Aron's Records In Hollywood

[Noj]

I was bummed to see this place has big sign up that reads "Store Closing." Easily one of the best music stores in Los Angeles. I've found some of my favorite cds and records there.

[ep1str0phy]

I was bummed to see this place has big sign up that reads "Store Closing." Easily one of the best music stores in Los Angeles. I've found some of my favorite cds and records there.

I thought the store closing had been public for some time now. Always sad to see the smaller shops go. I got into record buying in LA some time after Amoeba had been established--back then, Aron's was already on the way out. Amoeba has since monopolized the used CD market; Aron's has been a virtual wasteland for some time now. Such is the tragedy of business.

[AfricaBrass]

Back in the early 90's my roomates and I would drive up to Aron's from Orange County. It was such a treat. A typical haul would include a couple Bear Family reissues, a Nurse With Wound cd, some Incredible String Band or Scott Walker imports, and a bunch of ESP reissues... There was always something cool to pick up.

Edited January 12, 2006 by AfricaBrass

[Adam]

we were discussing this in another thread - maybe record stores in Los Angeles. I need to go by there once more. 'Tis quite sad.

[RDK]

Rhino is closing too.

[Adam]

I was just about to post what RDK said, as I just read it in today's LA Times. And Amoeba is starting its own label:

http://www.calendarlive.com/music/cl-ca-po...2,5188703.story

FAST TRACKS

Amoeba follows the Rhino trail

The Berkeley-based mini-chain is launching its own label.

By Chris Lee, Special to The Times

Heard of Amoeba Records?

No, not the ginormous 40,000-square-foot indie music emporium in Hollywood. We're talking about Amoeba, the record company.

Coinciding with this month's closing of the Rhino retail store in Westwood, the Berkeley-based Amoeba mini-chain is launching its own label.

Among the early releases: several previously unreleased recordings by country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons.

As with Rhino Records, the still-thriving reissue-centric label born in the back of the store in the '70s, Amoeba Records was created to cash in on the chain's access to catalogs of artists dead, largely forgotten or both.

Somewhere along the way, the original plan took a left turn.

"I was interested primarily in artists who aren't around anymore," says Dave Prinz, one of Amoeba's co-owners. "I wasn't planning on doing live people. It just sort of happened. There's not a lot of rhyme or reason to what we're doing yet."

The Parsons recordings, including a live 1969 performance by his band, the Flying Burrito Brothers, are planned for April.

In addition, Amoeba plans to offer several Gypsy jazz albums from artists including Brandi Shearer with the Robin Nolan Trio and teen phenoms the Gypsy Kidz, who range in age from 15 to 20.

A virtual music store offering Amoeba downloads is also in the offing, although music fans are advised not to interpret the Web expansion as a harbinger of the demise of brick-and-mortar music stores. "There's always room for a good store," said Prinz. "Downloading is still only 5% of the market.

[Adam]

And a few days ago:

http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/c...2,3465659.story

Indie record stores doing slow fade out

Aron's Records and Rhino Westwood are just a few of the shops that find themselves going the way of the dodo in the digital age.

By Geoff Boucher, Times Staff Writer

It'd be harsh exaggeration to say independent record stores are going the way of typewriter repair shops, but in Southern California it's been painfully evident of late that grand, eccentric music merchants are wheezing badly in the modern marketplace.

Rhino Westwood, a Westside landmark for more than three decades, announced its closing on Thursday, news that follows the November shuttering of Aron's Records, the storied shop that sold music for 40 years (and practically invented the used-LP sales practice), first on Melrose Avenue and then Highland Avenue.

Rhino founder Richard Foos, speaking in dejected tones, said Thursday that it "had become very apparent that it was too difficult to go on." The store's lease expired and Foos opted to lock the doors. The store plans a Jan. 21 parking-lot sale that will be part wake, part fire sale.

"But we are hoping now for a white knight to show up and buy the inventory and the name and hopefully carry on the tradition," he said. "It was a very emotional decision but this is where it's at. Now in Westwood you have no free-standing record stores. You have one of the largest colleges in the country and no independent record store. That says a lot."

