How Many Indepedent Record Stores Does Your Area Have? (RECORD STORE ECOLOGY)

New Jersey:

Princeton Record Exchange, Princeton: vinyl heaven.

Vintage Vinyl, Fords: son of vinyl heaven.

Iris Records, Jersey City: small store, vinyl and CDs. Only open on Friday and Saturday.

Sound Exchange, Wayne: CDs only, mostly rock/punk/hardcore/industrial; I've found some gems there.

Let It Rock, Montclair: Punk and hardcore CDs. Currently closed for renovations.

Cafe Soundz, Montclair: Industrial/electro/techno/some punk; great mail-order place. Mostly CDs.

Tunes, Hoboken (and maybe elsewhere): indie rock and related CDs, with some more commericial stuff thrown in. Has a very picked-through used CD section.

Scotti's Records, Morristown (and elsewhere): commercial stuff at slightly cheaper prices than the major chains.

There are probably a lot more that I'm forgetting.

I miss Wazoo and Encore. When I lived in Ann Arbor I'd hit both of them after every payday and buy the promo copies of records that WCBN snubbed their nose at for being too mainstream.

I have no independent music store in my town. The local Sam Goody, which I had not been to in years, closed right before Christmas. So, nothing except Wal-Mart and a Shopko; I have not bought a record locally in the 7 years I've lived here.

I think the closest independent record store is four hours away, in Appleton Wisconsin. The Exclusive Company there is pretty good overall, but confusingly divides records based on if they're on independent labels or not, so you have to either know what label something is on and if it's still considered "independent" or you have to look for stuff twice.

God I miss leisurely digging through record stores on Saturday afternoons.

rub-a-dub

though i'm not from Brooklyn, any talk of record stores in the area without mention of Eat Records in Greenpoint is totally blasphemous.

in philly, there's a few:

AKA Records (on 2nd, right before Market): uh, lots of used CDs and a shitload of obscuro CDs/ records that you only thought you could mailorder. tons of nurse with wound and old soul on vinyl.

Philadelphia Record Exchange (on 5th? near South): if you look, you can find gems-- i got a great recording of Istanbul's street sounds from the 60s here. mostly vinyl.

Spaceboy (low on South): Typical indie store-- new records, new CDs, pretty good selection. Also sells tickets, which is nice.

Repo (on South, 6th): Expensive. But if you're looking for old punk/rocknroll vinyl, this place is the bee's knees. Asshole employees.

there are a few more, but they're not that good-- mostly boxes and boxes of crap and old grindcore records that i bought in middle school. mmmmmmm
-t

xpost Hey Chris -- haven't seen you around here in a while.

I recently discovered that there's another notable record store in JC -- Stan's on Bergen Ave. which seems to specialize in old soul and doo-wop stuff. The owner is quite knowledgeable.

when i was in ann arbor the best store was Tower which was pretty sad.

x-post

Hey Hurting. Been meaning to shoot you an email, but I think I lost your email address. Do you administrate the American Altitude myspace page?

re: Stan's. Never heard of it, but I'm gonna check it out. Do they have a site?