection of Murfreesboro and Bell Road, Bailey’s Music & Image Corner (486-D Bell Rd. 361-4488) specializes in African music, particularly Afrobeat, Soukous, and Ju-Ju. There are also loads of Central African releases, particularly from the Congo, and many South African titles. If there’s any weak area, it’s the music of non-black Africa: Algerian rai, Egyptian music, and the like.
Bailey’s dabbles in other idioms as well. There’s a smattering of reggae and soca, plus some contemporary African American pop, blues, hip-hop, and gospel. But these are extra offerings and don’t detract from the store’s prime focus—though owner Rasheed Balogun, a Nigerian immigrant, says he plans to increase his reggae and soca output.
Many of Bailey’s cassettes are recorded directly from Balogun’s extensive personal collection: These include prime out-of-print LPs and discs from Fela Kuti, Chief Ebenezer Obey, I.K. Dairo, and numerous other classic African artists. There are plenty of fresh and recent dates alongside the vintage items, and Bailey’s will track down any African releases not in stock.
One of several Nolensville Road establishments aimed at Nashville’s ever-expanding Latino market, Las Americas Music (4706 Nolensville Rd. 332-8666) offers any- and everything in the Spanish-language pop market. This includes glossy fare from Vicki Carr, Norteño music from Flaco Jimenez, bossa nova, Mexipop, some salsa, and even Miami house music. The store has virtually every Ricky Martin title in existence, along with current East and West Coast favorites and a decent cross-section of Southwestern material.
Due no doubt to the fact that much of Nashville’s Latino population comes from Central America, there are few titles focusing on Latin jazz or vintage mambo/salsa music, styles that find their roots in Caribbean Latino culture. So don’t go to Las Americas looking for titles by Ray Barretto, the Palmieri brothers, or even Tito Puente—you’ll have far better luck at a chain store like Tower. Nor is there much South American music, though you can expect to find some Colombian cumbia.
Regardless, Las Americas’ selection surpasses that of its closest competitor, Discoteca Mexico (2617 Nolensville Rd. 255-1888), which is geared toward Mexican and East Coast Latin pop, though its salsa offerings are better than Las Americas’. The bulk of the store’s recordings focus on Tex-Mex, Norteño, traditional Mexican, and pop, with a little Brazilian and Colombian music and almost no Panamanian or Dominican selections.
Nashville’s undisputed champion when it comes to African American pop and hip-hop, New Life Record Store (5543 Charlotte Ave. 292-0946) stocks lots of vinyl. This longtime local fixture is also among the city’s quickest outlets in terms of processing orders—which usually arrive within two days.
Although most customers come to the store looking for the latest rap releases, New Life also carries a full load of blues, soul, contemporary gospel, and old-school R&B. Customers can also find classic comedy tapes and special releases on New Life’s in-house record label. Having been in business over 23 years, this store knows its market inside-out.
Strike One (1145 Gallatin Ave. 650-1551) is also worth a mention, though it doesn’t match New Life in quantity or variety of stock. That said, it’s a decent alternative for R&B, hip-hop, blues, soul, and gospel fans who live in East Nashville and don’t want to drive across town to Charlotte Avenue.
Online alternatives
It’s easy to blame big corporate chains for the disappearance of the homey little record shop. But the truth is, many people don’t haunt retail outlets anymore because they’ve moved their search for hard-to-find discs into cyberspace, where the bounty is fruitful. That’s great news for Nashvillians who simply can’t find what they’re looking for anywhere—an experience we’ve encountered repeatedly, even after driving to stores all over town.
Now, whenever a music fan reads about an interesting new band, he can simply head online. And judging from the huge success of several Internet record retailers, people are starting to enjoy the online experience more than standing stooped over a CD rack, flipping in vain. Not only are consumers more likely to find what they’re looking for, but they often get tipped off to other releases by the same artist, or they’re directed to similar-sounding bands or bands that share some of the same personnel.
In other words, you get the same kind of service that used to be available from knowledgeable retail clerks, before record selling became a more impersonal endeavor. When it comes to all-purpose record shopping, our Web site of choice is CDNow (www.cdnow.com)—which has proven most consistent when it comes to supply, price, and shipping. In addition to offering frequent sales, and keeping personal lists of recommendations tailored to customers’ tastes, CDNow also offers excerpts from reviews in Rolling Stone, Melody Maker, and CMJ, which means that listeners can go to the site for research as much as for purchasing.
The main reason to buy anything online, though, regardless of the company, is because of convenience: With a minimum of fuss, you can find what you’re looking for in a matter of minutes, even seconds.
So do we miss the joy of stumbling across a coveted disc in an honest-to-God freestanding record store? Hell, yes, but the next best thing, we’ve learned, is visiting the Web sites of some smaller stores that have managed to thrive by taking their expertise directly to the Internet. And as it turns out, it’s still possible to get that same sense of connection you used to get actually walking into a record store.
By far, the site we’ve visited the most is Chicago’s Dusty Groove America (www.dustygroove.com), a mail-order operation that has done so well, it now has limited store hours for people living in or passing through Chicago. This site can be credited in part for helping to spark the recent explosion of interest in Brazilian music—thanks to its incredible selection of imports, its helpful descriptions, and its very reasonable prices.
But the reason Dusty Groove is such a phenomenal site is because it doesn’t cater to one specific taste—something that holds true for most of the indie retailing sites we visit. Rather, it caters to people who share similar ideas about music, listeners who’re able to make the connections between French pop and European avant garde and deep American soul. (And that’s what a cool record store is all about—the chance to expand your musical tastes ever outward.) Hence the selection ranges from Astrud Gilberto to Curtis Mayfield to Serge Gainsbourg to Steve Lacy to the Association. Turnaround time is surprisingly quick, and the staff is remarkably cheerful and helpful.
Only one other store we’ve encountered online is even more amiable and helpful than Dusty Groove: Aquarius Records (aquarius.bianca.com). San Francisco’s oldest independently owned record store, Aquarius doesn’t have the most exhaustive selection, but that’s a good thing. As the owners point out, “We only carry music we love, which means sifting through all the crap out there so you won’t have to.”
In this regard, they’ve done a fine job indeed, carrying a broad selection of the latest indie rock ’n’ roll releases, along with an interesting sampling of world music, jazz, hip-hop, avant garde, and even metal. The catalog descriptions are highly informative, and there’s even a list of current staff favorites, which includes such brilliant off-the-wall offerings as The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations (a four-CD set!) and Sounds of North American Frogs, along with the latest from Aphex Twin, the Beta Band, Mogwai, and others.
Two other sites also deserve a mention: Other Music (www.othermusic.com) and Forced Exposure (www.forcedexposure.com). Both of these cater to similar tastes, offering a seemingly endless selection of electronica imports, Japanese noise-rock, avant garde, and cutting-edge hip-hop, along with the latest underground American rock. Due to the size and scope of their business, neither of these stores is as user-friendly as Dusty Groove or Aquarius, though Forced Exposure’s capsule descriptions are useful and Other Music’s graphics are probably the most eye-catching.
