LA's oldest record store is also its lowest rated

[JSngry]

Yeah, whatever happened to that guy? He had a great store!

[sgcim]

I used to check out all the record stores in the downtown area of NYC, and there were a few strange owners who I only went to once, and that was enough for me.

Bleeker Bob was the most uptight dude I ever met, and I ran out of there with a cheap copy of Woody Herman's Sextet "Live at the Roundtable" as fast as I could.

There was an older British guy who seemed to be a rock dude, who was some type of maniac or something..LOL! He made a sale of a record to someone, and it was so draining for him, he had to rush me out of his store with an overpriced copy of Grady Tate's disappointing album with "Sackful of Dreams", so he could unwind with a bottle of booze. He said I could come back in an hour or two...LOL!

It turned out that  another guy had a deal with TSS where he'd sneak into their warehouse, and pick up their jazz records after midnight and get them in bulk for a very low price, and sell them for 10x what he paid for them.

And so on...

[Joe]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Very much so, especially Collector's in its earliest incarnation (Dorothy, what a delight she was!). But all of them, really. Friendly spots who recognized you as a repeat customer and weren't afraid to conversate!

Yes, Dorothy!

Also, I as today years old when I learned that one of Metamorphosis' original proprietors was National Poetry Slam Champion Clebo Rainey.

 

[kh1958]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Very much so, especially Collector's in its earliest incarnation (Dorothy, what a delight she was!). But all of them, really. Friendly spots who recognized you as a repeat customer and weren't afraid to conversate!

Collector's Records was the one I liked.

[Ken Dryden]

22 hours ago, JSngry said:

Don't they keep shit like that behind the counter?

Fred has a second desk near his check out desk at the door that he evidently uses for purposes like sorting and packing auction LPs. I am pretty sure that this guy who grabbed this LP didn't even think for a second that it might command $1000 or more in an auction on line.

Frankly, I am not interested in simply acquiring first editions for bragging rights or display. I'd rather buy a greater volume of music than tie up that much money in one rare, mint first pressing.

 

[JSngry]

Same here. They're objects that contain music, not music itself.

And Fred should keep things out of reach if he doesn't want them being touched. Parenting 101!

[optatio]

On 7/22/2024 at 9:00 AM, Big Beat Steve said:

All quite hard to imagine as a business model today ...

 

The Records: The Records. Virgin VA 13130 [1979]

[Ken Dryden]

On 7/22/2024 at 8:37 PM, JSngry said:

Same here. They're objects that contain music, not music itself.

And Fred should keep things out of reach if he doesn't want them being touched. Parenting 101!

It happened several years ago, but I think the LPs in question were in a box, so the customer was off base in thumbing through them.

[JSngry]

Proper spray has a place in today's highly competitive retail environment.

[Big Beat Steve]

2 hours ago, Ken Dryden said:

It happened several years ago, but I think the LPs in question were in a box, so the customer was off base in thumbing through them.

Of course thumbing through boxes can be tempting regardless of the overall layout of the shop. But it all depends on whether records for browsing were in boxes in that shop at that time anyway. I know (now, and knew in the past) more than one shop where record stocks simply were overflowing in all directions and lots of records were in boxes placed outside the actual bins (sometimes even piled for the customers to shift them themselves if they wanted to peruse the contents of all the boxes).
So that customer had only himself to blame for being called to order but I'd cut him (and his "record hunter instinct") some slack.

[Rabshakeh]

Interesting reading, this thread. Are listening booths really rare over in the States?

I love a bricks and mortar record shop. Grazing is probably one of my top three or four things to do. Sadly, space and money issues mean that I am not really a "serious buyer" from these people's perspectives.

[Ken Dryden]

2 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

Interesting reading, this thread. Are listening booths really rare over in the States?

I love a bricks and mortar record shop. Grazing is probably one of my top three or four things to do. Sadly, space and money issues mean that I am not really a "serious buyer" from these people's perspectives.

