washington dc record stores?

One other thing: There was this incredible record store in NE (or was it just Eastern NW) whose name I forget. It was stacked to the ceiling with old vinyl. You could play records and buy old 45s cheap. I bought all the old funk singles. This was a couple years before the funk reissue boom, so the guy who owned the place, for $25, would tape you every Parliament-Funkadelic record he had. Anybody know this place? I got a haircut in NE a couple years ago and the barber told me it had closed years ago.

I saw John Cale there.

Can't figure out how I managed to miss that place called Joe's, though. I do remember Phantasmagoria. Got Cabaret Voltaire's "Nag Nag Nag" 12" there.

THAT'S A BOOST!

WWW.WMUCRADIO.COM !!!

Well, I travel a lot and have visited many used cd stores. CDepot certainly has the deepest used selection in the immediate DC area. But I would say that the prices are actually on the high end - stuff marked $9.99 that would be $6.99 or $7.99 at most other used stores.

re buying cds, the pickings were pretty slim the last time I was at Cd cellar in Falls Church. Plus kinda pricey for used cds- $ 9.99...

Are these used cds stores collaborating to keep prices high? Maybe I should get soulseek and just download?

Maybe it's just a coincidence some of the area cd stores are all trying to get $9.99 for used cds.

this just isn't true. maybe it is regarding their vinyl selection, i never look there, but their cd selection is large and all over the map. big electronic, international, jazz and used cd sections. their reggae/dancehall section is kinda weak. (wtf is a "fashionable re-discovery"? is this some sort of comment like "boo hoo, my favorite formerly-obscure band is now being listened to by a larger audience!")

normals is great for vinyl but their cd section has almost zero turnaround. i used to sell/trade shit to them weekly and was always disappointed to see the same cds. the rap cd section is funny though, lots of wack shit to be found since they obviously don't listen to that stuff.

a couple new places in baltimore - oncetwice sound on charles st. deals mostly with experimental/electronic/psych/indie end of things and the true vine in hampden which has similar taste to oncetwice but more obscure/rare and quite a bit of vinyl.

And why in God's name would you move to Arlington? Northern Virginia is the very asshole of the earth.

Suffice it to say: I suspect that the things you like about whatever place it is that you like (Soho, Bombay, Iowa City) probably are findable here, and the things that you don't like about Northern Virginia probably exist in profusion elsewhere. But if you've already made up your mind, I'm unlikely to be able to change it.

Generally people who say that sort of thing about NoVa are just looking at the wrong parts of it. It's like that thing with the blind dudes and the elephant.

What irks me about wholesale judgments of the form "Northern Virginia is the very asshole of the earth" is how much selective vision it takes, and how that skews the argument away from fairness.

The disparager gets to select (for example) traffic on I-395, the McMansions of Ashburn, Oliver North, Reston's nightlife, and the Tyson's Corner parking lot the Saturday before Christmas and say: "Aha! THAT is Northern Virginia therefore Northern Virginia suxor!"

Typically, it goes further and involves a comparative disparaging, vis-a-vis (for example) New York. So the disparager gets to choose totemic New york stuff like the Knitting Factory, CBGB's, Strawberry Fields, and seeing Dave Letterman pick up his dry cleaning and say "Aha! THAT is New York and therefore New York roxor!"

This is fundamentally unfair.

The disparager sets the terms of the argument; he or she picks the attributes to compare and thus stacks the deck.

Notice that the disparager never wants to let the defender choose examples. Behold: New York also has the cruddy toilet in the back of Louie Vitello's third avenue pizza joint, a patch of pigeon shit on a Bronx sidewalk, Donald Trump's hairdo, a pool of vomit by the side of a bench in Prospect Park, and the cops who shot Amadou Diallo 41 times.

Yes, Northern Virginia has McMansions. But it also has Dr. Dremo, and the Lost Dog, and Iota, and playing frisbee in April by the Netherlands Carillon, and the Serbian Crown, and my cats, and and and and. The disparager will never allow the shoe to be on the other foot and compare, say, Whitlow's on Wilson vs. the Prospect Park pool of vomit.

