Entries associated with the tag "Record Stores":

In what initially looked like yet another depressing sign of the declining music marketplace, last week Dr. Wax in Hyde Park announced that it would be shutting down at the end of August. The Dr. Wax in Edgewater closed this past winter, making the Hyde Park store the last outpost of the enterprise long owned by Sam Greenberg. (Full disclosure: for a couple years back in the late 80s I worked for a Dr. Wax in Lincoln Park.) The loss of the Hyde Park location would be a major blow to the area, leaving Borders as the primary retailer of non-used music. Obviously that’s not a good situation, particularly considering the manner in which Dr. Wax tailors its merchandise to the neighborhood. Longtime staffers Charles Williams and Duane Powell have made the store one of the most important sources for neo-soul and hip-hop in the city, breaking new artists long before they reach the broader populace.    

Because business was bad, last spring Greenberg tried to renegotiate his rent with his landlord of 15 years, Harper Court Foundation, asking to pay $2,000 monthly rather than the $3,000 on the lease. Greenberg submitted a document and got no response one way or the other, so he began to pay the reduced figure. As things started picking up earlier this year he increased his payments to $2,200. In June the HCF told him they wanted all $15,000 in back rent. Since Greenberg didn’t have it they mutually agreed to terminate the lease at the end of August. Greenberg spent a month looking for another location to no avail, so last week he announed the closing. But the store’s loyal customers aren’t taking it laying down. A customer named Marcus Davis, for example, started an online petition; in just over a week it’s already attracted nearly 1,000 names and loads of impassioned commentary from supporters.    

More importantly, in the last few days Greenberg has been contacted by numerous property owners—including the University of Chicago—with spaces for him to check out. “It looks like we’ll be staying open,” Greenberg told me today. Sometimes things turn out well.

Today's playlist:

Already a great record shop and mail-order service, Dusty Groove in Wicker Park recently expanded its business even further, becoming something of a record label. In the last couple of months it’s released five out-of-print albums on CD, all of them licensed from Universal Music. If any retailer is in a position to start a label, it's Dusty Groove. The store sells tons of second-hand vinyl all over the world, so it has a pretty good idea how much demand there is for a particular item, and owner Rick Wojcik routinely tracks down releases from all over the planet—Brazil, France, South Korea—so he’s got a pretty good handle on what’s available.

The first batch of releases, unsurprisingly, appeals to a very particular niche market, and Wojcik considers it as a test run to determine whether it's worth doing more in the future. An album like Seasons by keyboardist Pete Jolly (a jazz-fusion record marked by a wide array of electric piano, organs, and Wurlitzer) is the kind of music only a crate-digger could love, but titles like Funky Skull by Melvin Jackson (who plays an almost psychedelic, effects-heavy upright bass over taut, heavy grooves) and The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby (a trippy and funky jazz session inspired by the work of Omar Khayyam that features Ashby on untypical string instruments like harp and koto) deliver a broader, if still limited, appeal.

To me the new label is already a success, if for no other reason than its reissue of Força Bruta, a brilliant 1970 album by Brazil's Jorge Ben and the first of his many collaborations with the funky soul group Trio Mocoto. Ben's ability to transplant samba tunes into deeply soulful, often funky settings was simply stunning. Gorgeous string arrangements swaddle many of the tunes, but it’s Ben’s characteristic acoustic-guitar riffs and Mocoto's jacked-up grooves that make the record tick. Ben never had the greatest set of pipes, but few musicians have turned an imperfect voice into such a valuable asset, reinforcing the rhythmic agility of his songs with pin-point phrasing, surprising intervallic leaps, and a plaintive kind of moan.

I was asked to write some liner notes for the reissue, but I ended up passing on the offer, partly because information about Ben’s career and development is practically non-existent in the States, aside from thumbnail bios that only offer the slightest insight. It’s astonishing, really, that Ben—one of the most successful, deep, and influential musicians to emerge from Brazil in the last four decades—hasn't been the subject of more substantial analysis. Hell, a bunch of his classics from the late 60s and early 70s remain unavailable. I sure hope that if Dusty Groove continues its reissue program, more albums by Jorge Ben will see the light of day.

New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones has been hosting a lively conversation in response to the New York Times article mentioned on this blog earlier in the week. While some of his readers have been chiming in about the state of health of the brick-and-mortar record shop, an equal part of the discussion has focused on the notorious attitude that afflicts so many record store clerks. I know about that condition first-hand; I did time at the now-defunct Inside Track as well as at Dr. Wax and the Jazz Record Mart. My civility certainly waffled during those years, and looking back I'm sure my arrogance was nothing more than a mask for my frustration. When you've been selling records for six years hearing yet another person say, "Oh, you've got the greatest job, listening to music all day," can make a mild-mannered person turn murderous. As a consumer I find Reckless Records to be the guiltiest purveyor to hipper-than-thou 'tude--never mind that plenty of the staff seems to know less about music than its customers.

Anyway, what do you feel about the shops in Chicago? Too much attitude? Not enough knowledge and selection? Are you headed toward a download-only collection or do just buy music from Amazon from the cozy confines of your desk? Me, I still love the old-fashioned record store; sadly, they don't really exist here any longer.