The causes of death for Rhino and Aron's are numerous and unsurprising. Album sales are in decline, music consumers continue to migrate to music downloading and CD-burning. The loss-leader approach to CD sales at giant chains such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy have smothered mom-and-pop outfits. And when prerecorded CDs are sold, more and more often it's through new-approach merchants that are as varied as Amazon.com and Starbucks. Closer to home and to the heart, a new competitor arose from within the indie ranks with the 2001 arrival in Hollywood of Amoeba Records, the Bay Area brand-name that opened a colossal indie store on Sunset Boulevard that siphons offbusiness from stores far and wide.

Amoeba has learned well from the history of indie-store successes; Rhino is a significant part of that history locally.

In 1973, Foos launched the Rhino brand-name after finding success reselling the rare LPs he had cherry-picked at weekend swap meets. The first Rhino shop brought in a clientele that included Harold Bronson. The two self-avowed music geeks hit it off and Bronson became an employee and strong hand in shaping the oddball charm and pop-culture safari spirit of Rhino. In the back of the shop in 1978 they launched their record label, also called Rhino, which has become a potent force in audio and video reissues, novelty projects and the musically esoteric. In 1998, Foos and Bronson sold Rhino to the giant Warner Music Group in a multimillion-dollar deal that financially rewarded their longtime fandom handsomely.

While the label grew, its retail namesake contracted. Its retail space gave way to comic books and pop-culture trinkets and then later to a row of video games. Its music inventory in recent months was far less than its imposing collection in years past. That's a metaphor for music retail as a whole, which as seen its floor-space given over to video games and DVDs as the prerecorded music CD has lost favor with consumers.

Jim Donio, president of the National Assn. of Recording Merchandisers, the New Jersey-based trade group, said the closing of Aron's and Rhino comes clustered with the shutdown of Crow's Nest in Chicago, a past winner of the trade group's retailer-of-the-year award.

"There will be more casualties, I'm sure," Donio said. "There's a conspiracy of market factors right now. It's not just one thing ... there were only two albums in 2005 that sold more than 4 million copies and there needs to be many, many more than that. In 2004 there was a small but encouraging growth in music sales after three years of decline. Then in 2005 the numbers were down again."

Donio said the loss of singular shops such as Rhino are emotionally hard to take in an industry that puts a premium on free spirits and maverick successes.

"There's a real sense of community in these stores and discovery," Donio said. "Rhino was a great place. Aron's was a special place. It's sad to see them go away and it's not good for anyone."

The group that calls itself the Almighty Institute of Music Retail, based in Los Angeles, has in its database the names of close to 1,000 indie stores that have closed in the past three years. A decade ago, according to the group's stats, there were about 5,000 music shops flying independent flags; now there are about 2,800. The woes go well beyond small and locally owned stores — large chains such as Tower Records and Wherehouse Music, for instance, have seen their fortunes battered in recent years and have sought bankruptcy protection.

"There's no secret here that times have been tough, but every time you hear about another closing, it's still hard," Donio said. "You hate to read nothing but doom and gloom into it, but it is hard, isn't it?"

[Chalupa]

Death of a record store

Famed Rhino Records shop in L.A. has last gasp

By Chris Morris

The Hollywood Reporter

LOS ANGELES, California (Hollywood Reporter) -- They're throwing a wake of sorts for the Rhino Records store Saturday and Sunday.

Founded in 1973, the venerable record shop officially closed its doors after the turn of the year, hard on the heels of the folding of crosstown competitor Aron's Records.

But, in a final gasp of Rhino tradition, old customers will gather at the Westwood Boulevard location to paw through boxes of CDs, LPs, DVDs and videocassettes at the store's final parking lot sale.

Rhino, a Westside institution for three decades, never recovered its footing after moving into a large new space about five years ago. The old shop, left open as an outlet for used and budget product, closed within a year. A partnership with the Golden Apple comics store failed, and an attempt to rebrand the shop as Duck Soup with the addition of high-priced collectibles never caught fire.

These stabs at instilling new life into Rhino coincided with a precipitous decline in the music business. Owner Richard Foos says: "As bad as it is for everybody, it's much worse for independents. I don't know all the reasons. It's so complicated. There's literally hundreds of reasons."