I have never seen a listening booth during my 54 years as a record buyer. I do remember a local used bookstore that had several CD players with headphones for auditioning used CDs but they were removed at least 20 years ago.

[Big Beat Steve]

3 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

Interesting reading, this thread. Are listening booths really rare over in the States?

 

I can tell you that over here listening facilities at regular record shops (when there still were NEW records to be sold and therefore a certain number of record shops) went out of operation here sometime in the latter 70s. The only one local shop I remember that still had listening facilities (those "telephone receiver"-type thingies at the counter) was a long-established shop but by those later 70s the listening service had been modernized and trimmed down severely compared to the below photograph (which shows the same place in a photo from a 1958 product catalog). No other shops in town offered any possibility of listening in before purchase anymore.

To the best of my understanding, actual listening BOOTHS in record shops were phased out long, long before.

In the more recent era of shops dealing in secondhand records, listening facilities do not exist everywhere either. Our #1 local secondhand shop is a commendable exception and has a corner setup in plain sight of the counter where 2 Technics turntables with headphones are set up for the customers to listen to the records before purchase. Turntables operated by the customers themselves on the understanding that common sense and discretion be applied ("use the pickup arm lift at all times", i.e. don't put the pickup onto the record with you grubby, clumsy fingers! ), though I am baffled ever so often when I see how hard it seems to be even for so many of the (usually) discerning and knowledgeable clientele of the shop to pull the record out of its sleeve and hold it ONLY with an "octave grip" and not by placing their clumsy thumbs onto the grooves ...  So ...

 

Edited July 25, 2024 by Big Beat Steve

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I've been buying records for over 50 years now and I have never seen a "listening booth". I have been in many stores that have a turntable at the checkout counter where they might play a record for you, but nothing self-service.

As for CDs, there was small store on Newbury St in Boston that had portable CD players laying around and you could listen to used CDs before buying them but they disappeared when the headphones broke. Most portable CD players back then had really cheap plastic headphones that snapped easily. I was also told that some assholes started opening new CDs so they could listen to them.

[Dan Gould]

As I think of it, a couple of shops I would visit in south Florida had CD players (and I recall at least one with a TT also) with headphones available for sampling potential purchases.  But they were rather small shops, the ones I went to most (Blue Note in Miami and All Books/Records in Fort Lauderdale) did not.

Edit to add, contra Kevin above - these were good quality stereo-type CD players, no DiscMans and no $10 headphones either.

Edited July 25, 2024 by Dan Gould

[Big Beat Steve]

50 minutes ago, Ken Dryden said:

I have never seen a listening booth during my 54 years as a record buyer. I do remember a local used bookstore that had several CD players with headphones for auditioning used CDs but they were removed at least 20 years ago.

By all accounts they must have existed, judging by the tales (tall tales?) of youngsters of bygone decades who cherished their memories of piling half a dozen high into a booth after school to listen to a stack of the latest hit parade platters, and then buying maybe one single or none at all ("ah no, not actually my cuppa") until even the most sympathetic shop owner would kick them out of his place.

I don't know how long these booths lasted after (circa) 1960 (if at all), though.

Also see the below record sleeve from the 78rpm era.

Edited July 25, 2024 by Big Beat Steve

[Niko]

as a kid, I would spend hours at one of the local bookstores which had a row of 10 or so CD players where you could sample everything... nowadays, here in Amsterdam, most of the used-LP stores I go to regularly have one or two self-service record players... with used vinyl it's key to have a chance to decide for yourself whether the scratches affect your enjoyment of the music or not... Some also have a system where you need to convince the owner to play something for you over the shop system (and in one shop, the owner sometimes decides to punish clients with his choice of what to play next, e.g. Hans Werner Henze at very high volume)

[Daniel A]

Over here, you could audition new CDs in most shops, as long as there even were shops that sold new CDs (they are all but gone now). I would say that roughly half of the second hand stores I still visit have self-service turntables (though no "booths").

[soulpope]

10 minutes ago, Niko said:

.... in one shop, the owner sometimes decides to punish clients with his choice of what to play next, e.g. Hans Werner Henze at very high volume)

👹🤡👹 ....