Instead, twistedly, the defender of what has been disparaged is called upon to defend Ashburn's McMansions as being not all that bad, and/or weakly counterattack by saying that the Knitting Factory isn't all that great anyways. This is stupid. We should just object to the whole framing of the debate.

I don't even pretend to be reasonable about this. I should say that I don't know Naive Teen Idol, and don't know what NTI's beef with Northern Virginia is. But I distrust and dislike the ease with which NTI dismisses the region wholesale. It is at best a grotesque oversimplification; at worst it is the worst kind of snobbery.

But it doesn't make me want to go, much less reside there. Forget Ashburn's McMansions for a moment; the architectural landscapes of Arlington, Crystal City and some (but not all) of Alexandria, are atrocious to the point of forbidding. There are so many white baseball caps present on Wilson Boulevard, one could be forgiven for thinking it was the permanent site of a date-rapist convention of some sort. And the drivers are bar-none the most dangerously clueless assholes I've ever come across. And I'm from Boston.

Which, of course, has its own issues. But I'm not NYC or comparing NoVa to it. It's just become the worst kind of sprawl you could imagine, and for that, I can't stand it. Esp. not when you have DC across the Potomac, which is pretty nice. It even has a Best Buy now, meaning NoVa's main attraction would now appear to be the potpourri of Alamo's and Enterprises along Jefferson Davis (!!) Highway.

That said, mid-VA is quite attractive — so much so, I could imagine raising horses there someday. On my horse farm.

Let's get back to the thread subject here--record stores. Does Crooked Beat stock just new indie-rock, or new and used rock, or new and used music of many genres?

While I think they'd like to have a lot more on hand, the guys who run CB seem to really know and love pop music and want to share it, which in and of itself makes it a great leap over just about every other store in DC that I know of.

Is Orpheus Records in Clarendon and run by a guy with a huge beard and really gross fingernails? I bought a Tim Buckley cd there once....

Really, NoVA and Maryland are the assholes of the asshole. I hate it here (I'm currently in Alexandria -- from Cleveland originally). The sprawl is just awful...it honestly depresses me, and I don't even know why. I cannot wait to get out of here....

And the record store situation sucks. CD Warehouse is just OK...maybe a better collection than a Best Buy, not too cheap, and very rarely will you make an interesting discovery. Smash (?) down the street in Georgetown is kinda neat, good selection, but the prices are what you'd expect in Georgetown.

PB, isn't there sprawl everywhere--suburbs, and exurbs outside Cleveland and L.A. and everywhere in the U.S. of A?

And yes, PB, the guy at Orpheus has really, really gross fingernails. I was going to say that I wasn't the only one who noticed, but as I think about it, I can't imagine anyone not noticing them. I myself bought a Colin Blunstone CD there once.

If you hate NoVA, PB, you should try and move into DC. The record store situation isn't great beyond the ones mentioned, but there's loads more happening than in Alexandria. I live just off 18th Street, and aside from the infiltration of the Bridge and Tunnel crowds on the weekends, it's a certified good time.

I came across it last night in the George Pelecanos book I'm reading, Soul Circus. (Wonder if he knows about the store I mentioned above...)

Joe's is closer to Rockville now, but not far from it's old location. and they have a second store in Baltimore.

There used to be a store called New Wax Unlimited at 407 Rhode Island Ave. NE that had old soul vinyl. I think the owner died and the place closed up.

"Record Time"

by Troy Holland

Tampa, Fla., 1971. The girl next door (Theresa, I think) leads me into her room. She's 6, and I'm a 7-year-old yard ape whose main interests are catching lizards, playing with matches and banging on trees with ball-peen hammers.

She lifts the red plastic lid on the tiny phonograph and puts on the small 45 rpm single. With no older siblings to initiate me, music up to this point of my life is my mother's bliss during Steve and Edie duets on "Carol Burnett," and my father's mysterious yearning during the Sons of the Pioneers' "Cool Water." The Beatles might've broken up the year before, but I've never heard of them.

So I'm immediately grabbed by the beat that comes blaring out of the little speaker. When Elvis Presley begins to sing, he sounds good to me, though I don't know enough to realize how great he is. Then Scotty Moore's stacatto guitar riff enters the chorus of "Jailhouse Rock," and the song lights up my nervous system like a Christmas tree. I'm transported completely.

