I was kind of alarmed the other night to walk past the Good Records storefront on East Third Street and see it all papered up, with a “for rent” sign in the window. Hadn’t been there in a while, but it is always a tragedy when yet another New York record store shuts down.
BUT. Turns out Good Records has only moved, to 218 East Fifth Street. Which means I am now even more overdue to update my old Manhattan record store map. Anybody been the new location?
1 comments
Labels:
NYC,
record stores
My story about “Favorite Recorded Scream,” a 12-inch vinyl compilation of 74 screams from Black Francis to Ian Gillan to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to Bjork, which were chosen via ballot by the employees of 42 Manhattan record stores, is up on the Times homepage now.
“Favorite Recorded Scream” is a pretty great little project that I stumbled upon one day a month or two ago at Academy Records on 18th Street. On the wall behind the counter they had taped up a map of New York City record stores, which I’d never seen before, though I’ve attempted to do the same thing myself. (Lately the stores have been going out of business too fast to keep up with.) When I asked about it, they said that it was an insert in “that scream record.” Hmm? “Um, it’s this red record, can’t remember what it was called, but this guy came around to all the record stores. Can’t remember his name...”
It took a small amount of casual hunting, which I’m sure I could have done much more efficiently, but after inquiring at a few more stores where no one could quite remember that young man’s name or the title of the record, I tracked him down: LeRoy Stevens, an extremely nice 25-year-old guy in Brooklyn, who told me about his project over some Juan Valdez coffee. For the rest of the story, you’ve got to read the piece.
Buy the record soon. He made 500 copies and only has 150 or so left.
1 comments
Labels:
audio,
best of,
me,
NYC,
record stores
My head hangs with shame over my failure to visit Jammyland before it was to close on Saturday. Excuses: a lot of work and such beautiful, beautiful weekend weather. But when reporting my piece about the twilight of New York’s record stores, I was told by the owner, Ira Heaps, that the lease was up at the end of May, and that the store would close if he couldn’t find an affordable alternative. Last Thursday I called and spoke to Chuck, NYC music retail legend, who confirmed that the last day would be Saturday (May 31), and that it didn’t have a new home. Online operations, however, would continue, he added.
Did anyone make it out for Jammyland’s farewell? Reminiscences welcome. I’m still enjoying the pile of records I bought there about six weeks ago, but I’m bummed that I didn’t buy a T-shirt.
More on record stores: Manhattan record map, running store tally, Record Store Day postmortem.
0
comments
Labels:
music biz,
news,
obits,
record stores,
the indies
Following my earlier posts and the map that ran in the Times, here’s my first foray into customized Google Maps: a fuller plotting of Manhattan’s record stores, past and present.
Blue markers represent stores that are open; red means closed; yellow is status unknown (mostly because I haven’t gotten around to making the latest batch of phone calls); purple means it’s a non-record store that has a significant music section. Like the list I have been updating — with extra details including the date each red one closed — I want to make this as complete and accurate as possible, so additions, corrections and news are all welcome.
Last updated: September 2009
1 comments
Labels:
lists,
music biz,
obits,
record stores,
the indies,
visual aids
So was Record Store Day a success?
StreetPulse numbers reveals [sic] Saturday (4/19) as the largest day of music sales for 2008 out selling the second largest day (3/22) by 29 percent. Music sales increased 39 percent on Record Store Day compared to the same time the previous week. The response to Record Store Day increased music sales over 22 percent from same day last year.
Billboard surveys some stores, with mostly good news, and relays SoundScan data saying that while chain-store sales were down 20.8 percent from the same week last year, indies were up 1.6 percent. In most businesses 1.6 percent is flat; in the sad new music biz, it’s cause for a pat on the back.
But will it have any lasting effect? Probably not, of course. New York’s showing in particular was poor. I am aware of only three of New York’s quickly disappearing record stores that had any special activities: Other Music in Manhattan, and Sound Fix and Halcyon in Brooklyn. (Update: Apparently J&R also had something; Ed Christman mentioned it in his column but I can’t link to it.) Other Music was pretty busy, and gave 10 percent off everything in the store. That was nice, but Cortney Harding at Billboard noted a telling detail:
Perhaps the image that best sums up Record Store Day is this: Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach DJ’ing an afternoon set at Manhattan’s Other Music, with two iPods set atop silent turntables.
