My love of music started when I was in Junior.High. One of my neighbors was a huge fan of Echo and the Bunnymen and she had an extra ticket to the show. I remember putting on my best sweater (because you have to dress up for a concert! Thanks Mom) and heading to the Greek Theatre in Berkeley to see the show. As I entered the building I was confronted by one of the most mystifying situations I can remember. There were 3000 mods with their jet black hair, cool concert t-shirts, and heavy eye shadow in the audience along with Amy’s dad the neurosurgeon, and me. Her dad and I were the only people sitting and we were propped in the back completely alone. For me it wasn’t far enough away. It was so loud my entire body hurt. It was so hot I spent the entire evening sweating and scratching. I was absolutely miserable. The worst and most humiliating part was I felt uncool for the first time in my life.
The next day I rode my bike down to Tower Records. It was my first encounter with the leviathan that was one of the biggest record store chains in the world. The Tower Records in Mountain View seemed to have every record on the planet on display. I spent hours that day going through records, tapes, and these new creations, the compact disc. After probably 30 minutes I found the Echo and the Bunnymen section and purchased their self titled release on CD. It cost $17.99, or about 4 weeks of mowing lawns. It was a high price to pay, but I was convinced that this was a world I needed to know. I listened to it probably 1000 times. I learned all the words. "Lips Like Sugar," "Bombers Bay," and "The Killing Moon" are songs that still come to mind. I learned to love the music. Soon I was an avid alt rocker listening to New Order, Squeeze, the Stone Roses, Dead Kennedys, Suicidal Tendencies, The Vandals, and Nine Inch Nails.
Being a kid is always hard. My family was not poor by any means, but as a teenager I didn’t have much in the way of disposable income. When I was 16 I was allowed to get a job at a local pizzeria, which helped a lot, but I still struggled to feed my musical addiction. It was expensive, and I agonized over which records to buy.
As most of you remember, record stores were set up with thousands of albums in rows, in their packaging featuring amazing album art. Back then the packaging sold just as many records as the music. All you needed was one hit song and your album would fly off the shelves. My frustration was I would spend $18 on a CD and find to my disappointment that I had purchased a whole CD only to enjoy one song. Several years later the record stores started to install “listening stations� where you could at least listen to the music before you bought it, but even then you could listen to maybe two dozen of the 1,000,000 CDs in stock. All of this is still true today in record stores, a fossil of a recording industry boom time which supplied a substandard product at a premium price. Now I am reading articles about how sad it is that the record stores are going under and it just makes me smile.
Now, you and I, the consumers, are in control of the music we buy. We can listen to most of the songs we want to hear on myspace or get samples on iTunes. We can buy the songs that we really want to hear, just that one song, and download it to our iPods or burn it to a CD and listen to it as much as we want for 99 cents. For the real music connoisseurs like me you can get a streaming music service like Napster or Rhapsody that allows you to listen to almost any song ever published on your PC. Today, due to my Rhapsody subscription I have direct access to almost every song ever recorded. At home I have my PC connected to my stereo. That Tower Records store I told you about? The place I was so curious about, the place I wanted go through and rip open every album so I could hear everything for myself, is now at my fingertips 24 hours a day for $10 a month. It’s like Christmas every morning.
So no, I am not sad to see all the record stores going under. I haven’t been to a record store in five years and it feels great. These companies are getting what they deserved and they earned it. The market has changed, but they haven’t. They still cling to a time when they were in control and when they were making all the money. Now it’s the consumers and the musicians that are slowly gaining control of the industry. It’s a beautiful thing. In my job as a concert promoter I am finding that hard working new independent bands are beginning to outsell their newly signed major label counterparts. It’s becoming less about connections and more about talent and hard work. That’s how it should be.
Today, I will gladly stay home with my Ipod and Rhapsody whistling tunes while I drink a glass of wine with my wife, rather than driving all over the state looking for a record. Good Riddance Tower Records, hasta la vista Blocksbuster Music and Wherehouse. We don’t need you anymore. It's me, the future, and you are done.