Robert Plant on Record Stores

We used to ride our bikes to the train station (LIRR) and go into the city, walk down to the village and hang out for the day. First we'd hit Star Magic, cool little shop with lots of funky stuff to browse. Then to Tower Records for a few hours, the place was massive. Then finally landing at CBGB's for whoever was playing that night (Ramones almost every night closing the show). Try to catch a train back to the Island - didn't always happen, had to sleep at Penn Station many a time. Still, the record store was always something we prioritized in youth, loving it coming back.

I'm old enough to have experienced one of the old record shops that had a row of little record players hooked up to headphones, where you could listen to any of the Top 100 45 RPM singles in their bins. My friends and I rode our bikes to the Valley Fair Mall on Stevens Creek Blvd. in San Jose to do just that, and I recall going one Saturday in 1965 specifically to listen to a "nasty" song we had just heard about: "Baby Let Me Bang Your Box". How on Earth did THAT get by the censors back then?!

By 1967 we were of driving age, and Russ Solomon had just opened his second Tower Records store, this one in San Francisco, a 45 minute drive north of San Jose. I made a lot of trips up to the city to buy British import LP's, including the first Procol Harum album (the USA version was offered only in re-channeled fake stereo).

In 1969 a close friend of mine got hired by the new full-line record store (all genres, including Classical and Jazz) in town. I really wanted to work there, but the store had a music test one had to pass in order to be hired. That test included Classical music, of which I was pretty ignorant. My friend (a music major at San Jose State College) snuck a copy of the test out of the store managers file cabinet and made a copy, which he gave to me along with the answers. All I had to do in preparation for taking the written test when I applied at the shop was to memorize the answers to the questions, and it worked! I worked there for a year, until my first original-music band insisted I quit so we could practice for 8 hours a day. Talk about beating songs to death!

The little record store, (Deacon Records) in my small home town had listening stations setup too...but they were 8-Track players with headphones.

If you liked the album, you could buy it as a cassette, LP or 8-Track.

Wow, that brings back a lot of memories...

I also recall listening to records while in the shop. We lived near Cambridge, England at the time and the shop I really liked had both headsets to use and a couple of booths, sorta like a phone booth, that you could sit in. Give the record to the person behind the counter and they would play it for you. On a busy day you only got to hear a few tracks but on a slow day they would let you listen for as long as you wanted. Of course, it would help matters if you actually bought something too!

The Melrose store was open for a long time (way over 10 years).

It started out on the South side of the street and moved once (or twice) to the North side within a 2-3 block area 

I only looked @ it a few times in the 80’s as I wasn’t into super duper rare recordings.

The last time I noticed it was around 2000, or so.

DeKay