Features
Why Record Stores Are Like Church
By Doug Wallen
Visiting record stores is tantamount to a religious experience, writes DOUG WALLEN ahead of tomorrow’s international Record Store Day. Photo by LEAH ROBERTSON.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Record stores are like church for me. I walk in and feel instantly at peace. The outside world gets paused and I’m left in my own element, to sift and discover.
These days, as a father of two living in regional Victoria, I do a lot of my record shopping at op shops, yard sales and antique-y markets. To an extent, it’s the same experience: I get in there, find the records, start flipping through and wait for something to catch my eye. I take great satisfaction in the hunt – in finding something totally unexpected. Whether it’s some great jazz records in water-soiled sleeves or an Aztec Camera live EP stranded in a tiny rural town, it’s always more rewarding for me to find things by accident than with a mouse click.
But I miss proper record stores; I wish I got out to them more often. They make me feel bonded with a place, even as I block out my immediate surroundings to focus on the wares at hand. I can’t tell you comprehensively about Adelaide from the few days I once spent there, but I can tell you at length about the record stores I visited and the treasures I found therein (Kinks guitarist Dave Davies’s “lost solo album” and Talk Talk’s classic The Colour of Spring, among others).
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
During an average work day for me, the majority of music I listen to is digital, whether in iTunes or as streams. Maybe that’s why I still love it when I get CDs in the mail to review. (No lie: as I finished that last sentence, my two-year-old son brought two packages of CDs to me in my office.) After a day spent drowning in hopefuls for the musical future, it’s a relief to sink back into the Gene Autry and John Denver LPs I picked up a dollar so many years after those guys left us.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Hell, I still buy tapes. Not so much the fringe kind detailed in In-Frequencies, but random relics like TLC’s CrazySexyCool and OMD’s Dazzle Ships. It’s not to be esoteric; it’s because there’s a tape player in my car and they’re often under a dollar. There are tape decks on two of my stereos too, and I still have the copy of the Mountain Goats’ 1993 cassette Hot Garden Stomp that was playing when I drove up to university for my first day of orientation a decade and a half ago.
To me, the format doesn’t matter as much as the feelings I get from the music. There are things I love about tapes, CDs, vinyl and digital. I have room for them all. As much as I pore over the art and liner notes of old vinyl, there are albums I love now that I only have digitally and have no idea what the cover looks like.
That said, my hard drive (and back-up) has crashed enough that digital feels more ephemeral to me that a physical record collection that has seen countless losses and gains and been shipped piecemeal across an ocean. Records and CDs somehow have a temporary quality too – I’ve sold and lost too many things for them not to – but I love that I can look back at a Neutral Milk Hotel 7” from high school and see where I cut the corner with scissors while opening the package.
“I take great satisfaction in the hunt – in finding something totally unexpected.”
I don’t mean to fetishise the tactile here, but record stores are full of objects to touch, hold and consider. They’re also a place to learn. A clerk at my local record store in high school got into Palace Brothers because my friend and I accidentally ordered an extra copy, and years later I worked at a record store where the owner would blare jazz records in a way that instantly converted the customer. You can replicate these experiences online, but for me it’s great being there.
My favourite moment of Record Store Day in Melbourne last year was listening with two friends to Teenage Fanclub’s ‘God Knows It’s True’ 7” at Off the Hip. It had been sitting on display under the glass counter and we asked to hear it. Warm and fuzzy from a well-timed beer in our hands, we let the song wash over us. It seemed to go on forever, filling every corner of the room. Of course I bought it. How could I not? It gave me so much before I had handed over a single dollar.
Record stores are like church for me. And like so many churchgoers, I don’t go nearly enough. That’s why I can’t wait for another Record Store Day. Amen.
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