The Jazz.com Blog
April 24, 2008 · 9 comments
Good Riddance to Record Stores
A few days ago, jazz.com published Mark Saleski's comments on Record Store Day, an event drummed up by bricks-&-mortar CD retailers who are trying to reverse their declining fortunes. Mark lamented the gradual disappearance of these traditional purveyors of jazz music. Now Alan Kurtz, jazz.com's resident curmudgeon, offers a rebuttal. Readers are invited to share their own views by adding their comments or emailing them to editor@jazz.com. T.G.
On April 17, editor-in-chief Ted Gioia announced that Jazz.com had published its 2,000th track review. As the author of 600 such reviews and editor of 550 by other contributors, I take particular satisfaction in this milestone. But it is merely the latest of many in our 4-month-old web site's ambitious trek "to cover the full extent of the art form," as Ted puts it, with track-by-track reviews, each including "a link for fast (and legal) downloading." Nowhere is Jazz.com's uniqueness more evident than in our music reviews, which serve online consumers in a way that no other jazz web site even attempts.
So you can imagine my chagrin when, scarcely two days later, Jazz.com's Best Jazz Links on the Web redirected our visitors to a music blog that urged everyone "to celebrate the first ever Record Store Day" on April 19. Record Store Day! How retro can you get? This contrivance, explained stereogum.com, was the brainstorm of "a number of independent store owners who hoped to remind us that because most folks download their sounds today a lot of record stores are going under." (emphasis added)
Within hours, Jazz.com's Mark Saleski joined the chorus, lamenting the decline of record stores and decrying Internet music delivery services. To Mr. Saleski, Record Store Day underscores what's "missing from the online retail world: knowledge and culture." Knowledge resides in the record store staff. There is "no substitute for a store clerk who has spent years mining the Coltrane vaults." And Saleski's notion of culture? Why, that would be "the feeling of sifting through the bins with a group of like-minded people." As Saleski sees it, the alternative to record stores is bleak. "A future where people never leave their houses seems like no future at all." By this reasoning, Jazz.com is part of the problem, not the solution. After all, our track-by-track music reviews75 of which Mr. Saleski himself has deigned to writeare aimed expressly at consumers of Internet music delivery services.
Surprisingly (to me, at least), Mark Saleski is not alone in biting the hand that feeds him. Marc Myers, who has contributed 25 reviews to Jazz.com, launched a similar jeremiad on his own daily blog. While conceding that downloads provide "portability and instant access to music at rock-bottom prices, without the burden of shelf storage," Myers warns that "with convenience comes compromisenamely the virtual death of album-cover art, liner notes and that little thing called 'hold-a-bility.'" Gloomily, Myers adds: "By any measure, downloading is a pretty sexless act and medium. Lots of jazz albums are just a click away. One, two, three: you own it." Mr. Myers, lest we forget, is complaining about this!
Don't get me wrong. A little whining now and then from my colleagues doesn't bother me. However, it's one thing to bewail the fate of outmoded business models, but quite another to impugn newer models that have gained traction precisely because they better appeal to consumers.
And bear in mind, consumers are not bemoaning the demise of record stores. Industry insiders are. Consider, for example, Record Store Day's Official Website. Among over 100 artists singing the praises of record stores are Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, and DJ Jazzy Jeff. (Notwithstanding the last named, the closest anyone in this list gets to jazz is Norah Jones.) Even on a separate Public Quotes page, the testimonials are almost entirely from industry insiders, including executives, musicians, DJs, journalists, a fellow who fashions portraits of musicians out of their old vinyl LPs, a store manager, and a former store employee.
Polling such people is like asking refinery workers whether or not they're in favor of gas stations. Naturally the folks who turn crude oil into price-gouging gasoline at the pump will vote Aye. Their livelihood depends on it.