While the shop was crowded and the register lines were long, Auerbach’s small visual statement seemed monumental. Even on Record Store Day, the record had been supplanted.
Perhaps a good measurement of the success or failure of Record Store Day would be sales for the week that followed.
0
comments
Labels:
music biz,
obits,
record stores,
the indies
Second update to my story last week about the disappearing record stores of New York City (and the survivors’ efforts to stay in business).
As I said before, some stores were left out, mostly for the usual journalistic reasons: tight space, redundancy, difficulty confirming facts on deadline. Since the piece ran I’ve been contacted by a number of people about omissions, and while most of those stores I had already known about, some of them I hadn’t.
So in the spirit of bloggy completeness, here are all the record stores I’m aware of, each confirmed by phone, visit or reliable source. All the stores in Manhattan, that is. Brooklyn is a whole other can of worms.
There are at least 44 39 shops in Manhattan whose primary business is selling CDs and/or records; assuming I have been able to pin down 90 percent of them, the full number might be somewhere around 50 45. I hope to get them all here:
Other stores that have significant record sections (thrift shops with 100 dusty Mantovani and Ohio Players LPs don’t count):
Big Boxes with significant music sections:
Big boxes that do not have significant music sections:
(Updated and much more thorough map here.)
Big boxes that I don’t know about because I’m tired of calling and visiting big boxes:
Not sure if this one counts:
Status unclear, any info welcome:
Here are stores that I can confirm are kaput. Most have closed in the last five years; those are noted in red on the map. (Some stores have continued online, such as Midnight Records.) For purely historical/nerdy reasons I am also including many shops that may have closed long ago.
Need confirmation/details:
More:
Updates, corrections and any other relevant information is appreciated, and will be incorporated here. Viva la vinyl.
Last updated: September 2009
10
comments
Labels:
lists,
music biz,
obits,
record stores,
the indies,
visual aids
Well, not exactly a correction. But since my story on Friday about the gradual disappearance of record stores in New York — at least 80 have closed in Manhattan and Brooklyn since 2003, and several more are now on the brink — I’ve been contacted about some that I hadn’t included.
As the map with the story noted, there are around 70 stores now open in Manhattan. I arrived at this number through both my own research — which involved tracking down on foot and bike a long list of addresses compiled through means too tedious to mention — and information from the Almighty Institute of Music Retail, which maintains an extensive database of stores nationwide. Joel Oberstein, the president, helpfully crunched numbers for me and sent several pages of listings from Almighty HQ.
The map could legibly cover only from 59th Street to Delancey Street. That left out J&R World and a bunch of stores uptown, among them a number of important Latin outlets. We included one Best Buy, one Barnes & Noble and one Borders to have those chains accounted for, but otherwise didn’t include the big boxes — partly because, much to my irritation, I couldn’t confirm on deadline exactly which carried CDs and which didn’t.
But I’m delighted to report that in the last couple of days I’ve learned of two more independent shops. One is Deadly Dragon, a reggae store on Forsyth Street. (Vivien Goldman had actually mentioned to me another reggae outfit besides Jammyland, but I misunderstood and didn’t realize it was retail.) The inventory on their website is impressive, and they also promote live events.
The other is Malachi Records, on Fulton Street downtown, which says it opened in November. Not much else on their website, but this blog says the store specializes in “hard-to-find LP’s, 45’, 12”, and CD’s. Musizik from Abba Zappa, Funk, Soul, Jazz, Latin, and movie soundtracks.” The pictures show a pretty standard Village-style vinyl mix of rock and punk standards (Ramones, VU), snob catalog (“Vincebus Eruptum”!), bubblegum guilty pleasures (Donny Osmond) and those soundtracks (“Barbarella”!). But it looks good.
I’ll be happy to add more if they come in, though first I will post a list of shops I knew about but couldn’t include, and I’ll also try to post a list of closings. But don’t even get me started on Brooklyn, which it broke my heart not to include. Please believe me, people, I had to draw the line somewhere.
UPDATES: A building list of Manhattan record stores, alive and dead; and map of same.
Thanks to JD for the tip on Malachi.
0
comments
Labels:
corrections,
music biz,
obits,
record stores,
the indies
