Tag Archives: indie vinyl stores

More Random Pics From Vinyl Road Rage 2

Vinyl Road Rage has been a crazy journey but definitely fun. There are TONS of record store reviews from the road yet to come…I have stores in Allentown, Toledo, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York City and elsewhere to write up yet…the final leg of the trip begins Thursday (Aug 19 2010) with Toledo, and finally the drive back to Chicago where I’ll do my very last vinyl store of Vinyl Road Rage 2 at Laurie’s Planet of Sound.

All in all, I’ve hit 22 record stores on the trip so far and there are three more left. It’s been great and I am already thinking about Vinyl Road Rage Part Three…but I’ll save THAT discussion for another day. Now, enjoy some random images from the Chicago to New York City vinyl spree:

Saucy Silvia? I cannot WAIT to hear this one. Sex is the thing that started it all, indeed! Does she mean her recording career or what?

IndieWax Records had a tiny little dog that falls in love with each and every person that walks in the door. It was cute. But I was more interested in that pile of vinyl. Does that make me heartless? Or just obsessed?

I remember Not My Son from my days in San Antonio, Texas. Carol Steele, one of the members, got me hooked up with a massive interview (as in, there were five or six guys all talking at once) with the members of Voodoo Glow Skulls during a show at Emo’s in Austin back in the 90s. Then she sort of vanished off the face of the earth and I never saw her again. Always wondered what happened to the band and I was taken down memory lane here seeing this single.

Chicago Record Stores: The Old School Records

I have a sentimental fondness for the Chicagoland indie record store The Old School. Located at 7446 W. Madison Forest Park, The Old School Records put me back on the collector’s game in 2005 after being out for well over three years. I’ve found more than a few lovely vinyl titles here including part of the Aphex Twin Analord series, Danny Elfman’s Corpse Bride OST, and one of my favorite slabs of vinyl by The Orb, Komplott–which I like to play DJ sets with at half speed and mashup Harold Budd under.

The Old School Records does have one thing going against it–there is a large amount of vinyl on the floor and I’ve given myself plenty of grief on hands and knees crate digging here. I strongly recommend a beer after digging through those floor-based stacks–a muscle relaxant is a very good thing indeed. Ergonomically speaking, The Old School isn’t good on knees or spinal columns more than two decades old.

The Old School has a collection of old cassettes, too. I just so happen to have a cassette deck in my vehicle–the mighty Vinyl Road Rage machine christened last year as the DreadMobile, so this collection would be tempting if I didn’t already have an amusingly large number of dusty old tapes.

I’d rate this shop as a great place for new collectors to start out, especially if you’re looking for post-punk or want to fill holes in your new romantic collection. I also found a small pile of my favorite genre, weirdness on vinyl, and the soundtracks section is worth the spinal injury you’ll get–I scored the soundtrack to A Zed and Two Noughts and some other things I’ve never seen elsewhere. Nice.