Any funny stories about the *worst* record store you've been to?

The only (new) record shop left in Dundee is an H*V store where I recently Bought The Clash's "Sandanista" remastered LP. when I got home and stuck side 1 on, it was obvious the record was warped badly enough to be audible. I took it back the next day and when I described the problem to the assistant she took the record out, examined it and asked "Which side is warped?" FFS!
Today I'm returning a Durutti Column CD (LC) which I'd ordered expecting the recent 2CD remaster only to find when I got home, a Rhino re-issue of the single disc FFS!!
"There may be trouble ahead..."

 

Your description of Rebel Rebel brought back memories. Our NY office was very close to Rebel Rebel so I used to venture down when I was in the city. I was afraid of moving in that place let alone actually touching anything in case the whole place just fell apart.

They were really nice in there but I recall wanting to buy a Tony Bennett box set that was priced at $20. I brought it to the counter and the guy takes one look at it and says to me "I better call the owner. I'm not sure if he wants to sell this one" Apparently it was near a pile of cds the owner had set aside to listen to which he wasn't suppose to sell without asking him. So he calls the owner up and proceeds to describe the Bennett box set and get's the ok. Very friendly. Not the worst but quite a humorous experience.

I don't think I've ever had a really bad experience in places. Generally the worst places I've been to are the ones that price G- records at NM prices.

 

I was really startled to read this many stories about shops who price on the fly. I've never been in a store that does this. it's probably because the practice is illegal in new york (NYS weights and measures law §197-b: retail pricing accuracy, baby!), but even if it wasn't, overcharging the wrong guy and an inevitably outraged post article would probably put a stop to it quickly.

I have experienced both tiny-selection-of-one-guy's-CDs and possessive-shop-owner simultaneously in one store in the small town where I went to high school. the owner/clerk had monster and smashmouth used for $9.99. every time I inquired about a price, he told me the disc was rare and gave a justification that was totally irrelevant to rarity, as in: 'oh, that's a rare CD, REM changed their sound completely on that one.' he lasted about two weeks. I still wonder if it was some kind of front for social psychology research.

I don't usually mention black gold records in carroll gardens when talking about record retail here in the city, because I don't consider them a record store. they actually stock a nice selection of obscurities that academy only occasionally carries, but they come at twice or three times the price. it's just clearly a 'lifestyle' store with antiques and coffee and scones and cliques of thirtysomethings and overhead to pay. they have nice employees, though.

I have some good news for you. sounds is still very much alive, though not kicking as hard as it used to. they open when they feel like it--I call up and ask them the schedule for the next day if I want to visit. it's still a great place and sadly the last record shop left standing on st marks...

 

When cd's hit, an indie store opened in the Phila burbs called 21st century Sound. Owner was very knowledgable, nice guy. The wife was the odd one. She worked part time at (then) WIOQ in the city, but she was prone to wicked mood swings. Not like the old owner of Plastic Fantastic, who was bi-polar.
Anyway, you'd walk in one day and she'd greet you by name, ask you what's going on, recomend some stuff for you, tell a funny story about the station. The next day, you'd say hello and she'd look at you like you peed on her feet. Eventually, she quit the station (bad move) to work full time at the store and in 2 years the place went under cause most customers wanted imports and he stopped getting them. She'd be in the back room, doing the books and you'd walk in, say hi to the owner, and she'd slam the door to the office. Eventually, some people started avoiding the place because of her bad moods.

 

There is a severely overpriced store in Hastings. I can't remember the name but it is in the old town.

I thought I misread when I saw their prices. £40 for VG condition Led Zeppelin LPs. £25 for common Reggae LPs. £4 for common 12"s.

Apparently, the records are priced by the people who bring them in; when they sell, they take half and the store takes the other half.

So their logic was, price twice the amount they go for on eBay so that both parties get the same amount. Seriously, it beats me how they expect to survive.

 

We just had one close here in Pgh, a place called Rather Ripped. The dude had previously had the shop in Berkeley, and had connections to the original Bay Area/CA punk scene. At some point, he moved to the Pgh area, and first operated a stall out of a local flea market. I hit him up there a few times, but he always seemed to be out of good stuff. I put that down mostly to me not being a flea market early bird, and I would still stop by his booth whenever I was there.

Later on, he moved out of the flea market and opened a storefront in the trendy Lawrenceville neighborhood, right on the main drag of Butler Street. Instantly, he had loads of competition on that end of town...The Attic just across the river, Mind Cure back on Polish Hill, and Jerry's over in Squirrel Hill.

