A Ho-Hum Record Store Day

Some people get excited for Christmas or St. Patrick's Day. I get up for Record Store Day. This is the day when we celebrate God's gift of records and the independent stores who sell them to the masses. April 18, 2009 is Record Store Day.

Of course, I live in Misery. I've complained (some say "whined") before about the abysmal record store situation in this god-forsaken place. The letdown on my favorite holiday confirmed these feelings.

To be fair, last year's Record Store Day was a great one, hard to equal. Some of us headed to STL for the famous Vintage Vinyl - a real record store - before hitting the New Porno/Okkervil show at the Pageant. VV served PBR to its customers and I picked up some choice records. It was a Record Store Day of which I will tell my grandchildren.

This year was not so great.

For starters, I had to work today. I realize that is not COMO's or Record Store Day's fault. It is what it is. On top of that, it was rainy and miserable all day.

While at work, my sister texted me that she was going to buy me one of those live Pavement LP's at her store in Cincinnati. She quickly dashed my hopes, though when she texted back that there was a limit of one per person.

Eventually, I was able to finish work and head to the only record store officially recognizing Record Store Day in town. Little was going on when I entered Slackers this afternoon. There were supposed to be some bands playing later, but I didn't really have time to check that out. I did wonder however, why last weekend's Bathtime was not held during Record Store Day. I'm sure there's a plausible explanation for this. (An explanation that I'm sure one of the the Bathy kids will share in the comments. In truth, I'm just bummed that I missed the festivities last week.)

I sifted through the vinyl and was not overly impressed. So, I grabbed a Thermals' record I do not yet own and the re-issue of Mission of Burma's Vs. The only Record Store Day exclusives were a few uninteresting seven inches and some freebies. The highlight was the sweet Record Store Day bag and a RSD/Def Jam turntable pad the clerk gave me with my purchase.

Record Store Day this year was a bust. I'm writing this as my sister is witnessing the Breeders in her store. Maybe next year I'll plan to drive to a store and a proper Record Store Day celebration.

How did you Record Store Day pan out?

Reason #1 Why I Live in Misery: No Record Stores*

There are no record stores in COMO. Sure, this is not an indictment on the entire state of Misery, but it is my current home and thus deserves a complaint. I realize that St. Louis has Vintage Vinyl, Jeff City has that one used record shop (JT's, I believe), and Kansas City probably has something. However, that all translates into long car rides just to find a decent inventory of records.

Don't tell me that Slackers, Streetside, and Wal-Mart should fill my needs for quality record choices. They don't. I often find that none of these stores has what I'm looking for unless it's a new release and on a Tuesday (the day new releases hit the stores). Hopes of finding anything older than this week is hit-or-miss. What should I expect? Most of the stores in this town rely as much or more on video game and used movie sales as they do music. So, they're rather unlikely to stock any decent vinyl or the next Swearing at Motorist record.

I would give an honorable mention to Happy Time Media, a decent used record shop. However, they rarely have anything interesting or different. When they do have something worth a listen, the price is jacked up.

The record store situation is so bad here that I have had to resort to ordering most of my records (especially vinyl) online from Insound. The good thing is that nearly everything I am looking for can be found (with eBay as a supplemental source). The bad thing is that a record store in New York can only get orders to Misery so fast. My first new purchase of the year (Animal Collective's much-anticipated Merriweather Post Pavilion) is already on back-order. Plus, I am still waiting on a shipment of assorted older records to land on my doorstep any day now.

I remember the days when I could just go to the store and buy records in-person. The only waiting was at the cash register, behind the girl with used records by The Smiths and Cindy Lauper plus Motorhead CD. My store was Used Kids (with Magnolia Thunderpussy filling in the holes). If Used Kids didn't have it in vinyl, there was a copy on CD. If they didn't have it on CD, there was probably a used/promo copy for seven bucks. If they still didn't have it, they knew of six other bands you should be buying instead. Sadly, there is no Used Kids in COMO. Besides myself and R, there are maybe ten people in this town that know the wonder that is Used Kids. Tragic.

So, this is the number one reason why I call the place in which I live "Misery": There are no record stores.

*A note from comoprozac about this post: In an ongoing series of posts for this blog, I will attempt to give all the reasons why I actually live in Misery. This will answer my many critics who don't get irony, cynicism, or puns. Although each item will be numbered, they are in no particular order. I will just post a complaint about the state I'm in as they come to me. Enjoy.