Wasted Youth in Used Record Stores

I spent too much of my youth in used record stores.

See, I grew up in a small town with three colleges (and two more a few miles away). There were great used record stores there – one in the back of a head shop on Main Street (specializing in selling foreign cut-outs), one next to a stationary store (whose owner was busted for selling pot – I know, in a college town? Shocking!), and another one that sold hundreds of cheap bootlegs whose “covers” were cheap mimeographs of bad band photos.

And I was patient – I’d thumb through the stacks, always looking for something specific, but always open to what I might find – especially if the price was low. And the price was almost always low, because there were always lots of college students selling their records to the used record stores. Plus, I wasn’t a collector.

That’s important. Collectors care about more about the label and the idea of the record than they care about what’s on the record.

This is what collectors do:



For me, it was always about the music.

And while I own a few records that actually are valuable, their real value for me is what’s on them.

To be honest, when I was younger, I was more like Jack Black’s character here:



(I like to think I'm more tolerant now. So if you wanted to listen to "I Just Called To Say I Love You," I wouldn't say anything mean about you -- but I would leave the room.)

And while I own a few records that actually are valuable, their real value for me is what’s on them.

So this blog is mostly about music (and often about vinyl). Because it’s the music that matters.