If you’re in Lexington, KY, check out CD Central, just across the street from the North Campus dorms at UK. The owner (Steve) and his employees are always there to make you feel suitably inferior for your hopelessly mainstream musical taste. Good used selection, good prices, all the obscure music mags. The best CD store in the universe, IMO.
The same building used to house Cut Corner Records, which for a couple of decades was the beginning and end of cheap used obscure music. It was bought out several years ago, and the new owners thought they could take it to the next level by going more mainstream. They got rid of most of the used stock and added a rack sponsored by the local All Creed and Bands That Sound Like Creed All The Goddamn Time station. Talk about not knowing your customers–people who want that shit buy it at the mall.
Meanwhile, in a nearly abandoned warehouse-turned-shopping center next door, CD Central was striving to be everything Cut Corner ever was and more. They forged partnerships with the college radio station (88.1 WRFL, baby), sponsored local shows, plugged local bands, and drew the local music nerds like flies. When Cut Corner finally, mercifully closed (after a brief flirtation with an “urban” focus), CD Central was more than willing to take the prime retail spot, and they’ve ruled the roost ever since.
Here in Greensboro, BB’s CDs is a reasonable alternative, but it’s no substitute.
if you go to Manistique MI, check out LeftOvertures. it will change your life, motherfucker. also their vhs selection has ever movie comedy central has ever aired from bordello of blood to mannequin 2 to UHF. i think that is where the comedy central executives drive to whenever they want to buy the rights to a new movie.
I lived in Holmes for four years, and spent many an hour in Cut Corner. And then I’d go down to see if Bear’s Wax had anything interesting. I miss 'em both.
Same thing goes for used bookstores. People shouldn’t run used bookstores because they want to make lots of money, they should do it because they love reading and want to help other people find new things to read. The one my daughter works at is trying to “improve their stock”, which disappoints me. I WANT to find the cheap, ratty books that someone brought in as part of an estate. I don’t want to pay collector’s prices for used books. However, the owner and manager are trying to make more money at this business, and so sometimes I shop there and sometimes I go to other used book stores.
However, I have a few authors that I will only buy new. Doesn’t matter how many copies of a particular book I’ve bought new, I’ll always buy new until the book is out of print. In most cases, I originally read those authors in used books, but then I liked them enough that I’m willing to pay new prices just so those authors can get their royalties.
I love my local indie record store. It’s called Record Time ( http://www.buymusichere.net/rel/v2_home.php?storenr=59&deptnr=1 ) and they have two locations (although I don’t like the one that’s further away from me). They sell new and used CDs, used DVDs, new and used vinyl, clothing, stickers, patches etc etc etc. The first time I went there was after going to Best Buy and looking for a CD that they didn’t have. It wasn’t all that obscure but when I asked them if they could take my name and phone number and let me know when they got one in, they said, “sorry, we don’t do that.”
So I left and drove to this store that my friend had said was cool. And I haven’t gone anywhere for music since. They have everything divided into genres and even sub-genres, with “New” and “Used” sections. Each genre and alphabet letter has hand-made signs with creative flourishes or styles and colours.
The best part? Their new CDs are cheaper than Best Buy, Media Play and even Amazon! I can special order something, too! They take my name and phone number, give me an estimate of the price and say it’ll be in within a week. I’ve never had to wait more than four days for my order to arrive and for them to leave a nice message on my answering machine.
I remember I ordered a Soda Stereo CD from them last summer. The computer said (and I saw it did) that it’d cost ~$24 because it had to be shipped from Argentina, and they said it might take a couple of weeks. Four days later I had it in my hands, after him saying, “yeah, one of my contacts actually was able to get it cheaper, so it’s only gonna be $12.”
There is no way on EARTH I’ll ever go to any other music store. I don’t know what I’ll do if (heaven forbid) Record Time closes or gets bought out.
Without being overly specific about them, I know a couple of guys in indie music retail in 'Jersey, and what they take home from their proprietorship amounts to about what you could make by temping. Actually, a few temps make even more.
OTOH, you can’t find many temp jobs where you can listen to Bad Brains at 80 dB’s.
I have that problem too - although I did manage to find Possum Dixon and Mighty Joe Plum in used cd stores (I heart Bull Moose Music)- so my solution is to go to www.half.com and pick them up there. Many of the bands I like are so hard to sell that you can get a brand new, still sealed, copy for seventy-five cents plus shipping. Can’t beat that!
There are still a few indie used-CD stores left, but they’re all full of nothing but crap that the stoners listened to once, made a copy of and sold back. Who wants to buy the latest waste of plastic from a bunch of pottymouthed one-hit wonders?
Y’know what, if the butt-scratchers at the RIAA would go through their moth-eaten old vaults and put up on their own web sites every single tune in the archives, way back to Edison barking “Mary Had A Little Lamb” into a tinfoil wrapped wax cylinder, they could charge 50 cents a download and still make so much money off all of us who still remember that there were more than five songs produced in each decade that they’d have enough money to finance every garage band in the world in perpetuity.
Isn’t it amazing how a book covering the top five tunes from each week from 1955-1985 can be thicker than the Manhattan phone book and Chain Gang Radio still thinks there were only ten songs?
The OP said that the record company bought up the used CD store - that is how they are getting benefit from it.
I live a mile from a big Rasputin’s. I won’t debate the relative merit of Rasputing and Amoeba - I like Rasputin since I don’t have to drive to Bezerkley to go to it. Not a polo shirt to be seen, and I know freaks work there since my daughter’s boyfriend’s sister used to. New, popular CDs are not that much cheaper than new, but they have thousands of $1 CDs also. Not as good as the one in Princeton I used to go to, but not bad.
Someone else who enjoys Andrew Bird??? Bestill my heart!!!
:pauses Oh! the Grandeur!:
Anyway, the used record stores here in Reno leave much to be desired, as well. Recycled Records indeed does have records. CD’s, not so much. It’s a sad, sad day when Tower Records has what I’m looking for and Recycled Records has never even heard of it.
For anyone who lives in the area, in Corvallis Oregon there resides the best goddamn used record store I ever frequented in my life: Happy Trails. Go, and enjoy.
I, too, wish to piggyback onto laigle’s fine rant, mine regarding the piss-poor selection of the (traditional) used CD store owner. (Not the gel-headed khaki-wearin’ fook.) Yeah I know, the defense is generally “we can only sell what people bring in.” Well, put a little effort into it, Cheech. Get on your incense-choked PC, go to Amazon Used or eBay and sink some capital into acquiring one or two more Beatles CDs than that water-stained copy of Magical Mystery Tour you’ve been trying to unload since the Carter Administration.
I realize that renting a little hole in the wall squeezed between a Subway and a tanning salon may not exhibit the height of ambition in any entrepeneur, but Juiced Newton, make like an actual business owner, for pity’s sake.
Yes indeed; saw his show here in January, in a smallish club in a building that used to be the school where Elvis learned karate. He played mostly stuff from Weather Systems and a bit of The Swimming Hour, plus some apparently new stuff I’d never heard.
If you haven’t already, you should visit his Web site; lots of good info, mailing list, &c. there.
Hmmm. have you tried pawn shops? When I was still teaching dance and aerobics, I used to scout out cheap CDs (the kind that only HAVE one good song??) for my workout compilations there, and usually they were only a few bucks, same with DVDs.
