Vinyl Road Rage posts have gone from Cleveland to Philly and we’re not done yet! I’ve got a lot of New York City record stores to get through and there are a few posts that haven’t gone up yet from Ohio and Pittsburgh yet to come. New York comes first though–I’ve been posting these in chronological order. In the meantime, here is another collection of Vinyl Road Rage images collected from the trip. There were 1500 photos in all! Not that you’ll see all those here, but I have picked some of the best….

]]> http://turntabling.net/record-shops/even-more-vinyl-road-rage-random-images/feed/ 0 http://turntabling.net/record-shops/philadelphia-pennsylvania-record-stores-digital-ferret/ http://turntabling.net/record-shops/philadelphia-pennsylvania-record-stores-digital-ferret/#comments Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:02:48 +0000 Joe Wallace http://turntabling.net/?p=2589

I’ve known about the mailorder/online shop Isolation Tank for many years, but I have to confess I don’t know the back story of their bricks-n-mortar version at 732 S. 4th street in Philly called Digital Ferret CDs.

Multiple names aside, I found Digital Ferret to be an excellent specialty shop–like the mailorder operation, this Philadelphia record store focuses on gothic, industrial and related genres. Looking for a record shop that specializes in the dark side? This is the one.

There is just enough vinyl to make it worth the trip for a collector, and the CDs  on sale here include some rarities that I couldn’t resist. I scored two Coil discs and even found a compilation featuring Coil in the track listing–anything to do with Coil on vinyl has my undivided attention. The vinyl selections here overall were tempting and I do plan on returning to score more of them.

I’ve got a soft spot for the old goth/industrial scene, so I was naturally inclined to browse…and contrary to at least one report I read on Yelp, the person running the shop was friendly and talkative. Of course, I know when people are busy and don’t waste precious time yammering away–perhaps someone with few social skills would find someone actually trying to do their job a bit bothersome. But I digress.

Apparently this shop is the “new” location, extracted from an older and more cramped version elsewhere in Philly. I found this shop to be quite easy to navigate and the layout was customer friendly, especially since I had a backpack stuffed with vinyl from other conquests…it was easy to navigate which I greatly appreciate.

Digital Ferret carries DVDs, some books and clothes, but the music is the main attraction here. It’s hard to believe that a goth/industrial shop can survive as a bricks-n-mortar store these days, but Digital Ferret has carved out a pretty good niche from what I could see—kudos for staying true to their chosen musical obsessions and making it work.

First I’d like to say that from a visual perspective, I think this band was much better when it was called Alice In Chains. Maybe they THINK they’re Alice In Chains, but one listen to the tracks off this album and you’ll be begging for Layne Staley to dig himself out of the ground and throttle these guys to death with his bare zombified hands.

This is yet another in a long parade of nu metal “mad faces” album covers, but honestly, the cover makes it look like the mad faces are due to the fact that the hair salon won’t take them as walk-in clients rather than some kind of teeno-angst mongering.

I couldn’t figure out what it was that made me think this Static-X album cover is so wretched until I realized that the mad face dude with his mouth open (catching flies, no doubt) makes this cover look an AWFUL LOT like that Devil’s Bris album by Voltaire.

From the moment you spot the sign on the street, you’ve got stuff to sift through as on good weather days there are crates of dirt cheap vinyl waiting for you outside the store.

Once you get inside, you’ll go down the Philadelphia record store rabbit hole for a long, long time. Since I’m not a jazz collector per se, there was a lot of browsing, but when I hit the soul section the stacks were much harder to resist.

Deco Disco does look pretty cool…regretting that I didn’t pick that one up now. Ahh well, can’t buy them all! The Philadelphia Record Exchange is crammed full of opportunities like these…it all depends on how much cash you can afford to part with on any given day. They really don’t make it easy. One thing I did notice about this shop–there was a constant stream of people coming in and out–the reputation of this store is rock solid in Philly, and with good reason.

It’s your choice. The lady or the tiger? It has to be said, there is a LOT of crap in the basement rock section, but the hidden gems are waiting there for you. I scored the DBs 12 inch single Spy In The House of Love and a lovely copy of the Peter Murphy post-Bauhaus project Dali’s Car with a bit of dilligent digging. Yes, you have to get past Dan Fogelberg first…but it was worth it.

Yes, the Philadelphia Record Exchange is far more slanted towards jazz, soul and non-rock genres…but it’s a refreshing change of pace…and the rock section does have some gold nuggets hidden in there. Don’t miss it.