I've never recovered. Over the years my requirements have changed, but such moments are what I seek every time I listen to music. Which is pretty frequent, because I'm what Freud might've called aurally fixated.

If your fixation -- like mine -- manifests itself in a lust for 7-, 10- and 12-inch vinyl records, then the D.C. area is a good place to regress. Though roughly a decade has passed since the compact disc dethroned the LP, Washington boasts a number of new and used vinyl stores, stocking everything from vintage jazz sides to homemade rock to the latest European dance music. And, interestingly, vinyl sales have been rising. Comparing 1993 and 1995, yearly record sales nearly doubled, growing by 1 million to 2.2 million, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Some credit the rise to huge bands like Pearl Jam who release albums on vinyl prior to CD versions. Even so, vinyl has maintained stealthy strongholds in the worlds of jazz, classical, indie-rock and dance music, and has lately received a boost from the Internet. Though not yet a revolt of audio Luddites, it's not bad for a format that seemed headed for obscurity.

To which you might say: "So what? CDs sound a lot better."

Looking back though, it wasn't so much sound, as it was ease that made the CD predominant. Compact discs didn't liberate music lovers from bad sound, they liberated music lovers from involvement. If the listener was a cook whose attentive flipping provided sustenance, CDs were TV dinners. You simply "popped them in" and soon they were done.

But if you were a lacquerhead with a decent stereo who took care of his records, if your removal of the outer and inner sleeves, then gentle placement of vinyl on the turntable was a kind of stereophonic foreplay, then your music was usually free of the flaws that CDs claimed to conquer. "Records didn't sound bad," says Fluffy Centner of Orpheus Records in Georgetown. "It was records that were treated badly that sounded bad, and that was the owner's fault, not the record's."

Though it's easy to find music lovers who question digital sound's superiority, CDs clearly have some advantages. They're harder to scratch or warp, they take up less room, their track-cueing capability is helpful in making tapes and they possess the rarely utilized ability to hold more than 80 minutes of music per disc. Still, do these strengths add up to a $ 16.98 list price? Especially in light of recent press reports estimating that CDs may last only 15 to 20 years? "I'm not sure it's the medium it's cracked up to be," says Centner. "Records have shown they'll stand the test of time."

Outta Sight...

Visual appeal was another test that records aced over CDs. There was something about the oversize presence of LPs -- the elaborate art and typography, the double and triple gatefold sleeves, the posters and booklets -- that had a cool synergy. Adds Centner, "Not just fancy covers either, simple ones like 'Yellow Submarine' just looked bigger big."

Like the Rolling Stones' 1968 LP "Sticky Fingers," with its suggestive cover photo of Mick Jagger's fly. But since that risque zipper has been ridiculously shrunk on CD, Mick probably feels a little...little.

He isn't alone. Consider Reid Miles's classic designs for the Blue Note jazz label. Or the loopy liner-note riddles of Bob Dylan's early records or the storybook of the Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour."

But one vinyl refuge -- indie-rock -- has mixed the old aesthetic with a do-it-yourself energy, resulting in bands who customize their records in some way. "Being involved in all the steps of the process...where you have to sit down and make 2,000 'somethings,' just shows that people really do care about their records," says Kristin Thomson of the band Tsunami -- and the Arlington based indie-label Simple Machines.

The personal touch of an indie release is a natural extension of a scene that answers more to individual creativity than to the call of the mass market. And that can mean anything from recycling and altering old LP sleeves found at Goodwill, to engraving jokes and Zen parables where only stock numbers used to exist, near the out-grooves of a record.

Such efforts aren't easy. "Grenadine's first single was probably the most complicated package we've had," says Thomson. "It had a strip of cloth wallpaper about two inches wide that was closed by a huge gold medallion sticker. And that was sealed with an embosser that notary publics use. Then we put sticky stars on each one. It took forever to put it all together."

Currently Thomson is considering home-printing the sleeve of Tsunami's next single by using the antiquated but very distinct letterpress technique. "I really like seeing hand-decorated or homemade things. Most of the time they're really beautiful."

