Daddy what’s a Record Store? Death of the small town Record Store

I should begin by telling everyone that the first few drafts of this post were just lengthy diatribes against Big Box Stores and File Sharing Sites , two places which I frequent quite a bit , so instead of the pot calling the kettle black I have decided to approach this subject from a different angle, let’s remember the past as it was, not the future that’s still unwritten.

What got me really going on this subject was earlier in the week my son and I went for a walk through our local mall , it’s a good way to burn some of my toddler son’s energy off for the night. As we walked around a corner I noticed that another store had went out of business (one of many in this soon to be “Dirt Mall”). The store was a CD Plus store, a CD/DVD/Music Paraphernalia store.

As I stood there with my sons hand in mine I got a really bad feeling in my stomach, it was that feeling you get when something happens and you know that it will never be the same again, I realized that the age of the Stand Alone Record Store was gone in our little town and memories are all we have.

One of my first jobs ever was when I was 15 or 16; I worked at Sam the Record Man in Orillia. Looking back that was probably the coolest job a kid of my age could have had back then. This was still the age of Vinyl and Cassette tapes, CD’s were just starting to come out and I remember we had a small little section of them, maybe with 10 or so and they were mostly classical. Because I worked there I would read anything I could get my hands on about music and I could answer any question that could be thrown at me. The records would come in and you would write the prices on them with grease pencils, I still have a Pet Shop Boy’s 12” Import single that a customer had ordered and not picked up so I snagged it.

Many years later I was back working at a small indie Record Store in Orillia where we were best known for our large selection of alternative/punk Records and cd’s, that experience helped revive my love of music . There was just a feeling about a small store were the focus was music and just music nothing else, you had customers that you knew so well that as soon as they walked through the door you could point out something new that had just came in and 99% of the time they would buy it. I remember ordering things for people even before telling them and they would buy it because we knew them that well. You could sit around for hours just talking music...there was or never will be another store like it.

That store is long gone, thanks to the Big Box Stores and file sharing, but as I said before I just want to remember the good times.

In the end I was the guy that worked at the record store and that was very cool 

Joe Cornelisse