from the bookshelf: Record Store Days

I'll admit that I'm not much of a reader, but I've come across a handful of great books about music lately, so I figured I should chip away a bit at this blog's overwhelming dominance on audio and occasionally mention a book I think y'all might like. Here comes the first one...

"RECORD STORE DAYS: FROM VINYL TO DIGITAL AND BACK AGAIN"
by GARY CALAMAR and PHIL GALLO
(Sterling Publishing, 2010)


I was browsing the neighborhood B&N one day, idling in the aisle and talking on my cellphone -- something I almost never do in a store but maybe twice a year -- when I ended my call, nonchalantly glanced to my left, and saw this book staring me in the face. After thumbing through it for less than a minute, I knew I absolutely had to have it. Hey, a thick, attractive hardcover book about music stores, and for only twenty bucks? How could I not snap it up? It took me a couple months to finish reading it (mostly 'cause I'm not in the habit of regularly picking up a book, so I kept forgetting it was there), but I immensely loved every page of it.

"Record Store Days", by Gary Calamar and Phil Gallo, is an illustrated history of how changes over the years in technology, business, and culture, have shaped the evolution of American recorded music retailers, from their beginnings alongside the birth of the phonographic industry a century ago, through their grassroots groundswell and explosion into the mainstream in the '60s and '70s, up to the recent collapse of the mega-stores and the die-off of independents that brought about the creation of Record Store Day, the annual celebration that has galvanized the tenacity between the remaining retailers and their fiercely loyal customers.

What it might lack in atmospheric and enthralling narrative -- though it's well-structured by chapter and does share plenty of commentary and insight by a multitude of artists, record label insiders, and record retail veterans, it reads kind-of like a history textbook -- it makes up for in its snappy layout, which boasts hundreds of rare, exciting, and revealing black-and-white and full-color photographs, as well as some entertaining sidebars throughout. It features a foreword by R.E.M.'s Peter Buck (who, like many musicians, worked in a record store in his youth), and regularly mentions some of the most beloved and influential stores in the country, past and present ... a few of which I've patronized, which makes it all the more fun.

So, whether you're old enough to remember the glory days of record stores, or young enough to not get what all the fuss over them is about, whatever method you use to shop for and discover music, chances are this book will either re-kindle an appreciation for the past, or make you long to dip your toes into a world you might never have explored before ... a world that, in my opinion, every music lover should.