For the the old 45's hip descendant -- the 7-inch single -- unusual art is the norm. As with LPs, many bands go the colored vinyl route, with nifty clear or marbled variations. And often there's a clever gamesmanship present. "Split-singles" feature different bands on the opposite sides of the same record, sometimes covering each other's songs. Other singles mimic the sequencing of albums, only in a compressed way. On "Tommy in 7 Minutes," the musicians on the Vital Music label do indeed do the Who's rock opera "Tommy" in 7 minutes, even throwing in a Beatles cover on the B-side. Or Coat-Tail Records's "Sixty Second" compilation, where 10 widely varied bands are each given one minute.

Many collector "zines" come with singles as well -- often splits -- showcasing artists in that particular issue. Most are as limited as the circulation of the magazines they appear in.

And it's not uncommon for singles to have bonus tracks tacked on the end of a B-side. Pavement's recent 7-inchers -- "Pacific Trim" and "Stereo" -- each came with a bonus tune available on vinyl only.

Though some records end up more appealing as artifacts than music, 7-inch singles can be especially anthropological. Since production costs can be kept under one dollar per single, many bands who might never make a record get heard. For three or four bucks you can gain access to music scenes of distant places, as with "If the Blizzards Don't Get You the Mosquitos Will," which captures nine Finnish bands in action.

The Price Is Right

One plus for analog loyalists is that new music is cheaper. Imports can be $ 20, jazz audiophile vinyl can run $ 14 and chain-stores with token quantities are usually higher than elsewhere. But generally, new vinyl at independent shops averages $ 8 to $ 9 for single LP domestic releases. Many American indie labels -- Dischord, TeenBeat, Matador, Drag City, Skin-Graft, Touch and Go, Emperor Jones, Thrill Jockey, Quarterstick and others -- do mail order.

Hot Wax...

Though new wax is relatively cheap, the collector's desire for rarity does amazing things to the price of some vinyl. The mark-up involves first- and limited-edition pressings, in good shape of course. Packaging also plays a part, as with the Beatles' rare and coveted "Butcher Block" LPs: "I found [mine] for $ 120," says Orpheus's Centner. "It was originally priced at $ 150, but I got him down to $ 120."

Being as famous as the Beatles is helpful, but since this type of collecting is a subculture comprised of aficionados, often the "stars" whom collectors spend lots of cash on are not hugely famous, as George Gelestino, owner of the Silver Spring record store Vinyl Ink, explains. "My booth at a record convention in New York was next to [Sonic Youth guitarist] Thurston Moore. He had a box of 30 to 40 original Sun Ra sides...in beautiful shape, all hand-decorated, all dating from the 1940s, the cheapest being like $ 30 and going on up to $ 200...They were all gone within an hour."

Yet when a smaller band -- with a multiple, but limited back catalogue -- suddenly appears on the brink of larger fame, prices can skyrocket. Take, for example, Guided by Voices. In the early '90s the Dayton, Ohio, rock group's self-released records languished in the cutout bins of its hometown stores. But then the band was signed to a label and began to gather a sizable fan base consisting of just the type of collectors willing to pay for what they love. Suddenly, an EP the band literally couldn't give away was being sold for a cool $ 100, and certain 7-inch singles were going for $ 30 apiece.

But it was the GBV album "Propeller" that was the real savings bond. Limited to 500 original copies, hand-numbered and decorated by the band members prior to their success, it's long since been snatched up and isn't changing hands too often. All of this real-estate-like activity comes at a point when Guided by Voices is still relatively small but growing. Should they fulfill the expectations of wider fame, that cutout copy that cost $ 3 in 1993 could acquire a couple of extra zeros.

Is That a Record or a Doormat?

While scratchy records are cool as sampled backgrounds for some music, they're not what the used-vinyl buyer is looking for. Most stores that carry vinyl have used vinyl as well. Usually, apart from normal wear, the condition of the records is good. In many cases people have sold their whole collections to stores, and some excellent copies can be found. Just recently, I was blissed to discover a cache of hard to find John Fahey records in excellent condition at a great price. But there is some used vinyl that -- as you tilt it to the light -- seems to have been chiseled on by over-caffeinated Neanderthals. Which leads to this scenario: The vinyl fiend sees the old Ventures LP, sleeve in great condition. It's "Walk, Don't Run, Vol. 2," the one with the uber-cheesy photo of the band sprawled in the wake of the beehive babe in chartreuse tights...His pulse quickens...It's pressed in the thick, seemingly extra-tough vinyl common to the '60s. He tilts, and the surface refracts in a spider-web of abuse. Aaargh!