Significantly, among the Official Website's Public Quotes, only a couple are from actual consumers. Of these, one is especially telling. A woman recounts purchasing "a great import punk DVD" from a record store around 1990. When she gave it to her boyfriend for Christmas, they discovered it was "a Loudon Wainwright videonot what we expected!" She duly returned the item, whereupon the store promised to replace it. Unfortunately, the punk DVD proved as hard to find as Loudon Wainwright's cover of The Sex Pistols' Greatest Hits. "Fast forward to 1995," the customer advises, "and a package arrived in the mail. It was the video!" Far from being dismayed that it had taken five years, the customer was thrilled, concluding: "Now that's the ultimate in customer service!" It this weren't so funny, it would be sad.
Personally, I always detested brick-&-mortar record stores, and haven't set foot in one for years. I found the independents as inhospitable as large chain outlets were bland. The littler stores, typically with black-lighted satanic dcor, always had small bins so crammed with overpriced merchandise that I could neither browse nor find anything. And worse, they invariably played rap, reggae or heavy metal albums nonstop WITH THE VOLUME CRANKED UP TO 11 so that I literally had to wear earplugs, and even then could only suffer it briefly. Shopping was an endurance test that I miss not in the least.
And as for the specious argument that customers could count on sage advice from the scruffy, surly, devil-worshipping salesman glowering from behind the checkout counter stocked with rolling papers and other drug paraphernaliawhy, that's just asinine. Jazz.com reviews are infinitely better informed than those guys, and dapper to boot.
Once, in Houston, removing my earplugs as I exited a store, I overheard an arriving customer tell the clerk she liked the piano player on Kind of Blue. When she asked for something similar, the clerk recommended George Winston. That hyperventilating coot who bolted from the store, blathering obscenities and lurching headlong into lower Westheimer traffic, was yours truly.
Pity the poor record stores? I say good riddance to them, one and all.
This blog entry posted by Alan Kurtz.
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Did you ever consider helping the woman find the Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly bins? I've gotten some great advice from people in Boston-area record stores...Jack Woker at Stereo Jack's in Cambridge, Skip at The Record Exchange in Salem. And I've offered my advice to more than a few people as well. I still shop at independents, and prefer owning to downloading. The thrill of the hunt is part of it. Did you ever collect baseball cards as a kid? It was more fun to buy the individual packs than it was to just buy the whole set. It might have been more expensive, but it was the experience that counted.
Your anecdote about the woman in Houston who liked the piano player(s) in Kind of Blue is tragic. Even an unsophisticated yahoo from Manilasuch as myselfknows that its Evans and Kelly. Sorry for this imposition but I was led to this site because I remembered listening to a jazz vocalist-much like in the tradition of Dave Lambert, Annie Ross, and Jon Hendrickswho was characterized as the Woody Allen of Jazz? Already tried Google.com but nothing except Allen comes up. Thanks.
Dave Frishberg comes to mind. Woody and Dave were born within two years of one another, and both wear glasses. Back in the day, before Woody became a movie star, he was known to the terminally hip as the Dave Frishberg of standup comedy. Check out my Jazz.com reviews of "Zoot Walks In" and "I'm Hip." And by all means retain Dave's classic "My Attorney Bernie." Hope this helps.
My apologies, Mr. Kurtz, for every sub-human record store clerk who played something other than Art Pepper when you left your little cyber-cave to shop. Record stores are like any other idiom; they vary tremendously in quality as defined by such standards as knowledge and cordiality. I can assure you that my satanic little shop, while not specializing in Jazz, is host to many regular customers who trust us to have the latest Peter Brotzmann, Brad Mehldau or Blue Note reissue. In my collection of over ten thousand records and discs there are at least 1,800 jazz titles. I quite enjoy Jazz and I 'm happy to share, unpretentiously, the joys of my experience as a listener. It's a pity you only stumbled into the day-glow dens of iniquity that you exemplify to vilify all record stores. Unfortunately, the broad characterization and condemnation you issue makes it pretty obvious that you're an anti-social crank. Blessings, Steve Wilson
Steve Wilson personifies the industry insiders disparaged categorically in my blog. A 30-year veteran of the music biz, Mr. Wilson manages Kief's Downtown Music at 823 Massachusetts St. in Lawrence, Kansas. (For additional info, call 785-843-9111 or visit www.downtown.kiefs.com.) Since Kief's is both a charter member of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores and an official Participating Store in Record Store Day, it should come as no surprise that its manager springs to the satanic shopkeepers' defense. But as Mr. Wilson himself told CMJ.com in 2006, "This is a screwy industry, mired in denial and prone to manipulation." No Art Pepper-digging antisocial crank mired in his little cyber-cave could have said it better.