[Rabshakeh]

I am primarily thinking of used record shops. I am also not suggesting an actual "booth" (which may be what is being referred to above), so much as an area for customers to listen to the vinyl.

But most ones to which I go have a turntable set up with headphones for you to listen. As someone mentioned above, it is inevitably a Technics deck, and battered.

I would go so far as to say that I consider the idea of having a record player set up for customers to be absolutely unremarkable in 2024. Hence my surprise at the reminiscing above.

My parents were shopkeepers who sold womenswear. They always jokily remarked on how important it was to have "good mirrors", by which they meant that the lighting and angling of the mirrors in the changing room was key to whether you actually made the sale, almost more important than the shop decor, staff attentiveness and the clothes themselves. I always saw the record shop turntable in the same light. Shabby as they are, you bet that those headphones and that old Technics turntable are going to make the record you're sizing up sound incredible. They never sound that good on my home system.

My kids recently bought me a record for my birthday (a Howling Wolf record that my 6 year old son had seen and liked the look of). My wife not-so-subtly let me know and I directed her to a shop which I knew had it in stock. I said to make sure that the kids listened to it beforehand to make sure that it was good - to add to the pomp and ceremony of them buying their first record in a shop. 

Edited July 25, 2024 by Rabshakeh

[Big Beat Steve]

30 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

I am primarily thinking of used record shops. I am also not suggesting an actual "booth" (which may be what is being referred to above), so much as an area for customers to listen to the vinyl.

But most ones to which I go have a turntable set up with headphones for you to listen. As someone mentioned above, it is inevitably a Technics deck, and battered.

I would go so far as to say that I consider the idea of having a record player set up for customers to be absolutely unremarkable in 2024. Hence my surprise at the reminiscing above.

 

When I referred to listening "booths" I was actually referring to such booths. Which did exist, judging both by testimonials from some who were around in those days, period photos and ads and by certain period films where a listening booth was part of certain scenes of the plot. I dimly remember that there even was a Hitchcok crime movie that had such a scene. And I more distinctly remember both German and French movies from the late 50s/early 60s that were geared at a youth/teenage audience where you had scenes with rows to teens listening to record over those "telephone receiver" type headphones (very similar to the record shop from 1958 I showed above).

But my MAIN point about these record shops "in the days of old" was about those shops where the bulk of the records were stored BEHIND the counter and you went to the counter and asked the clerk if he/she had this or that record or if they were able to suggest you new arrivals by certain artists or items in your preferred styles of music, and they then pulled them from the racks behind them to show them to you (and play them too, if the customer so wished). And this is where the listening booths (as part of period shop furniture) came in too and were mentioned by me.
All of this triggered by the post about the character in L.A. who would not let customers browse the bins but forced them to tell him beforehand what they were looking for.

The Technics turntables in our local secondhand shop BTW look and sound OK and well cared for. I agree that the headphones make the records sound incredible - but OTOH I hardly ever listen to records through headphones at home.

Edited July 25, 2024 by Big Beat Steve

[JSngry]

I seem to remember booths in one store in Shreveport, probably Stan's?, in the early 1960s. But that's it.

One "trick" I learned that used vinyl stores will try to play on you is to turn the treble down so the scratches aren't clearly audible. I always either crank it (the treble) all the way up, or ask the clerk to do it if it's their purview. I've actually been able to negotiate a lower price on occasion by doing this!

[mjazzg]

Yeah, that treble trick...sure I fell for that a few times before realising 

[optatio]

Various: Jumpin' At The Record Shop. Acrobat ACRCD 152 [UK 2002]

[Steve Gray]

This BBC film about Hifi in the UK in the 50s is hilarious all the way through and is well worth watching but it

also contains a scene in HMV in Oxford Street of a row of booths with different music coming from each booth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9o_eZGaaMk

The Hitchcock film was "Strangers On A Train"

Edited July 26, 2024 by Steve Gray