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| San Francisco, Mission District street art |
I'm just back from my latest family jaunt Stateside - this
time to San Francisco
and various points south - armed once again with the indispensable VinylDistrict iPhone app. Not wanting to take any chances with getting my purchases
home safe and sound, I got kitted out with a sturdy flight case before heading
out. It's built like a brick shithouse and at £30.00 didn't break the bank.
I'm no stranger to the Golden State
and its record stores, so was fully expecting rich pickings. Before
leaving home I had compiled a US vinyl wish-list; not a comprehensive list of
every record that I hoped to add to my collection, but a best case scenario,
cream of the crop, fingers crossed kind of a vinyl roll call. Of the 75 LPs I brought home, eight of them were from my hundred-strong wish-list. I'm yet to decide
whether that's a result or not.
The holiday began in San
Francisco, one of my favourite cities and home to more
nut-jobs and dead-eyed junkies than you could shake a shitty stick at. Walking through
the Tenderloin, even in daylight, is like stumbling onto the set of Michael
Jackson's Thriller video. The people
there really have been left to rot. Those drug casualties who haven't
completely given up on interacting with anyone other than their crack dealer haul
their arses up to the Haight to hang out and provide a bit of authentic
counter-culture colour for the tourists. It's all a million miles from the manicured
perfection of Russian Hill and the commercial artifice of Fisherman's Wharf.
Except, it's not - it's just a manageable walk away. But anyway... record
stores. There are plenty of them.
Recycled Records, Haight Street, San Francisco
Last time I was here I got into an altercation with the guy
at the checkout because he didn't think I needed a bag for my purchases. That
was a decade ago. The staff are still on the glacial side of frosty, but at
least the stock is interesting and the place is a manageable size. I was
chuffed to find a copy of Wichita Fall's Life
Is But A Dream and a Locomotiv GT album. A good start to the trip!
Amoeba Records, Haight Street, San Francisco
It looks like it's going to be vinyl nirvana when you survey
the acres of racks that greet you as you cross the threshold, but the truth is
that since my last visit the amount of space given over to vinyl appears to
have shrunk, and much of what there is consists of new, sealed LPs - which I
can pick up on Amazon any time - mixed in with the used stock. That's not to say that I came away empty-handed, but
the pickings were slimmer than I had anticipated. Of the eight LPs I purchased,
perhaps the most interesting was a self-titled album by Shotgun Ltd, which is
an impressive and largely unheralded slab of hard rock and comes highly recommended.
Incidentally, the staff member who sneered "we're not a toy store"
when my wife and Kiss-obsessed kids asked if Amoeba sold Kiss action figures,
might want to think whether a customer service job is really right for him.
Prick!
Originals Vinyl, 3150 18th St #105, San Francisco
This is more like it: a welcoming record store run by a
friendly, enthusiastic, helpful guy who allowed me to listen to anything and
everything before committing to buy. It seems that the smaller the store, the
better the quality of the music on offer, and the better the service. I can't
recommend this store highly enough. It's a bit off the beaten track, nestled in
a tiny unit in what appears to be a small industrial estate, but Originals
Vinyl is an essential stop-off if you're looking for vinyl, particularly 60s /
70s psych and hard rock. There's a pretty healthy jazz section too which
provided me with a couple of gems. The cheaper stuff is at floor-level, but the
low prices in no way reflect the fantastic selection of goodies on offer.
Highlights of my haul included Ramatam's In
April Came the Dawning of the Red Suns, The Yellow Payges' Volume 1, White Water's Out Of The Darkness and Larry Coryell's Offering, each for a measly five
dollars. A fantastic little shop!
Logos Books & Records, Santa Cruz
Logos is definitely more of a bookstore than a record shop,
but there is still a reasonable, if limited, selection of used vinyl to dig
through. I came away after 15 minutes, having checked out all the vinyl there
was to see, clutching Savoy Brown's Blue
Matter ($3.00) and Spooky Tooth's You
Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw ($6.50), so it was certainly worth a
look.
