Music Stores in Detroit/Surrounding Area

I recently moved to Windsor and I hoping someone knows of good music stores in Detroit...Stores that sell new and used and they also have a good selection....Also any stores in the surrounding area of Detroit....

 

I don't know any! There used to be three stores called Desirable Discs.. they were great and are now all gone. There is only one store in my area, called Dearborn Music. They have a great selection but is extremely expensive. There is a store in Ferndale called Record Time, but their new selection is pretty awful. There really is nowhere to go and browse. (There's not much of anything in the actual city of Detroit anyways.) I've been buying discs on the internet for years.

 

You're lucky...Windsor is my home town. I never miss Car City Records.

 

Car City Records. In Detroit proper. I havent been there in a few years, but they have all used vinyl and had a great selection.

Mark Kelley

 

my wife and i go to windsor quite often. i found one store there "dr. disc" not bad, but not good either.

detroit used to have "repeat the beat", they even came to cleveland for a while. i think they are gone now. they might have been the best store ever.

renny

 

Stores in Detroit Area

One of the best Stores in Detroit area is Dearborn Music at Oakwood and Michigan Ave for used and new CDs. They have a good jazz section and lots of used jazz, rock, country. The turnover is pretty good in this store too so you won't find the same old stuff from week to week in the used sections. Also go to Gratiot Ave. Between 9 and 13 mile there are about 3 or 4 decent used CD and vinyl stores (Melodies and Memories at 9 mile, Record Time at 11 mile, and another I forget the name at 12 mile). Car City on Harper is good for vinyl. They have a small section for used CDS. Also Ferndale, off Woodward at 9-mile there are a couple stores although not as well stocked as Dearborn Music or the ones on Gratiot. Good luck!

 

A shame that Car City Recs no longer maintains an online site. Was that logo of theirs, the silhouette of the pink woman playing the sax, taken from an old LP cover?

 

I'd recommend Record Time in Roseville on Gratiot by 10 mile. Lots
of used discs as well as the usual new and catalogue stuff. As a
Canadian music freak, I usually slobber when I go in there. Of course,
it's not as good as it used to be....musical tastes being what they
are these days.

 

Thanks for everyone's suggestions....

 

"Repeat the Beat" was a great store, but rumor has it they owed a lot of people money when they closed (causing a few other retailers to go down with them). My vote for best store ever in Michigan would be for the old Schoolkids Records in Ann Arbor. The current Schoolkids in Exile is only a pale shadow of what once was.

Derek

 

Dearborn Music is at Michigan and MONROE streets, not Oakwood Blvd. Monroe is the next north/south street west of Oakwood.

Derek

 

I recently was in the Detroit area and went to MANY of the same recommended stores. NONE were all that great to be honest. Dearborn Music in Dearborn was MUCH shorter on product than the last time I was there five or so years earlier. They do have a pretty good CD selection, but the vinyl (especially the 45's, are now all gone!)

Melodies and Memories was the best. Again, only for CD's! They have vinyl, but their 45's are in long boxes, mostly catagorized by letter, rather than by artist and you better have LOTS of time to look around! They had a very good CD "OLDIES" section, although they didn't have the "Rhino Handmade" Dionne Warwick titles and they SHOULD have, with the exceelant selection that they have. In the words of Maxwell Smart, "They missed it by THAT much!"

Car City may have been a great store in it's time and SURE, they have tons of albums, but, dollar for dollar, I easily recommend JERRY'S RECORDS in Pittsburgh, twenty times over CAR CITY!

The other stores I hit, were so mediocre, that I can't even remember their names now!

Detroit, for being so "music" oriented, sucks when it comes to good record stores, IMO!

The days of REPEAT THE BEAT and SAMS JAMS are LOOOOOOOONG GONE and that's a damn shame!!!

Chris C

 

I guess a lot will depend on what specifically you are looking for. Record Time has lots of Indie and local CDs. Dearborn Music has a bigger Jazz selection. I've only lived in the area for about 5 years so I'll take what I can get. Prior to Detroit I was spoiled in the Bay Area with Rasputin, Amoeba, Tower, etc. But even those stores are scaling back now with so much business going to Amazon, e-bay, downloading, and such.

 

I was at the AMOEBA, down from Haight & Ashbury, one year ago in May...I thought that I'd died and gone to record store heaven. Wish they would have had a better "45" section though!