It's smart to visually inspect before buying. Most prices reflect condition as well, so watch out for those $ 2 ones.

Two Turntables and a Microphone...

Though the CD is today's most popular format, it's in the world of electronic dance music that -- thanks to the DJ -- things get truly ironic. English dance artists like Goldie, Photek and the Aphex Twin create music largely on computer, building rhythmic patterns of drum machines, sequencers and synthesizers. This high-tech music's main avenues of dispersal are dance clubs where DJs who mix the tracks have attained performer-like status. "They take the best part of the record, and just work it," explains Sam the Man Brown of Washington's Twelve Inches Dance Music. "Working" or "mixing" however, can't be done on CDs. So this particularly futuristic sounding music is released on -- that's right -- good old analog vinyl. "This is stuff that's recorded almost exclusively digital," muses Mark Sullivan, a frequent music history teacher for the Smithsonian's Resident Associates program. "And a lot of it is available as vinyl only...which is the strangest concept in the world."

Typically such artists press up small runs of 12-inch singles, hoping to generate enough of a buzz to be picked by one of the European labels that often compile the tracks on CD to sell domestically or abroad. But many of the singles are imported to D.C. stores like Twelve Inches in Dupont Circle, or Music Now in Georgetown, where they fuel the dance scene here. "But it's not just imports," explains David Javate, Music Now sales manager. "There's a growing dance market in the States...it's always been there, but it's getting even bigger."

That's partly due to stores like Music Now and Twelve Inches, that release vinyl by local and regional DJs on their own in-house labels.

Hardcore UFOs...

There's a pop maxim that says you can learn a lot just by looking at someone's record collection. But one mark of the die-hard collector is the schizophrenic air his collection can have. These are people -- myself included -- whose appetites for sound have them grooving to the dense feedback of the Dead C or the shrieking electron streams of Merzbow. While most people would flee the room, it's precisely this openness to all forms that makes the collector just as happy to hear Patsy Cline.

Mark Sullivan is like that. With him talk may shift from current styles -- "Atari Teenage Riot is one of the hardest things out there right now" -- to bizarre '60s kitsch. "Have you heard of Mrs. Miller?...She was this big Italian mother who put out an album of incredibly awful covers: 'Downtown,' 'Catch a Falling Star,' 'A Hard Day's Night,' [all] horrendous, operatic versions of pop tunes."

Though many enjoy such anti-entertainment thrills, collectors often take it to another level. "It all started with Nancy Sinatra," Sullivan says. "My friends started teasing me about 'These Boots Are Made for Walkin.' Now when they run into a new version, they send it to me. I've got 35 or 36 different ones...and only two or three are any good at all....I've got a ska version, a Trombones Unlimited version...Megadeth doing a metal version...Loretta Lynn, the Carter Family and Mrs. Miller."

Don't Drop It, Be-Bop It

Given the abstract complexity of the best of it, jazz is a music that requires serious listening. Anyone who'll follow John Coltrane through the 13 intense minutes of musical origami that link the opening and closing phrases of "Impressions" isn't looking to hear any Kenny G. But a big part of it, apart from the music itself, is the acoustical space that it was recorded, and exists, in. Many of the Blue Note albums of the hard bop era -- recorded by Rudy Van Gelder in a home studio in Hackensack, N.J. -- had a warmth of tone and sense of space that set Blue Note apart from other labels.

This happened because the old technology captured a performance by transferring its continuous sound waves -- or "analogs" -- onto the grooves of a record. But digital sound captured music by rapidly "sampling" it. Every second in a piece of music was sliced into thousands of pieces that a computer would later reassemble. And since space existed between these sampled musical fragments, the computer would fill in. This -- according to some jazz buffs -- exchanged the original warmth of the music for a cold, shrill sound.