Foos adds dispiritedly: "There's too many other things to do and too many ways to get your music without paying $18 for a CD. ... I don't see a great future for physical product."

The demise of Rhino hits home on a very personal level for this writer. For years, it was my neighborhood record store, conveniently located between my Westwood Village apartment and the Santa Monica Boulevard office of the film exhibitor I worked for.

It was the hip shop on the Westside -- one of the few places you could buy that hot import album or that cool local punk 45. There, music obsessives gathered to buy their records, socialize and, frequently, argue with the store's highly opinionated clerks. In a gambit worthy of "High Fidelity," Rhino for many years maintained a "Worst Customers List," posted prominently behind the counter; the more obstreperous patrons -- including, on more than one occasion, myself -- were duly namechecked there.

As combative as things could get, the store also spawned its own tightly knit community. When Rhino's fledgling record label wanted to promote one of its early novelty acts, the Temple City Kazoo Orchestra, the store drafted some of its regulars to march through Westwood Village, where they serenaded passers-by with kazoo renditions of "Whole Lotta Love" and other classic-rock chestnuts.

The era when music lovers on both sides of the retail counter bonded is long gone. Foos notes with some astonishment that there are now no free-standing independent stores selling music between West Hollywood and Santa Monica. The options are Best Buy, Borders and Barnes & Noble.

"The days of going into a place like Rhino and saying, 'What's the cool new import?' -- forget it," Foos says.

Things aren't any better for the big mall music operators: Witness the bankruptcy filing last week of the 869-store Musicland chain.

Does this reflect a paradigm shift? Of course, but, if a new study from England's University of Leicester is to be believed, it also reflects a basic difference in the way consumers are looking at music. The school's psychologists noted last week that music had "lost its aura," and was now viewed as simply a commodity.

Says Foos with a sigh: "It's really sad and dangerous. Everybody's like a silo."

Ave atque vale, Rhino Records. For some, you were a way of life.

Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Find this article at:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Music/01/2...reut/index.html

[John Tapscott]

Everytime I read something like this, I'm sad. For the true jazz fan, there's nothing like going into a speciality store or the jazz section of a large retail chain, hunting through the bins, and chatting with the jazz-loving clerk or other customers, and swapping recommendations. I've had a great time doing that over the years and made a few good friends that way. Sad to see it go. But I have to blame myself too, because the majority of my purchases over the past 5 years have been from the web.

Edited January 20, 2006 by John Tapscott

[Adam]

There are still a couple of independent stores on Pico near the Best Buy, but they are pretty much exclusively used, without the delights and wisdom that one could get at Rhino back when it was still good. But Rhino probably never should have moved south. I'm sure the rent had something to do with it, and it probably seemed like a good idea - a new, much bigger space and parking lot. But I think they got just a bit too far from Westwood to lose walk-in traffic from UCLA students and westwood village in general. Amoeba also hurt, but Rhino should have been able to hold onto West Side patrons; it's 35 minutes to Amoeba from there.

It's really sad to see them go.

[Dmitry]

I was at Aaron's last Sunday, along with a good friend and fellow board member Cali.

All I can say is I scored BIG on used cds.

All titles are 40 to 60% off. I must have bought about 30 single cds as well as the Complete Billie Holiday on Verve and Complete Lester on Verve.

They're closing doors some time in February. btw.

[Tjazz]

Everytime I read something like this, I'm sad. For the true jazz fan, there's nothing like going into a speciality store or the jazz section of a large retail chain, hunting through the bins, and chatting with the jazz-loving clerk or other customers, and swapping recommendations. I've had a great time doing that over the years and made a few good friends that way. Sad to see it go. But I have to blame myself too, because the majority of my purchases over the past 5 years have been from the web.

Now you can talk to the jazz fans here.

[Tjazz]

There are still a couple of independent stores on Pico near the Best Buy, but they are pretty much exclusively used, without the delights and wisdom that one could get at Rhino back when it was still good. But Rhino probably never should have moved south. I'm sure the rent had something to do with it, and it probably seemed like a good idea - a new, much bigger space and parking lot. But I think they got just a bit too far from Westwood to lose walk-in traffic from UCLA students and westwood village in general. Amoeba also hurt, but Rhino should have been able to hold onto West Side patrons; it's 35 minutes to Amoeba from there.

