A WOW Hall connection gave me stacks and stacks of CDs to borrow this summer and he became my musical pusher-man. As I labored through them, sometimes listening to unnamed tracks or long recordings of live shows that were all on one track, I became hooked on indie rock music, electronic music and indie hip hop.
Two of the bands he gave me were what I would characterize as electro-punk-pop: LCD Soundsystem and !!! (an innovative band name that allows listeners to create their own articulation of three exclamation points, most frequently people say Chk Chk Chk). I found their CDs at CD World on Seneca and West 11th. I couldn't find !!!, probably because of their mysterious name, and asked at the counter for help. "Oh yeah, I've heard of them," one of the clerks said and escorted me to the Cs of the Rock-Pop section. Later that summer I walked into House of Records looking for an Outkast album when all I knew was the horns part of a song that I would only recognize by ear; the clerk hooked the computer up to the store's sound system and played 30 second samples of over a dozen songs before I recognized it, and bought it.
This is the heart and soul of what the independent record store has to offer: a knowledgeable staff offering a service while Bob Marley's "3 Little Birds" delights the ears. I did have to pay around 15 bucks for each, not quite the price you can find at say, Best Buy or Circuit City. But then again, they won't be stocking much beyond the major label releases. I'm not that into LeAnn Rimes, Bow Wow or Karen Carpenter, so in Eugene, House of Records, CD World and the Museum of Unfine Art and Record Store are where indie kids go for music.
But other music consumers, mostly twenty-somethings and teenagers, are using iTunes, LimeWire, BearShare, EMusic, Kazaa and Napster to download MP3s, sometimes illegally for free (also called peer-to-peer sharing) and other times legitimately at a price. Either way, this is certainly a relatively new phenomenon – the iPod itself was released in 2001 and functioned solely on Apple software until 2003 when iTunes became PC-friendly. Later in 2003 Apple introduced the iTunes Music Store and record stores are still reeling and adapting from a booming business that sells .99 cent songs over the internet.
On a side note, it's funny to think of buying each track of a Sufjan Stevens album. His album "Greeings from Michigan" has 15 tracks, some of them are less than half-minute interludes and "Illinois" is a 22-track album. But you can buy them in their entirety relatively cheaply at, say, House of Records for under $15. Furthermore, you don't get a product, something to hold in your hand. No liner notes, no intended track order, no physical object until you burn your iTunes purchase onto a CD, which can be easier said than done. Here emerges a distinction between two kinds of music fans: the dabbler who listens to music casually, and the music freak who is a collector and deeply cares about music.
"You don't really get anything," said one of CD World's managers, William Kennedy. "And if you don't really like shopping at Borders or Best Buy then iTunes is the same thing," he said, hinting at the corporate nature of all of the above. Believe it or not it might be stores like Wal-Mart, Target, Circuit City or Best Buy that are more threatening to record stores than iTunes or illegal file-sharing. Mega-store profits actually take a hit by selling CDs so cheap; they're selling them for cheaper than an indie record store can possibly get away with in order to get people in their store to buy a computer or a digital camera or a fridge. "Frankly, I think it should be illegal to price gouge like that – to sell CDs for $1 or $2 less than what the store actually pays for them is just not fair," Kennedy said.
Greg Sutherland, who's worked at the House of Records since 1986, but has been buying the stock of the store since 1988, told me about the three biggest factors threatening indie record stores: "Number 1 is probably downloading and burning CDs because then people don't need to buy CDs. Number 2 is cutthroat competition from places like Best Buy, Circuit City and Target. Selling a CD that I sell for $16.95, when they can sell for $10, is just not fair. Something's going on there. And finally the record industry itself is just stupid. They think they can charge $18.95 for a record. They've been blind-sided. Or they should make it a bargain by actually putting good music on them."
***
Shawn Mediaclast, the proprietor and sole employee of the Museum of Unfine Art and Record Store, is wearing an oddly monochromatic outfit: dark blue pants, a lighter blue button-down shirt, light blue Chuck Taylor's and a blue winter hat over his large-lense clear plastic glasses. He is high energy, affable and knows more about underground music than anyone else in Eugene.
