It’s the summer of 1985 and we pull into a parking lot inside my brother’s older but well maintained Honda. As we pull into the space he slows the car to a speed that will allow the parking bumper to do the job of the brakes and stop the car. Both the drivers side and passenger doors open as the car is in its last seconds of rolling, and the race to the glass double doors of our favorite strip mall record store is on! The weekly Saturday afternoon race was almost always won by my brother, mainly because he would park the car to his advantage, and also due to the fact that he really didn’t mind shoving someone out of the way in order to get inside first!
In hindsight, the race to see who could get inside the store first seems ridiculous, considering the fact that we were each heading for different sections anyway. I was headed to the 12″ Single section and my brother was all about the 45’s.The race however was to get into our respective sections first, because whoever was done sorting first was then the person to get to where the real gold was, the LP and rare picture disc sections. Even there our tastes differed, with my brother preferring picture discs due to their rareness and higher expense, and I was more into finding a rare LP with the original seal and special sticker on the plastic wrap.
Our tastes ranged the spectrum from old Philly soul to modern rock. The Temptations to Hall & Oates to Rush and The Outfield. We checked it all, every record of every row, at least twice. However, this particular summer we were on the hunt for what back then was the rarest of rares, Jingle Bell Rock in green.. See, a few years earlier Hall & Oates had released their version of the Christmas classic, and actually cut two versions. One with Daryl on lead and one with John. However when it came time to press the 45’s, RCA made most of the records in red and only a very few “promo” versions in solid green, shown here. We searched for years stateside, and it was not until my brother did a tour of Germany in the early 1990’s while in the USAF that he found the holy grail in all its green glory. To say things have changed is a massive understatement.
What we were in search of was the rare Jingle Bell Rock 45″. What we did come across, both of us actually getting a hand on it at the same time, was the even more desirable 12″ picture disc! The argument over who would get to add it to their collection was solved by the price tag that came in at just under $100. Too rich for my blood!
Of course these days all it takes is a few clicks, probably less than 10, and you can basically have everything your heart desires delivered to your front door. No hunt. No chase. No lifelong memories either. You see the record store was a meeting place of common ground for everyone to enjoy. The 1980’s are the picture perfect years of musical diversity. A 20 minute set from
popular radio station Y-100 would find Van Halen sandwiched in between Whitney Houston and The O’Jays, followed by Quiet Riot & Beastie Boys before the break. The lines between genres were not just blurred, they were nonexistent. Somewhere in here is another story about how Radio DJ Bobby of Bobby & Footy gave me a personal call after some rather disparaging remarks he made about my beloved Hall & Oates at one of the early ” Wing Dings” hosted by Y-100 at Young Circle in Hollywood.
The other purpose that record stores served was as a sort of musical library. Back then your favorite song making the top 40 meant everything, and if you happened to miss American Top 40 you were stuck all week not knowing if your favorite band cracked the top ten. No, you could NOT just look it up!! What you did instead, was get in your car and drive to the record store, and browse
the always current magazine section. Once you found either Billboard or Radio & Records you would swiftly sort through it to check the charts, hoping that the store employee would not find you going through magazines that you had no intention on purchasing! During my time in the USAF in Alaska our base library would actually get Billboard magazine, and though it was about a week behind,it was better than nothing!
This is yet another example of how progress has made things easier, but not necessarily better. I would much rather spend an afternoon treasure hunting a half dozen record stores in a 40 square mile radius than typing in a search and clicking a few buttons. Sure it’s more time consuming, but what is time anyway? Time is nothing unless you are making memories, especially ones that last a lifetime. Online there is no hunt, no chase and really no winners or losers. It’s just all there, all the time, something that we all now take for granted. Maybe it’s just me but 4 hours of store hopping followed by a cheap meal at Denny’s to sort through the loot beats click click delivered all day every day!