Though many claimed to hear no difference, some of the first artists who recorded completely digitally -- like the high-tech pop singer Peter Gabriel -- returned to analog recording with those very complaints. "[There was] an improvement period for CDs," says Joe Lee, owner of Joe's Record Paradise in Aspen Hill. "[And] a pretty bad reaction in the industry...[they] had to go back and say, 'What are we doing wrong?'"

Fortunately for jazz fans, the answer to that question was the reissuing of many of the era's albums on vinyl. In some cases, 180-gram audiophile vinyl.

The Holy Grail

And did you ever wonder how stores get all that vintage vinyl in the first place? Sure, some people bring crates of the stuff in, but it's not always that easy, as Lee explains:

"A friend of mine calls me from Fort Worth and says, 'Get down here! There's 80,000 LPs that look great!' So I immediately fly down and the seller is the son of a collector who had never missed a sale or a close-out, from 1958 onward. It's unbelievable. There's everything... the Freedom Travelers...flawless Mingus Dynasty records...tons of good blues, semi-obscure soul groups...Most of the records are in racks, but the real treasures are in boxes that haven't been opened in 15 years...I open one and find 50 copies of the Isley Brothers 'It's Your Thing,' their best album ever, sealed."

Lee's reverence is shared by collectors everywhere who know music as something more than a pleasant diversion. And while commercial radio reduces expression to a formula, vinyl collecting can be an entry into the authentic art of sound. Once you've heard the similarities between Mississippi Delta blues and the music of the Tuken people of Kenya, or noted the likeness of a techno track to Balinese gamelan music, then you see music as more than entertainment. It's a fundamental human need worth exploring in all its varieties.

But hey, don't take me too seriously. Anyone who pontificates about a dated technology must be stuck like a record. You probably should switch to CDs now. Go ahead, sell off that vinyl! It's too fragile. It doesn't sound as good. It's the past, Jeeves...Now is the time! Especially if you have an original Velvets and Nico with the peel-able banana!...Or a mono copy of "Blonde on Blonde"!...Or a scratch-free Ventures LP!...Or...

THEY TAKE PLASTIC

These area stores stock serious vinyl.

THE DISTRICT

MUSIC NOW -- House, Eurotechno, jungle, trance and acid jazz. 3209 M St. NW, 202/338-5638.

NEW WAX UNLIMITED -- All genres. 407 Rhode Island Ave. NE, 202/635-3507.

ORPHEUS RECORDS -- All genres. 3249 M St. NW, 202/337-7970.

PHANTASMAGORIA -- All genres. 1619 Connecticut Ave. NW, 202/462-8886.

SAM "K" RECORDS -- R&B, jazz and gospel. 1839 Seventh St. NW, 202/234-6540.

TWELVE INCHES DANCE RECORDS -- 12-inch dance singles and remixes. 2010 P St. NW, 202/659-2010.

MARYLAND

FERNDALE OLDIES RECORDS -- All genres. 7176 Baltimore-Annapolis Blvd., Baltimore, 410/760-1205.

JOE'S RECORD PARADISE -- All genres, with a good selection of jazz and blues. 13822 Georgia Ave., Aspen Hill, 301/460-8394.

MEMORY LANE MUSIC -- Oldies from 1903 to the present. 2817 Walters Lane, Forestville, 301/568-5044.

MODERN MUSIC -- All forms of electronic dance music: ambient, acid jazz, techno, drum 'n' bass and more. 2905 O'Donnell St., Baltimore, 410/675-2172.

MUSIC LIBERATED -- Rock, calypso, reggae, gospel, 12-inches. 201 W. Saratoga St., Baltimore, 410/837-1000.

PHANTASMAGORIA -- All genres. 11308 Grandview Ave., Wheaton, 301/949-8886.

RECORD AND TAPE EXCHANGE -- All genres. 8147-D Baltimore Blvd., College Park, 301/345-9338. Also at 901 Bayridge Rd., Annapolis, 410/267-0462.

RECORD COLLECTIONS INC. -- Classical, jazz, rock. 523 N. Charles St., Baltimore, 410/528-1616.

REPTILIAN RECORDS AND COMICS -- Indie and alternative. 403 South Broadway, Baltimore, 410/327-6853.