His store on Willamette and 5th is much more than CDs. In fact, Shawn's title on his business card is artist, and he shows and sells a lot of local art in his store alongside a huge collection of vinyl. "The Museum remain[s] committed to contributing to an economy by which artists are able to show and sell their work without kissing the ass of the foof galleries' stagnant aesthetic & exploitive practices," says a photocopied mission statement. "See! Capitalism works!!!"
This is indicative of Mediaclast's ideas behind what he does. "The destructive element has sort of been winning for a while," he said. "You can work just as hard at building people up as you can competing with other people. When you build creative people up you create a better world."
Walking into his store I'm struck by the smell of incense in the air, the clothes and shoes that line the left wall, and the record and tape players that sit atop his clothes rack. He sells everything from ties and belts, to cigarettes and candy bars, to hair dye and wigs. Three different video screens are showing Austin Powers 2, retro female pro-wrestling and on another is a simple vertical line of frequency that reacts according to the music that's thumping overhead. Fatboy Slim is on at first; "Under the big bright yellow sun" repeats to fast-paced techno beats. You don't get this shopping in your pajamas on your couch.
At his store, though, you can listen to anything you want before you buy it. "Can you recommend some super-high energy techno for me?" one customer asks and Mediaclast zips around to the other side of the counter to pull out some vinyl for his customer's sampling. He's been at this for just over four years and it hasn't always been easy: "[Business] is good, it always gets better," he said. "I'll admit it was hard for a while, I was definitely hanging on by less than a shoestring. It's almost too much – I'm almost burnt out."
Half the people that shop in his store are looking exclusively for vinyl; a testament to the hope that record stores will never die. Even though music is becoming more and more digital, it seems, DJs and hipsters will always demand vinyl. About what music he sells, he reported, "I take as much feedback as possible. I have what I've encountered that I really respect… the creamiest stuff. And there's all kinds of DJs in Eugene: techno DJs, house DJs, drum and bass DJs. So I listen to them and it ends up being a combination of what I like and what the community likes."
This store is unique for a number of reasons; where Sutherland at House of Records closely monitors trends and upcoming demands via the web, Shawn functions solely on his own tastes, Eugeneians' picks and what people come in asking for. "I use the internet for three reasons," said Shawn. "Communication, promotion and graphics. I've never downloaded music and I feel like I don't have time to."
***
It's a Monday afternoon when I meet with Greg Sutherland and he's preparing for the usual Tuesday release of new titles. Dilated Peoples, Arab Strap and the Artic Monkeys are the big ones this week. The House of Records has existed in Eugene, across from Full City on 13th, since 1971 in the same little house.
"We have a lot of independent labels here. This is the quintessential mom and pop store – same ownership, same employees, and it's in an old house. It's a place for people to go who love records," Sutherland explained. "It's not just about the market or sales; it's more about the social experience." In some ways the biggest thing keeping indie record stores alive is their character and the experience that comes with shopping there.
A lot of people, especially young people who are technology-savvy, are under the belief that in the not-too-distant future the CD, and as a result the record store, will be obsolete. But when there were just records along came tapes and people figured out they could make tapes of records. Then came the CD and tapes became worthless. "When I was a kid Rite-Aid and Fred Meyer sold cheap records. And people were taping records, too. So this isn't really a new thing for the record industry," said Sutherland. What is new is the kind of internet exposure artists rely on and capitalize on in an era of popular electronic music journalism, blogs and the proliferation of sites like iTunes. In a way, new media outlets like Pitchforkmedia.com empower the music customer in an exciting way: they decide what they want to buy at their indie store and they establish demand. If their local store doesn't carry it then they can but it on the artists' website or elsewhere online.