Streetlight Records, Santa Cruz
Streetlight is a nice store - if slightly confusingly laid
out - and the staff are friendly. It's unfair to judge a used record store on
its stock after just one visit, but despite full racks, I struggled to find
much of interest. Prices are reasonable, but the stock when I visited was just
a tad uninspiring. Richer pickings another time maybe?
Metavinyl, Cedar Street, Santa Cruz
The clean, simple logo that announces the store to the
street presages the smart, minimalist interior. Clutter is kept to a
minimum and the racks are arranged around the edges of the room to give an airy,
spacious feel. The used and new vinyl is racked separately (halleluiah!) and
clearly labelled. Prices of used vinyl are very reasonable, starting at a
dollar.
It's always a test of my patience and parenting skills when
my bored kids are rolling around at my feet, play-fighting and shouting at each
other while I'm digging through racks of records. I think the store owner coped
with their 'colourful' behaviour better than I did and, for that, I'm grateful,
as I found a bunch of quality titles within Metavinyl's racks. I've been
looking for a minty copy of Dylan's Blood
On The Tracks for some time, and I found one here for a grab-it-and-run $8,
along with Traffic's John Barleycorn
for $5, Harvey Mandel's The Snake for
$7 and The Resurrection Band's Awaiting
Your Reply for $5, which, if you can ignore the god-squad lyrics, is a
kick-arse, must-hear, heavy rock LP! Not that it was audible over the racket my
kids were making, but ELO's Out Of The
Blue was playing over the shop's system for the duration of my visit: that
earns Metavinyl extra points in my book. The kids were given stickers when we
left (presumably on the understanding that they never return.) My favourite of Santa Cruz's record shops.
Recycled Records, Lighthouse Ave, Monterey
With my family happily ensconced on the beach, I made the
eight mile drive into Monterey
and took full advantage of my freedom. Recycled Records has masses of well-ordered
stock, some hard-to-find titles and bargain bins that contain the occasional
gem if you're prepared to root through some pretty mundane stuff. I bought
eight LPs including a couple of Keef Hartley albums, two by The Flock and
Badfinger's Magic Christian Music,
prices for which ranged from $5.50 to $11.50.
Sean, the co-owner of Recycled Records, is friendly once
you've lured him from his little wooden booth and engaged him in conversation
(I never did find out the purpose of the mysterious booth), and he was kind
enough to steer me in the direction of my next digging spot a couple of miles
up the road in Pacific Grove.
Vinyl Revolution, Forest Avenue, Pacific Grove
Pacific Grove is a well-heeled and attractive stop-off five minutes' drive down the coast from Monterey. Vinyl Revolution declares its presence with a sign executed in Master Of Reality-hued purple, a window box display of half buried LPs and the sound of a band in thrall to Black Sabbath bludgeoning its way from the store's sound system. Bob, the proprietor, looks like the Big Lebowski's biker brother and is affable and interesting company. Anyone who understands the brilliance of Captain Beyond's debut and Judas Priest's Sad Wings Of Destiny is alright in my book. A hand-made, wooden Scorpions logo adorns one wall of Vinyl Revolution - a remnant of a shop display from the time of Taken By Force. It really ties the room together.
Vinyl Revolution's stock is priced to sell. The records that
I dug out from the bargain bins have clearly been well-used, but none of them
is trashed: The Beatles' Yellow Submarine,
Blues Project's Projections and
Richie Havens' Alarm Clock for $0.25c
each! My most expensive item was Triumvirat's Pompeii
LP; a steal at a shade under four dollars. My only regret is that I didn't pick
up a copy of a single by Bob's own band, The Tomb Weavers: an authentic-sounding, 60s-style
garage band recorded in the store's back room. Top bloke, nice store!
