Category Archives: vinyl road rage

TD’S CDs & LPs in Bloomington, Indiana

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The second stop of Vinyl Road Rage 4 was another familiar shop–TD’s CDs and LPs in Bloomington, Indiana. This shop, located at 322 East Kirkwood Avenue, is a basement record store in a building with a good coffee shop and several other attractions.

It’s been running in the basement there for over ten years, giving love to local bands, selling rare and weird music and with quite a good, diverse selection too.

Any fan of 80s/90s electronic or experimental music should definitely have a look. Nurse With Wound is very well represented there (just one example) and the soundtrack section is crammed full of great, obscure and hard to find titles–especially Goblin. Vinyl and CDs are both equally represented–this is not a shop that has one or the other as an afterthought.

Like other great indie record shops, the notes about some of the more attention-worthy releases handwritten or printed out by the staff on stickers make the shopping experience a lot more fun and informative.

There’s something about notes written by the people who work in that particular shop that make you feel like you’re really connecting with the store overall. It’s a great touch and a habit I like to encourage.

I can’t tell you how many albums I’ve purchased strictly on the content of those notes alone, and my visit to TD’s was no exception–at least one of my purchases was on the strength of those little writeups. TD’s is friendly, fun to shop and very cozy. The fact that you can go right next door for a caffeinated jolt and review your purchases is also a big plus.

I highly recommend this record store and it’s definitely on my “must shop” list for anytime I am in the area.

Fellow vinyl junkies, why not join me on Facebook? You can also become a fan of the official Facebook page for the upcoming Turntabling.net book WTF Records: The Turntabling Guide to Weird and Wonderful Vinyl.


Vinyl Road Rage Video-More From The Road

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Yet another installment in the Vinyl Road Rage video series, shot in Austin Texas. This one’s a closer look at the Crosley Revolution portable turntable and how it performs when broadcasting to an FM channel as opposed to going USB in to a computer…naturally the USB signal will be much better, but when you need the FM capability, it’s pretty nice to have.

The Crosley, after road testing and playing with it onscreen, seems to be very handy for a low-tech streetcorner DJ concept, or perhaps a set at your local drive-in movie theater…very handy indeed! Get two, a big boom box and let your DJ skills fly.



Landlocked Music Bloomington Indiana

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by Joe Wallace

The first stop on the cross-country record store road trip we call Vinyl Road Rage was a familiar one-–Landlocked Music in Bloomington, Indiana.

Bloomington is a great place to be if you’re a fan of good record stores, indie music, and weirdness overall. Landlocked Music has plenty of that–mostly found in the used soundtracks, ambient/experimental, and miscellaneous record sections. It’s easy to become a big fan of Landlocked as they’re open to a lot of musical craziness both genre-wise and in terms of format.

I found a nice selection of cassette-only projects which always makes me happy. I think today’s cassette culture people are totally nuts and I can’t imagine releasing anything on tape, which is why they are totally awesome to have around.

It’s good to see people fighting conventional wisdom so hard–AND making an interesting success of it as near as I can tell. Shine on, you crazy cassette people. (PS-I would love to know about cassette-only projects for coverage here. It’s just too retro not to do! Get in touch.)

Landlocked Music has a wonderful experimental/avant garde section that definitely needs a look if you’re a fan. I always gravitate toward the soundtrack/miscellaneous categories first as I’m a rabid collector of weird vinyl in the last couple of years.

While it’s true that I’ve covered Landlocked before, they deserve a second mention. Not only is the selection great, well-organized and fun to browse, but the staff are friendly and fun, too. The best record stores seem to have people who get it–the old cliche about folks being too cool to talk to you doesn’t exist at the really good shops I’ve found time and again.

Personality goes hand in hand with selection and Landlocked has both. Always approachable, never pretentious, and full of surprises (one visit I spotted a vinyl cutter on display and apparently for sale…) your opinion of Indiana as a vinyl destination will change after a stop here, rest assured.

Honestly, I wouldn’t go on and on about how fun and easygoing this shop is if it hadn’t been for some of the truly bizarre and unpleasant experiences I had at other shops on the road trip. When you find the awful stores, it makes places like Landlocked Music seem even more noteworthy.

Join me on Facebook as I’m quite active there and am always glad to make new friends–especially those obsessed with vinyl. Also, you can become a fan of the official Facebook page for my upcoming book WTF Records: The Turntabling Guide to Weird and Wonderful Vinyl.

Vinyl Road Rage Four Is Off The Road

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Vinyl Road Rage Four is officially off the road and back in Chicago Illinois. That doesn’t mean the posts for Vinyl Road Rage are ending–actually the record store reviews are just beginning. For every record shop visited in Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Missouri, there will be an individual review, warts and all.

The trip ended exactly where our coverage began–at Laurie’s Planet of Sound in Lincoln Square. It was great to be back in the home town record shop, looking at the vinyl again after being gone for half a month. There was even a WTF record find or two, so it was definitely a welcome home after the long seven-state drive.

The last three days of the trip were fairly vinyl-free, since I was catching up with family and friends, meeting new people and working out how all the record store reviews would go once I was back in Chicago.

The Holiday season means getting started is a bit delayed–I’ll start writing up the record stores next week–but it will be well worth the wait. With seven states worth of record stores, photos and vinyl to cover, it will be an interesting cross section indeed.

Stay tuned for the Vinyl Road Rage record store updates, plus news of the WTF Records book project and much more…in the meantime, enjoy this video clip shot in Austin, Texas during Vinyl Road Rage…there is more video to come as well–at least two more reports after this one…enjoy the sights and sounds of the sore-throat punk outfit (individual?) Nigel Pepper Cock, reviewed here with the Crosley Revolution portable USB turntable…