Dave's Fanboy Sermon

A few days ago I took a trip to Dallas. It was my birthday and I celebrated in the usual way: visiting the few surviving record/CD stores. Now the recorded music business has been so poor the last few years that it has made the comic industry seem like easy money by comparison. In Dallas alone I have watched Oak Lawn Records, RPM Records, Pagan Rhythms, Tower Records, the Wherehouse chain, Take Notes, and several others all disappear. The reasons are many. Primarily the way people consume recorded music has changed. Many people, especially those under thirty, no longer buy physical storage mediums for their music, instead simply downloading their favorite tunes to their ipod. There are other factors as well. The rise of cheap CD burners has made it all too easy to copy your friends CD. And of course a lot of people simply buy their music from the internet.

In April of this year, the recording industry sponsered "Record Store Day". Various acts such as Metalica visited independent record stores too show their support, many doing free concerts and other publicity gaining acts. These acts feel that something important will be lost if the record stores go away. Recorded music sales has shifted to the big box retailers, who are reducing shelf space and only stocking the best selling acts. The independent record store was the last refuge for the smaller acts, the imports and niche genres. Some point out that those genres might be better sold on the internet. Perhaps they're right, but many, including myself, disagree. Music stores serve as a "community center" for music fans. They are exposed to new music and divergent genres much more effectively in this environment. Websites try to emulate this with search engines that offer alternative suggestions ("like Tangerine Dream? Try Klaus Shultz."), but while better than nothing, this format simply falls far short of the personal interaction that fans could get at a good record store.

My son and I have spent many hours trolling through the bins at some of the better surviving stores. We would stumble across a KMFDM or a Front 242 CD, I would pull it out and say "Oh, you have to hear this. I think you'll like it." He'd take the CD over to the listening station and come back excited. He'd found a new band to collect. Yeah, I guess we could sit in front of the computer together and browse through itunes, but the appeal simply isn't the same.

I understand that some people won't miss record stores at all. They aren't interested in CDs and simply want a quick, disposable download of their favorite tune. Fine. In an ideal world there would be room for both types of fan. Unfortunately, our society of convenience only seems interested in catering to the casual fan. It's a simple matter of changing times. But like most changes, we won't be able to access what's lost until it's...gone.

So I made the rounds on my birthday, hitting what was left. CD Source still hangs in there, as does the one surviving CD Warehouse. Then I headed to CD World. With two locations in Dallas, CD World was voted "Best Record Store" in the Dallas Observer earlier this year. My son and I refer to the two locations as the "dirty one" and the "stinky one". Actually the dirty one isn't dirty at all. It just has a high ceiling which gives it a dimly lit appearance and its older fixtures make it seem somewhat run down. But the selection is great, there are some great bargains there and the people are nice. The "stinky one" actually is stinky, though. It's next door to an Indian restaurant and they also sell some incence. The combination of smells is memorable. But, again, great bargains and a friendly atmosphere. There was a Japanese copy of Vangelis's "Antarctica" on vinyl that I passed up last time I was there. I wanted to see if it was still there and ad it to my collection. But as I pulled into the parking lot, the "For Lease" sign caught my attention. CD World was gone, another victim of "changing times". When I returned home, I told my son and he grew quiet. Later he pulled out a stack of CDs to show me. It was all albums he had pulled out of the bargain bin at CD world. There was Rolling Stones, Genesis, John Coltrane, Oasis and other great acts. More importantly, there was KMFDM, Front 242, Mike Oldfield, Paul Haslinger, Patrick O'Hearn, and quite a few other gems that he "discovered" there. These were artists that he would likely never have encountered save for stumbling across them in CD World.

A note in the door explained that the chain had held out as long as it could, but finally had no choice but to close. It thanked its customers and reminded them to find one of the surviving shops and support them as best they could. Frankly, it's not just changing times. Times are tough. If there's a place that you will miss, a "community center" for your passion, whether it be comics, music, games or anything else, remember, it survives only because you support it. We've seen what happened to the sports card stores when its customers shifted their money elsewhere and assumed the shops would still be around when they decided to sell their cards.

Brick and mortar stores are important. They generate the excitement that makes fans. Then, in turn, fans make the stores. Without each other, neither would survive.

Illustration by Gerald Kelley