Granny Had One, Main Street, Cambria
Cambria's real draw is the
beautiful, wild beaches, but the town has much to recommend it too, with its large
choice of restaurants and antique shops, many of which have the odd rack of
vinyl lurking, waiting to be discovered. Prices are often on the optimistic
side of realistic, but there's always something worth a punt. In the case of
Granny Had One, I left with Grand Funk Railroad's All The Girls In The World Beware ($7.50) and Sea Train's hard to
find debut ($8.50) under my arm.
Country Collectibles, Main Street, Cambria
The beauty of shopping for vinyl in places like this is that
there's plenty of books, jewellery, antiques and vintage toys to keep Mrs
Shelf-Stacker and the kids entertained while I flick through the surprisingly
sizeable vinyl selection, amongst which I found a nice clean US pressing of
Badfinger's No Dice on the Apple
label for $20 - a fraction of the cost of buying a UK original back home. I
realise now that my taste in music belongs in an antique shop after the sweet old
lady behind the counter looked at my T-shirt and commented: "Black
Sabbath! It doesn't get any better than that!"
Boo Boo Records, San Luis Obispo
For a fairly large store, I struggled to find much of interest here, in part because much of what's on offer is new vinyl. Having said that, I did pick up The Association's self-titled album ($3.00), Redwing's eponymous debut ($1.00) and Trouble's Live In L.A. ($10.00), so I can't complain. Prices seem very reasonable. The staff at Boo Boo Records are friendly, welcoming and kept the kids happy with stickers and badges promoting the recent, expanded reissue of Led Zeppelin's Coda. This is another store where it's probably unfair to judge it on the back of one visit because on a different day I'm sure there would be more interesting used records in stock to supplement the wide range of music-themed peripherals such as T-shirts, playing cards, mugs and key fobs.
Cheap Thrills, San Luis Obispo
When I first climbed the stairs to the vinyl section of
Cheap Thrills, I thought I was in heaven. The place is huge. Not Amoeba huge,
but pretty impressive nevertheless. Once I had got my bearings and had a tentative
poke around, I realised that it was more manageable than I had at first
thought, as great swathes of the racks house genres that are of no interest to
me. The next thing I noticed - something that initially made me want to walk
out empty handed - was that all the LPs are sealed in plastic sleeves making it impossible to check the condition of the vinyl. The urge to leave subsided once I'd spotted the signs explaining that records are
visually graded and can be inspected at the till prior to purchase. Not
something I'd encountered in a record store before, but fair enough. I needn't
have worried as all the records I picked up had been very conservatively graded
and, what's more, every LP comes with a free, brand new, protective outer sleeve
upon request.
I had to pay two visits to Cheap Thrills to satisfy myself
that I'd not missed anything. I came away with ten LPs ranging in price from
$1.98 to $9.98, including a pair of Barefoot Jerry albums, James Gang Live, Sugarloaf's Spaceship Earth, Dreams' self-titled album and Zephyr's debut
featuring Tommy Bolin.
Downstairs at Cheap Thrills is a labyrinth of CDs, comics,
action figures, computer games, cables and connectors and
anything and everything vaguely related to music and home entertainment. My
kids filled their pockets with complimentary fridge magnets and stickers, and
charmed the guy at the checkout sufficiently for him to give them each a
Hotwheels toy. A superb store that I would live in if I was a local. And
there's a customer car park.
One thing I noticed throughout California is that many record stores are
racking new vinyl in amongst the used stock. I hate that. To me they are
different things that have their own separate appeal and should be shelved separately.
You wouldn't expect vintage apparel to be hung on the same rail as new clothes,
or for used cars to sit alongside new vehicles on a garage forecourt, or for
dog-eared paperbacks to be shelved next to the crisp, new books in Waterstones;
same principle applies to vinyl. My over all impressions of my modest sample of California's
record stores are that the prices are higher than on the east coast (although
there may have been a nationwide price hike in the two years since my last
visit to the States) and that, with the odd exception, small is beautiful when
it comes to vinyl shopping: as with any retail experience, a smile and a spot
of friendly banter goes a long way.