During my visit to Philadelphia, I was very pleased to shop at Repo Records at 538 South Street. From the moment you spot the store, you know you’re in for a crate-digging safari you should set aside plenty of time for. I realize that most of the reviews from this particular Vinyl Road Rage trip are glowing (I had very good luck most of the way) but Repo Records truly deserves the praise.

South Street is full of touristy places to lure you in, but I get the vibe in Repo Records that locals shop here. Like all the good shops on my trip, the staff were friendly and chatty. No sullen-faced wankers who have seen High Fidelity too many times here.

I was pleased to find a good combination of new material and re-issues. There’s so much good stuff coming back on the market these days that a new record collector will have trouble picking their battles. Behold:

Yes, that’s Here Comes Shuggie Otis on 180-gram vinyl, brand new and ready to be discovered by a whole new generation. But I was happier with this discovery which, in spite of its ruined cover was a very pleasant find indeed as I’m a bit of a nut for anything on vinyl related to the Justified Ancients of Mu.

You couldn’t have made me happier if you had given me a white label pressing of a late night drunken collaboration between William Shatner and Mark E. Smith (with Brian Eno playing a MicroKorg through seven echo boxes).

For some reason, the farther east you drive, the more prevalent record stores with basements become. I don’t know why this is, but I’m very pleased that the phrase “bargain basement” is still more than just a cliche.

The Repo Records bargain basement was fab–not just for the usual crate digging, but as a connoisseur of tasteless, poorly thought out or just plain goofy album covers, I was in heaven.

Look at that HAIR. Now THAT’S a SIN.

You people quit your day jobs, decided make a career in music and the best name you could come up with after pondering it for AGES and AGES was….

But I digress. Basically, Repo Records was fun to shop and I crawled around the old, new, and very used bins for quite some time. If you’re in Philly and are tired of all the other South Street stuff, drop into Repo Records and stay a while. Just make sure you’ve got a nice, cool place to stash all that vinyl when you’re done shopping…the trunk of your car might work in November, but in the dog days of summer you need a better plan.

]]> http://turntabling.net/record-shops/philadelphia-record-stores-repo-records/feed/ 0 http://turntabling.net/record-shops/vinyl-road-rage-2-gallery/ http://turntabling.net/record-shops/vinyl-road-rage-2-gallery/#comments Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:06:33 +0000 Joe Wallace http://turntabling.net/?p=2545 Here is yet another collection of glorious images from the road trip from Chicago to NYC, vinyl finds, kooky album covers and much more. There are still LOADS of record stores to review and post–we have more from Philly, Toledo Ohio and New York City to come…next week is going to be packed full of record store review goodness.

When I walked in the door, I was greeted by an impressive collection of empty, crushed beer cans and bottles. Far from making me cringe at the clutter, I felt envious of whatever event I had missed out on that created this post-modern sculpture of party refuse. A quick glance to the right reveals a large (for a record shop) performance space, which explains everything.

The Marvelous specializes in a range of new stuff, reissues and reissued obscurities–I scored big at The Marvelous with the vinyl reissue of Japanese freakout music by Flower Travellin’ Band, name-dropped in Julian Cope’s JapRockSampler and a holy grail record of mine ever since reading that lovely tome.

On the overhead while I was digging through the stacks of vinyl goodness,  the gent behind the counter had some Magazine playing which made the experience even more lovely.

There is a lot to love about The Marvelous–they’re one of those record stores (of which there are many) that make Vinyl Road Rage a joy to do. I couldn’t possibly have walked out of the shop with all the titles I wanted, and when the selections were small, they were still pretty comprehensive for the size of the genre.

I scored Gary Numan & Tubeway Army, Soft Boys and The Bongos plus the glorious reissues previously mentioned…it was quite difficult not to just load up the old credit card to the max in this shop…

I highly recommend The Marvelous, my only regret was not being able to hear what that in-store performance space sounds like–it had one of the more generous stage areas I’ve seen in a record shop–rivaled only by the late, great 33 Degrees in Austin which cleared out an entire section in the back end of the shop for bands to play. If you are in Philly, you owe it to yourself to check out The Marvelous.

Double Decker is another shop where the people working don’t mind telling a brother where to find more vinyl goodness–I got the down low on several other good indie record stores along the Vinyl Road Rage 2 route and it’s so great to encounter down-to-earth people willing to chat about other shops and all things vinyl. Double Decker, I WILL return!