It's really sad to see them go.

Rhino has basically been DEAD the last two years.

[Cali]

I thought the store closing had been public for some time now. Always sad to see the smaller shops go. I got into record buying in LA some time after Amoeba had been established--back then, Aron's was already on the way out. Amoeba has since monopolized the used CD market; Aron's has been a virtual wasteland for some time now. Such is the tragedy of business.

Uh, isn't Amoeba, L.A. only 4 years old?

[ep1str0phy]

I thought the store closing had been public for some time now. Always sad to see the smaller shops go. I got into record buying in LA some time after Amoeba had been established--back then, Aron's was already on the way out. Amoeba has since monopolized the used CD market; Aron's has been a virtual wasteland for some time now. Such is the tragedy of business.

Uh, isn't Amoeba, L.A. only 4 years old?

Something like that (frankly, I've forgotten the time). I'm from (born/raised in) the Valley, although I've always been fairly familiar with the LA area. For most of my youth, I never made Hollywood/downtown LA record buying into a religious habit--transportation issues being a factor, the lack of utter necessity being the other (there are enough well-priced rarity shops near the Valley and the shoreside, if one is willing to look hard enough). For whatever reason, subsequent the Amoeba opening, LA record scouting turned into a ritual of mine--enough to apprehend the detrimental effect on the smaller shops, enough to better appreciate the strange, ragged beauty of city. It's kind of tragic coming into the scene like this, although I can only imagine what (you) the more seasoned record buyers must feel. Interestingly, a good friend of mine--who's been buying records in LA for ages--has acclimated to the change of location pretty well. I suppose efficiency benefits when the better proportion of used-CD/rarity trades/sales go down in a central location, but we're losing the atmosphere--and LA can be a pretty beautiful place. Otherwise, why not buy online?

Excuse me for waxing--it's just that I'm in Berkeley right now and I can feel the physical distance. I was just getting to know the place. But hey, I'll be back in a year or so.

[Adam]

I was at Aron's last Sunday, along with a good friend and fellow board member Cali.

All I can say is I scored BIG on used cds.

All titles are 40 to 60% off. I must have bought about 30 single cds as well as the Complete Billie Holiday on Verve and Complete Lester on Verve.

They're closing doors some time in February. btw.

I bought about 20 CDs there on Monday. Sorry I got there after you though; one of those boxes would have been nice. Where did you find them?

But the pickings are thinner now; I mostly got things that looked interesting but weren't on any list of "to get." A couple of ECM Rarums, a couple Tzadik releases; George Russell 80th Birthday concert; Pee Wee Russell "Ask Me Now" and this amazing new Roswell Rudd with a Mongolian quintet album. Some blues and other discs - Big Jay McNeely and Jimmy McCracklin Chronological Classics; Burning Spear; David Grisman, etc.

I've certainly spent thousands at Aron's over the years. I almost went again tonight with a friend who worked there in the mid-90s.

You guys are in LA? Let's all get together for a show, with RDK and anyone else.

A

[bertrand]

I'll be in LA next week (1/27-1/31). There was talk of us all possibly getting together for a show, maybe the Lee Morgan Tribute at Claremont McKenna College on 1/30 (which is why I'm going). I'm also going to the Wayne Shorter gig on 1/28.

Bertrand.

[Adam]

I need to get tickets to the Wayne Shorter gig, and had totally overlooked what's going on at Claremont McKenna. Maria Schneider Orchestra is a week later at Disney Hall.

My experience from last year is GET THERE EARLY for the concerts at Claremont.

Is there anywhere online that has the listings for the American Jazz Institute shows at Claremont McKenna, including the Lee Morgan tribute? The Claremont McKenna page still lists last year's shows, and teh American Jazz Institute page doesn't seem to have been updated in over a year.

Edited January 21, 2006 by Adam

[RDK]

Yep, the AJI is relying on us street teamers to get the word out...