I hadn't been in a store THAT good since traveling to L.A., back in the mid 80's!!!

Chris C

 

I'll be back out there next month and can't wait. There is definitely a bigger music scene out there than here in Detroit. Amoeba has the advantage of being in a bustling city on Haight/Ashbury where there is lots of foot traffic, places to eat, things to see, etc. in the heart of music-hippidom. Detroit lacks the density and vibrancy of an area like that (among other things). Not too many people are going to drive 1-2 hours to go to Record Time.

 

Southeast Michigan record stores

Dearborn Music is the 'bricks-and-mortar' place I go for new CD's. They have decent rock and classical selections, and a very good jazz selection.

The last Harmony House in Berkeley recently became a FYE, to my dismay.

Car City Records in St. Clair Shores was a bit of a disappointment when I visited in 2004, compared to 1994. But their 94¢ bins are full of great easy listening LP's.

Ann Arbor has few new CD stores since the demise of Schoolkids' Records, mainly just Borders now. But we have two excellent used record stores. Encore Records on Liberty Street is chock full, and I mean full, of old vinyl and used CD's. Their prices are pretty reasonable, and selection turns over often. There is no category of music that is not represented at Encore. Say hello to Carmen when you visit. Park in the Thompson Street garage.

PJ's Records on Packard Street is a second-floor used record store with lots of old vinyl, and some used CD's. They also stock a hundred or so new vinyl audiophile reissues, adding more every time I go. Park on Mary Street.

 

Weighing-in from some distance here, not in Detroit and I don't know if it's still open, but...

We had a family reunion for my parent's 50th Anniversary in Saugatuck, MI and there was a cool shop on the Blue Star Hwy. This is about five years ago. I picked up a couple Nick Lowe CD's (then OOP) and albums by Jesse Ed Davis, Billy Lee Riley, and a few others. It was a fun place to kill an afternoon.

 

I'm afraid he's closed up shop. He moved to downtown Saugatuck for about two years. I liked going there until he put up a sign saying you had to put down a $5 deposit to even look at his LP's! He claimed it was due to people damaging records when they looked at them but it really killed my interest in visiting the store. It closed a couple months after my last visit.

If you visit Lansing try Flat, Black and Circular - one of my favorite stores.

 

One advantage of the small out of the way stores is that you may have a better opportunity for finding good deals simply due to the ignorance of the owner and potential customers. The more popular stores in big metro areas tend to be run by savy music folks who know their stuff. A few years ago I bagged a couple used Miles Davis DCCs for $7.99/ea and a new Dave Brubeck Box set for $20 at a used book/music store in Gaylord, MI. The clerk had no clue what he was selling me.

 

I soooo miss Repeat the Beat and Sams Jams. Many a paycheck spent in both of those stores...

Derek

 

Further out

How about other cities in Michigan? JohnBeas mentioned Flat, Black & Circular in East Lansing. The web site photos are promising. Does Grand Rapids have any good CD or used record stores?

 

You found a music store in Gaylord? Was it in an igloo or a log cabin?

 

I don't know about Gaylord, but Petoskey, MI, a similar sized city, used to have an excellent record store, which like stores everywhere else these days, went out of business in 2004.....

That store, and their knowledgable employees, turned me on to Neutral Milk Hotel, amongst others.

 

I wish we had all of these "local" music store threads all in one place! (Where's Leppo when we need him? )

Anyway, I agree about Car City. They were a great store, but it has shrunk considerably since I went there in 1998 and 1999. If you are familiar with both Encore (in Ann Arbor) and Car City, just picture Encore's "ordered chaos" inside of Car City's walls--that's exactly how it used to be in the old days, mainly because Encore's owner (Pete) used to own Car City. I spent many a lunch hour at Car City, from about 1983 until I started working elsewhere in 1999. In fact, Car City grew so much that it expanded into two storefronts, but now it is back down to one, with empty floor space.

Sam's Jams...I really miss that place! The owner (Steve Milgrum?) had a goldmine on his hands, but I remember he tried to get into the theater biz (bought a XXX theater and turned it into the Magic Bag), which may have eaten up all of the money. In fact, I found a small thread on soulfuldetroit.com:

http://soulfuldetroit.com/archives/1157- MAR APR 04/10098.html?1080280184=

Far as I know, Bob still owns Car City.