I wanted to know what people buy. "I'm not a gatekeeper, I just follow what people want," Sutherland said. "Danger Doom, MF Doom and Mad Libs are really successful hip hop names. Anything with their name on it sells like crazy," he said. "Other stores don't really carry them." Jack Johnson sells as much as Miles Davis and the Beatles. Animal Collective, Cat Power and Beck do really well. "Iron and Wine too, which is strange really, it's been a really pleasant surprise because it's quiet, subtle music. I was at the WOW Hall and it was packed with kids sitting on the floor," Sutherland said.
The last mini-movement, as Sutherland phrased it, in his time in Eugene has been electronica and techno. "It goes down well on vinyl. It's kids who determine the next big thing and they've been buying records because nowadays the DJ is like the rock star," he said. "And in rap and hip hop kids will wonder where the music comes from, and it comes from old jazz and old funk, their music doesn't come from a vacuum." This is why vinyl is still alive and could even outlive the CD.
In some ways the internet has been a big help to record stores. Online music websites like Pitchfork can make a CD the album to have. If there's a big buzz about it the House of Records and CD World need to have it in stock. Free downloads, critical buzz and buying one song on iTunes, in some cases, will send a music fan running to the record store to get the whole album, or scanning for their upcoming tour dates.
"I've just begun to figure out Pitchfork," Sutherland explained. "If they give something five stars, I better have it in my store." Glowing reviews threw bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and the Go Team into a realm of commercial success that may have been previously unlikely without some kind of critical support. Sam Gressett, a senior journalism student at the U of O writing his thesis about online journalism's effect on the recording industry said this about Pitchfork's effect on indie stores: "It gives them an already established fan base – they get a good consistent underground market out of it. It's creating a whole sort of underground fandom that's going to come into their store and look for the music they want."
iTunes it turns out, may not be that bad for indie artists. If anything, the serious fans might even download a whole album and then go buy it at their local record store. "In general the stuff that's getting bought on iTunes is the more mainstream stuff. You can't even find a lot of the popular indie stuff. It may affect the mainstream industry but not the indie record store," Gresset said.
Still, some music purists despise iTunes. A website called Downhillbattle.org says iTunes's Music Store is a "facelift for a corrupt industry." They celebrate that, "Apple has recently removed the claim that iTunes is 'fair to the artists' from their website." They're encouraging iTunes to show, next to every song, the cut that artists take from each song they sell, which is 11 cents.
Regardless of the corruption of the music industry, CD World's Kennedy observed that iTunes "will and already has forced record stores to be something new or different. In any city smaller than Eugene a record store will have a hard time competing with the mega-stores. Eugene's probably about the limit," he said.
***
CD World is more mainstream than House of Records and The Museum. It's a huge space; probably four or five of Shawn's stores would fit inside it and at least a couple House of Records'. The ceilings are about 30 feet high and it's in a strip mall next to a Blockbuster. The huge array of promotional posters that cover the walls are a mix of alternative and super-popular acts. Sevendust, Madonna, the Rolling Stones, Depeche Mode and Bjork cohabitate with Ashanti, Rod Stewart and Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt.
Independently owned does not necessarily mean independently minded when it comes to record stores. CD World has accounts with nearly all the major label distributors, Kennedy reported. "Unfortunately, the business of selling records has pretty much nothing to do with how good it is," Kennedy joked. "If that were the case we'd probably cell 100 CDs." The draw that CD World has is that it offers a depth of collections for every artist that the mega-stores don't carry.
"We try to keep a deep stock so that places like Wal-Mart and Target will have the first and most recent of artists but we'll have everything they've put out," Kennedy said. CD World does well selling classic artists like the Beatles, the Dead and Pink Floyd; "they always sell well," said Kennedy. Maybe this could explain the presence of gray hair in their aisles.
The one young patron in the store, Scott Moninger, was an 18-year-old Willamette High student looking for "alt. rock, indie rock, soft rock. My all-time favorite is Death Cab for Cutie." He wore shredded jeans and Chuck Taylors and I asked him if he downloaded music. "No - my computer doesn't really work that well. But I like to pretend that I'm helping out the artist," he said.
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