Unfortunately, his stock was still full of stuff that no one wanted...it wasn't just a flea market fluke. Plus, he had a complex system where records were tagged with a price, "but if it's got the green dot, it's under $5, and if it's the pink dot, it's over $10..." or something like that. He'd have to explain it to everyone who walked in, and he's giving you this convoluted rundown while you're just starting to go through the bins

He was a nice guy, and his heart was in the right place. But 3/4 of his stock was cutouts of '70s soft rock or bagpipe music. And a lot of it would be priced over $10, while you could find the same thing in the $1 bin anywhere else. It was all totally at odds with all the photos on the wall of him with the likes of Jello Biafra or the Cramps.

He shut down a couple months back. The consensus was, he was nice enough guy, but it's a wonder his storefront lasted the 6 months that it did.

 

I went to a 2nd hand shop the other day. The place was so overcrowded with stuff that it lay around in huge piles and the owner honestly warned me not to touch anything or I might be burried beneath it. It was almost impossible to move around in there. If I made a photo and posted it here, nobody would believe it. They also had clothes, books, small furniture and so on. The whole place was a mess. He told me that he had just taken the shop over from somebody who didn't care for anything and that he would clean this mess up soon. Weeks later it was only slightly better, no big change at all...

 

I tried to sell some CDs of some albums where I bought either an SHM or MFSL instead and ended up walking out of the place because they offered me $0.25 for a basically NIB CD.

 

[QUOTE="Bob_in_OKC, post: 8256849, member: 25505"]PS: Bill's Records in Dallas is indeed still in business.[/QUOTE]

Ah Bill's. What a bizarre dude. That place is both amazing and frustrating. He does have some gems in there. Pro tip : if you go in there and find something you absolutely need, find a good looking fresh faced young guy to pay for you (it helps if he also looks kinda innocent/dumb) The price will drop by 30-40%

 

I did find a original LA pressing of Dean Martin's Swingin' Down Yonder there for $25. Would have called it overpriced, but couldn't find it on eBay etc. for a starting price of less than about $50. The store called the vinyl VG+ visually. When I got it home to play it, this slab was, conservatively, NM-. Absolutely no surface noise. For a 60-year-old LP, it's amazing, and probably my best vintage record.

 

At Ojata Records - Hip Hop & Hot Dogs (I guess that's the full name, pulled from Facebook, since the building has no identifying signs of any kind on the exterior) in Grand Forks, ND, I found about half a dozen Dean Martin minty mono Reprise LPs, including a copy of Happiness Is Dean Martin sealed in the plastic sleeve insert (the ones with the perforations), none with prices on them. The guy who I believe is the owner looked them over and gave me prices that averaged $4-5 apiece, totally reasonable for their really nice condition. When I commented like a tard that I hadn't seen such clean copies of DM monos in an actual store, he was like, "oh yeah, now they're $7 apiece." I bought them all anyway, including a couple of Canadian pressings, and thankfully every copy played just as nice as they looked. I had a hard time figuring out the business model of the place, since the owner seemed to spend most of his time in the hot dog section. He was friendly and clearly at least somewhat knowledgeable on records, including how to hold them, but I didn't like the raised prices after the fact. I should have said something to that effect, but I was giddy enough to have found those copies in the first place, and just wanted to leave with them without any issues.

 

This is the VERY thread that needs to be shown to those that insist over and over that the "bad old internet" with its "bad old downloading & file sharing" and "bad old mom-and-pop-shop-killers-like-Amazon" is solely responsible why many record stores don't exist anymore. My God....these are first-hand accounts of dementia in action!

 

Melodies and Memories in Eastpointe, Mich., has a very wide selection of CDs and vinyl, but the shopping experience is just slightly less painful than flying commercial aircraft. There's a sign at the door prohibiting more than one person under 18 entering the store at the same time, turnstiles, and signs everywhere about not touching the box sets or taking photos. When I took out my phone once to check my messages, the clerk walked down from his eye in the sky to remind me not to take photos. Subsequent visits are always similarly awkward.

I get the part that stores are hurt by theft, but when you're more worried about having your merch stolen than selling it, your business model is a little flawed.

 

I wish I had a dime for every time I was treated horribly at a record store in S.F. It's only gotten worse and I've written that part of my life off altogether. I once went into an "establishment" that I really enjoyed going to when I was a teenager. I had gone off to the military after college and grew up some which gave me a different perspective admittedly and I started giving it back to them which they didn't know how to handle. I was in the store and witnessed a homeless person dropping a deuce in a corner near a t-shirt rack, I told the clerk about it and got the kind of look as if to say "How dare you judge these people?" and she said "That's life in the city, she was probably desperate and I'm sure she'll clean it up." I watched the woman leave and about 2 minutes later heard someone screaming cos' they stepped in said deuce. The "victim" promised to never come back there again and the clerk muttered "Good f'ing riddance" as if the "victim" was more of a problem than the crazed woman taking a dump on the floor. I went by the location a few years back and saw the place was closed down...................good f'ing riddance.