When it comes to music, I am a consumer. Nothing more. Im not an industry insider. Im not a high-brow critic. I have a reasonable command of the English language but I have learned not to use it like a blunt instrument (hopefully analogous to the better Jazz musician with their instrument of choice). I like both mediums. Online is easy but it has the disadvantage, as mentioned, that it tends to attract buyers to the most popular individual tracks and typically away from albums. This is probably not a bad thing for most popular genres where many album tracks are just rubbish. For Jazz however I think that the better artists create albums to take their listeners on a journey. If you just buy the popular track you miss out on so much. I agree that Jazz.com reviews are a cut above the rest and I also agree that the online mediums feature, of listening to a few seconds for free, is a pretty cool review tool. On the other hand I like tactile and visual things too. An iTunes voucher feels so much less like a gift than a CD does. Im not old but Im not young. This is why I often suffer the pain of searching the small bins so crammed with overpriced merchandise. The thrill of finding an album that is a bargain to me. I must admit that often the strategy is to exploit the store clerks ignorance rather than their superior knowledge. With the record store you have the benefit of the pleasure of gratification that is not instant. Even if its only the minute or two while I walk back to my car and pop the CD in the player, the anticipation makes the experience all the sweeter. In my humble opinion record stores are no different to book stores, they must evolve. The days of the dirty and dingy store are thankfully numbered. The days of the bland and soulless chains will not be as many as most would imagine. I think that record store owners who are not greedy and have a passion for what they do can find a future that will be as profitable as necessary. The ones I like tend to deliver things that meet my unarticulated needs text my mobile when a sought after album comes into stock, linkages to local and accessible bands, a well timed quip, a daring recommendation, courtesy and real human respect. Not all things can be adapted to the online model. Ill bet that the organizers of Record Store Day were not greedy profit-grabbing consumer-exploiters but a passionate core who are concerned that they may not be able to single-handedly resist the agendas of the greedy profit-grabbing consumer-exploiters who use marketing and less than noble tactics to create and then satisfy ultimately shallow consumer needs. Why do I say this? Because rarely do they ever attempt to reach or feed the soul the way great Jazz musicians do. Could there be a baby in the bath water?
Here in Hong Kong the only record stores that are of interest and which can survive in the long run are the specialized small store like thse cater for auddiophiles and jazz. There is also a triving market segment for 2nd hand stores. I frequented those and picked uplots of interesting bargains and hard to find japanese imports.
My experience of independent record stores (Stereo Jack's in Cambridge, Recycled Records & The Grooveyard & Amoeba in the Bay Area) is that they are staffed by people who are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about music, and eager to share their knowledge with anyone who cares about music. I doubt that anyone takes that kind of job for the $$$$; it's like being a bookstore clerk. Maybe this is a little too boho & uncorporate for Mr Kurtz (who seems to be channeling Andy Rooney dancing on Kurt Cobain's grave), but .... not to worry, Mr K: soon all vestiges of outsiderdom will be eradicated & American culture will be utterly plastic. Your ilk are destined to win, so why not just be a little patient, eh?
So you prefer to download, to each his own. The sound of a download is the pits compared to a manufactured CD and though I own an Ipod, I haven't opened it since receiving it in 2006. I would rather listen to CDs, read the liner notes, enjoy the photographs in the booklets and eventually have something to pass on to my heirs. Also, who wants to keep track of a bunch of downloads? What happens when your computer or Ipod dies? You get to rebuy them, unless you care to back them all up. There's also something to be said for brick and mortar stores (try Papa Jazz in Columbia, SC). It is less time consuming for me to search record and CD bins then do what seems like an endless on line search 15-20 titles at a time on so many websites.