It is no secret that record stores have been going belly-up at an ever-increasing rate. In fact, about the only thing slowing down the mass extinction is simple mathematics as fewer and fewer stores remain around to go extinct. The chains are gone—Tower, Wherehouse, Virgin, etc. A lot of the independents have also flickered and died, with plenty more to come.
To which I say: good riddance. I’ve just about had it with record stores, to tell the truth. Over the years I’ve been obliged to deal with an endless stream of smart-mouthed losers whose posturing attitude cannot mask the bare truth that they are minimum-wage morons scraping together a paycheck for unskilled and easily-replaceable labor. For whatever reason, record stores have never seemed to consider training in customer service a priority—most likely due to the high turnover amongst their employees. But even the grudging courtesy of the most marginal Starbuck’s slave is typically lightyears removed from the sullen mouthy rudeness of record store employees.
A vanishing few independent record stores remain here in the Bay Area, the most notable being Amoeba with its locations in SF (on the last block of Haight before Stanyan) and on Telegraph in Berkeley. The big problem with Amoeba is that it caters mostly to a grunge crowd and goes out of its way to be offputting to middle-aged folk such as myself. Both Bay Area stores are located in neighborhoods I would otherwise avoid but which would be attractive to grubby under-30 slackers. Why in the world would I ever want to go to Haight Street with its pestiferous street people, moronic teenagers and greasy young adults, its worthless stores selling nothing but hand-me-downs or grubby crap. Telegraph Avenue ditto, even as it slowly metamorphosizes into a Dead Zone characterized by boarded up storefronts and a general atmosphere of somnolent malaise, punctuated by punkish kids pretending to be hardcore street people—aided by the influx of the real McCoys from People’s Park a few blocks east.
Last week I dropped into the Berkeley store to do a bit of CD shopping. At least the Berkeley store offers a separate classical section, away from the studiedly ugly concrete-and-poster ambiance of the main rooms. However, that classical area has the look of incipient demise about it; gaping empty spaces and a downright funereal atmosphere, not that it was ever remotely friendly. Even though I found a certain number of CDs worth getting, none of which could not be found easily online, the checkout process offered the usual problem of dealing with a bored, inattentive, and vaguely hostile grungy, late-20-something checkout clerk whose carefully cultivated Berkeley-style casual rudeness could not mask the simple fact that he is a minimum-wage clerk in a record store, very much at the shallow end of the employment gene pool, while a few blocks up the street stands a great university filled with clever, ambitious, and promising young people who are everything he is not. I frankly admit to having given him a thoroughgoing glare of disapproval, which he reciprocated. My mind: what a miserable failure, obviously pushing 30, obviously a stoner, obviously going nowhere. His mind: look at the old fart spending more on these boring classical CDs than I make in a week, just like my dad who keeps ragging me about being such a loser.
Depressing as hell, and also irritating. Why should I have to deal with such a crappy specimen of humanity, even momentarily, in order to be allowed to buy a set of recordings?
So much nicer to press the 1-Click button on Amazon, or go through ArkivMusic’s easygoing checkout with my PayPal account. No bother with societal bottom-feeders or other associated riffraff, no being assaulted by the toxic sounds of whatever obnoxious noise those types always seem to play in stores like Amoeba, no forced rubbing of elbows with greasy, grubby, smelly kids whose ridiculously protracted adolescence offends my eye, ear, nose, and sensibility. And for what? To buy something I can get just as easily elsewhere?
With downloads improving at an exponential rate, FLACs are becoming increasingly common, while HDTracks expands its offerings of uncompressed stuff, and the sound quality available from ClassicsOnline or iTunes being at least decent (if not audiophile), and with the staggeringly speedy delivery possible from the big boys like Amazon, there just isn’t any point in standing there thumbing through CDs.
So the extinction of the record stores is no tragedy. It’s a public service, long overdue and welcome, at least from this one fellow’s point of view.