 

I know I'm responding to a three year old post...but this was laugh out loud funny!

 

Back in 1968 when I was 10, a small record shop opened up near my favorite Speedee 7-11.
The 2 guys that ran the place dressed in suits and glared at me every time I went in there, even when I bought something.
("Yeah, kid..we 'sell rekkids' here. What's it to yuh?")
They only had the top 20 45's and 2 skimpy racks of Lp's...and no one else was ever in there.
They lasted about 2 months and then were gone. I'm pretty sure it must have been a money-laundering front or something.

 

This guy downtown has a small record store in a gallery downtown. Advertises on local version of Ebay. He's like 6' 7¨ and looks like a viking; very rude and intimidating.

Claims to sell everything new/sealed and everything is used/sealed at home with that thin flimsy plastic everyone can seal at home with.

Bought a Cramps DVD from him; he would not let me unseal it to make sure a)the disc was inside b) the disc was OK. The disc had slight marks on it, was clearly used so I bought it because there was no way I could get it anywhere else (was expensive. Gave him a negative and he called home threatening to kill me on sight if we ever crossed paths again. His loss; I advised everyone I knew against buying from him.

 

Rather Ripped actually does still operate, inside Trader Jack's Flea Market.

I've had plenty of great finds there, and he has loads of oddities worth checking out.

 

There's a place on the south side I checked out when I first began collecting.
pretty sure the dude's a coke-head. he tried pawning off lame Beatles editions on me because I grabbed Who and Dylan albums.
then when I paid, he did not open the register. I can't recall if there were even prices on anything.

I went to another one near Beverly a few weeks later and it smelled like wet cardboard. Huge inventory, but very little you could look at.
You had to tell him what you were interested in and he would get it for you.
very annoying.

Oh, now i just remembered the worst: popped up as a "record store" on GPS near West Palm Beach, Florida. My father in law drove me there, and they didn't have any records, but they did have a huge selection of Haitian DVDs. I guess it was too funny to be the worst. the look on my father in law's face was priceless.

 

For the record, when Musicmania first opened, it was better than Waterloo. It was the greatest record store I had ever been to.

Fast forward a few years... I had just moved back to Texas from California and I fly in to Austin. I tell my buddy that picked me up that I wanted to swing by Musicmania.

The store had turned into a primarily hip-hop store, selling rims and lowrider accessories. I sighed, and walked out, lamenting the death of another great record store.

 

It was definitely more hip-hop than anything else, but even that looked to be dying a quick death. Crap

 

That's just weird.

 

I just found an LP (Reincarnation : Fat City) with the "Capers Corner" sticker on the front. There was also a $20.00 price sticker on the cover too. Not sure if it's also from Capers Corner. Purchased the LP in Fort Lauderdale, FL. (Big Apple Books) I paid $4.

 

While googling for Capers Corner, noticed this article about Ben Asner. (he died in 1986, I assume the same year the store closed.) After reading the story, I can understand Ben's disposition.
Lawrence Journal-World - Google News Archive Search »

Video about Caper's Corner.

 

This was a store that opened sometime in the late 1980s. The two shop owners had been selling fruit and vegetables for some time, but somehow suddenly switched to selling second-hand records instead. It was obvious that most of their stock of 7" singles were simply acquired from the local juke-box operators, as they'd had their centre holes 'dinked' out. Their LPs were a random selection of titles, some seemly unsold stock from a store that had closed many years previously. One of the owners soon departed.

The one that carried on seemed to have virtually no musical knowledge, and got all of his pricing out of a few old back-copies of Record Collector he had somehow acquired. Records were often mis-filed, often hilariously - one example was an LP section labelled Motown that contained virtually anything from a black artist that wasn't Hendrix. There was also a single from UK jazz-funk outfit Morrissey-Mullen filed in The Smiths section.

Pricing was all over the place, too, with most album prices derived from whatever Record Collector was quoting for an original pressing, even if the record was a recent re-issue. Occasionally the odd rarity would pop up for next to nothing, as he simply didn't know what it was. Then there was his rack of rarities - one being a signed album from one minor Merseybeat era act, an album of covers from their post-fame cabaret period.

The odd thing that the shop was somehow successful, and relocated to larger premises a few doors away. This shop had two rooms, with one speaker situated at the far end of the second room, with the other right next to the counter. If anything with something panned to the far speaker was played, the owner would exclaim "Listen to the stereo on that!"

After a few years located there he started dealing more with VHS tapes instead, and music became a side-line, before the store eventually closed.