ROADHOUSE OLDIES -- R&B, soul, doo-wop. 958 Thayer Ave., Silver Spring, 301/587-1858.

VINYL INK -- Alternative, indie, punk, experimental, techno LPs and 7-inch singles, and a used section featuring jazz and other genres. 955 Bonifant St., Silver Spring, 301/588-4695.

YESTERDAY AND TODAY RECORDS -- All genres. 1327-J Rockville Pike, Rockville, 301/279-7007.

VIRGINIA

RECORD CONVERGENCE -- Classic and vintage rock, progressive and alternative, jazz. 4005 Chestnut St., Fairfax, 703/385-1234.

RECORD MART -- All genres. 217 King St., Alexandria, 703/683-4583.

RECORD AND TAPE EXCHANGE -- All genres. 9448 Main St., Fairfax, 703/425-4256.

MAIL ORDER

METRO MUSIC -- Classic and indie rock from a Silver Spring company. 301/622-2473.

OUT OF PRINT RECORD LOCATOR -- Specializes in all genres of LPs -- except hard rock and classical -- from 1970 and before. Baltimore, 410/358-3033.

QUALITY VINYL & CD OUTLET -- A Chantilly-based non-retail, mail-order only business. All genres. 60-page catalogue. 703/327-4809.

Well, it's looking like a No. Quite the trek. Guess I could bus it from the metro.

yep.

http://www.metroweekly.com/2015/01/vinyl-record-stores-in-washington-dc/

A few I don't know, but i don't buy that many records these days...

I'm in the middle of a 5 week work trip to DC and I have to say, the record stores have been incredible. Som, Joint Custody and Red Onion are excellent stores. I'll definitely go back to these three stores but where else should I go?

Crooked Beat maybe, and out to Md for Joes and to Va for CD Cellar and others. Check out that metroweekly link I posted in January.

Joe's Record Paradise in a Silver Spring just for the experience. It's unlike any of the others and massive.

Whoops - er, like curmudgeon said.

Sweet. Thanks for the tips. Think I'll try to hit joes next weekend. Metro accessible?

Yep. Here's your link: https://www.google.com/maps?ll=38.992121,-77.026942&z=15&t=m&hl=en-US&gl=US&mapclient=embed&q=8216+Georgia+Ave+Silver+Spring,+MD+20910+USA

Don't sleep on the Music & Game Exchange 1/2 block north of Joe's -- pulled some good stuff out of the new arrivals and $1 bins there. My boy found a Fairport test pressing in the $1 bin but it got yanked at the register.

Joint Custody has been killing it lately.

Arlington Flea Market starts up again this weekend, might go see what that's all about. I think it is Saturday morning.

Nice tips! I was thinking of making Saturday my big record hunt day so that would be convenient.

but it got yanked at the register.

What do you mean? The clerk just went "whoops - that's mislabeled" or something?

I've never found anything in the Music Exchange vinyl-wise but they have tons of CDs for like .50 cents - I got some great Go-Go discs there.

Record Exchange in Silver Spring is closed until mid-April. They're moving up to the street next to the Fillmore (condos are going up in the current space).

What do you mean? The clerk just went "whoops - that's mislabeled" or something?

yeah, clerk said he'd already seen it and had pulled it to be looked up/marked up, though it was still sitting over by the cheap bins.

Joe's Record Paradise was awesome. Spent 2hrs there but could have easily spent another 2. All the shops in DC have been great. Even Hill & Dale, which I wouldn't go to again, necessarily, but for what it is, where it is, it's good.

In Arlington, most of us are aware of CD Cellar but brief shout out to Blue Groove in Westover.

http://www.bluegroovesoundz.blogspot.com/

http://bandwidth.wamu.org/joes-record-paradise-is-moving-again/

Lee says he found out today that the store’s landlord won’t be renewing its lease come March 2016.

was going to joke that they shd move back to their og space in plaza del mercado and it looks like they are

red onion moving over to u street too

http://patch.com/virginia/oldtownalexandria/record-store-moving-dc-alexandria

Crooked Beat moving (moved?) to Old Town Alexandria.

Joe's Record Paradise will supposedly finally open in new Silver Spring location soon.