This picture appeared in my face book feed and got me thinking about days gone by.
The hours I'd spend browsing the racks, for me, at Tower Records on the sunset strip in Los Angeles. For you it was a different record store you frequented but the experience was the same. There was a potpourri of good music at the time when, like New York restaurants, it was hard to find something bad.
Many of the groups I had never heard of and many were bought based on the cover art alone. In many ways, it resembled my dating style. If the outsides looked good then I figured everything else was too. Two divorces later I realized I should have read the linear notes, but I digress.
The album artwork was one of the most important parts of the LP. Record companies would spend a fortune on getting the right drawing or photograph to make an artistic statement.
The covers conveyed so much and one could spend hours just looking at them. (Think Sgt. Pepper to name one of many). The records would be displayed in bins alphabetically. I'd pity the poor employees who every time a new album came out, would have to rearrange the racks to allow for a new title beginning with "D" or "M" to be introduced into the alphabetized system. If the LP was popular, there would be five or six copies in the racks, thus necessitating a big restructuring of the bins. If really popular or promoted by the record companies, stacks of the record would be positioned in the front of the store as you walked in so you could not miss the album dujour.
Having been in the music business at the time as a promotion man, I had access to free albums from the label. They were great for bartering. Restaurants, haircuts, hotel upgrades and much more. LP's were a valid coin of the realm and I had lots of coin! Everybody loved free LP's. I also could go into Tower and pick as many records as I wanted, to be charged back to the label at no cost to me. It was absolute musical heaven.
When I left the music business, I had accumulated a 7,000 album record collection, many of them still unopened. They were alphabetized by group/artist in my home. The collection was great until I moved, which in those days was frequently. Boxes upon boxes of heavy, dead weight records.
An anecdotal story. I had moved to a new apartment and had completed the lengthy task of putting the records in shelves alphabetically. Proud of my accomplishment I went to bed. That night a big earth quake struck LA and my records fell from the shelves. Strewn about the floor in unalphabetized chaos. Although the quake was a 6.0, it was the equivalent of a 10 to my record collection.
Eventually the technology changed and records came out on cassettes. You could now make your own LP's with a cassette recorder. From spending countless hours browsing record bins I now spent countless hours making the perfect mix tape on 60 then 90 minute cassette tapes...My one rule was I'd always end with an instramental.
The technology changed again and LP's now transitioned to CD's. I was fortunate enough to be able to sell my LP's to a record store for a very good price and bought them yet again as CD'S.
Today all my music exists in the cloud. Something I don't quite understand. No more cover art no more linear notes. Just music somewhere that I have no tactile feel for, still providing auditory bliss, which, is what I was looking to achieve from all the browsing way back when, without the accouterments of the bins.
I miss those days of mindless browsing, intense mix tape sessions and dropping the needle perfectly on to the 3rd cut of an album.They say the only thing constant in life is change. Well, I've looked at the cloud from both sides now, from near and far, but still somehow, I really don't know the cloud at all.
© 2024 Kenneth Kates
Yes Kenny those were the days !!!
I loved Tower records