There are plenty of rarities on the walls, as it should be in every good record store…and the collector-friendly selection includes the old left-of-center favorites:

The classics…

To the utterly reprehensible…

Double Decker Records, like many of the shops on my journey, had at least one section that was quite literally a disaster area of vinyl—in other words a cluttery hodgepodge certain to yield at least one irreplaceable treasure, usually of sentimental value rather than collector cash cow cred.

What a great shop! Comfortable and easy on the knees–no bending and stooping to get to the weirdo vinyl titles usually relegated to a crate on the floor or under a table someplace…everything is easy to access, with plenty of surprises. Bravo!

I have been looking forward to this particular post ever since I walked in the door of Jerry’s Records–the Pennsylvania record store that wins hands down for size, selection and overall coolness. And I mean that literally as well as figuratively–Jerry says his air conditioning bills are $1300 a month for this staggering collection of vinyl.

As you can see, when you get to Jerry’s, at 2136 Murray Avenue
in Pittsburgh PA, you’re in for quite a treat. The 78s section advertised on the door is sure to draw out the obsessives in that part of the vinyl junkie kingdom, but I thought the main store was more than plenty to keep me going–no need for me to obsess over a whole new undiscovered country yet.

A newcomer to the store really cannot prepare themselves for the volume of vinyl here. If you’re into post-punk, 80s new wave and related sounds you will spend all of your money and all the money you’re GOING to make in the next year at Jerry’s. No contest.

And the prices are extremely reasonable, I might add.

Soundtracks were a bit frustrating to wade through as there was a filing system at work there that completely escaped me. I was looking for the horror stuff, naturally, but found so much broadway mixed in with the other titles that it made things quite difficult. The soundtracks section was full of the old standbys and in the short time I was able to spend back there (in a labyrinth all its own) I couldn’t locate anything I didn’t already have–the curse of the collector rather than an indictment of Jerry’s, really.

Don’t go into Jerry’s Records in Pittsburgh for the first time if you aren’t able to spend at least 90 minutes. Seriously. You WILL be late for whatever appointment, rendezvous, tryst or meeting you’ve set up for the day. There is too much, too too much here to skim over or simply glance at.

What I loved best about Jerry’s, aside from an excessively fussy classification system that lists MANY bands by name (even obscure ones that might be better in the general alphabet sections) is the attention to one of my favorite genres—weirdness on wax.

Jerry’s breaks down the weirdness into subdivisions I’ve never found in any other record store–I was soooo grateful to find the strange vinyl handled as lovingly as all the other genres—no short shrift given to THESE records just cuz nobody but me wants to buy them. I mean, really–they listed all the weird records with ANIMAL COVERS.

Jerry’s Records was one of my absolute favorite record stores on the entire Vinyl Road Rage 2 trip. I say you’ll be hard-pressed to find another shop that is as large, exhaustively stocked, and fussed over. Jerry himself is on duty at the store, which tells you something about how he likes to run things…and he told us he’s got a whole warehouse of vinyl that hasn’t even made it into the shop yet, so you know this place isn’t running out of the good stuff anytime soon.

I highly recommend Jerry’s, in case you couldn’t tell from all the breathless hype. I will be back there and soon, I hope.

–Joe Wallace

Many, MANY thanks to all who retweeted, posted on Facebook and blogged about Vinyl Road Rage. There were many highs, a few lows, and a LOT of great record stores along the way.

Quite possibly the largest, most daunting and overall amazing record store of the trip was the mighty Jerry’s Records in Pittsburgh. It was absolutely staggering in every way and you’ll marvel at the size and scope of the place when you read the review.

Biggest disappointment of the trip? Fun as it was, I would have to say that from a vinyl junkie’s point of view, the Andy Warhol Museum (also in Pittsburgh) was a major letdown–from the lack of a return call when I phoned to get press access to the Warhol archives to a serious neglect of Warhol’s involvement in the music business from the Velvets to the Rolling Stones.

I had high hopes for the Warhol Museum, but maybe it was just a case of bad timing…I certainly hope so. I loved the place, vinyl gripes aside, and will be very happy to go back.

As I mentioned, there are MANY more posts bearing the Vinyl Road Rage logo to come…just wait til you see the record shops I found in NYC. I’ll post many more of these record shops this week, but next week the remaining posts will go up combined with our usual WTF bad album covers, vinyl blogs to watch and other features. THIS week, it’s ALL about the Road Rage.

–Joe Wallace