Minneapolis/St. Paul record stores past and present

Discussion in 'Music, Movie and Hardware Store Guide' started by steelydanguy, Jun 8, 2017.

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  1. lambfan68

    lambfan68 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Minnesota
    Same. In my teenage years I worked across the street from the St. Paul Northern Lights. Most of my paychecks went to the little separate CD shop they had in the back. It had a sliding glass door and its own register.
     
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  2. DeeThomaz

    DeeThomaz Senior Member

    Location:
    In The Felony Room
    The downtown location also had a separate little room for the CDs and I believe it's own register too. I do remember they would remove the CDs from their longboxes and kept the discs themselves behind the counters. The racks had transparent hard plastic cards that they slipped the CD booklets into, which you'd bring up to the counter.

    Eventually the vinyl was moved into the side room, and the CDs took over the rest of the store. At that point, they no longer removed the discs from their original packaging of course.

    PS: I believe the St Paul store still lives on in another guise, as Urban Lights:

    Urban Lights celebrates 20 years of record store madness in St. Paul | City Pages
     
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  3. lambfan68

    lambfan68 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Minnesota
    Yep. I remamber all that too. I liked browsing through those little plastic cards. If I only knew then what I know now. I'm sure I flipped past a bunch of stuff that I would never see again.
     
  4. steelydanguy

    steelydanguy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Yeah, that's unfortunate. I had only stopped in there a few times while visiting family in the Twin Cities in recent years, but I always come away with some used CDs. The selection was pretty decent. I found a bunch of 1994 Monkees Rhino reissue CDs in good shape the last time I was there.

    My go-to places for used CDs when I'm in the Twin Cities are the Electric Fetus and the Cheapo branches in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Not sure there are many places left for used CDs in the Twin Cities, are there? I guess the various Half Price Books stores carry some as well.

     
  5. steelydanguy

    steelydanguy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    That's a really cool website. Thanks for sharing.

    It looks like the focus on that site is stores that opened from the 1950s to the early 1970s. That's fine (and there's a lot of really great material on there, all collected in one place for great convenience), but it would be even cooler if the site also contained info on stores that opened after the cut-off date of 1974. Like, I'd love to see some photos and a write-up of the great Let It Be that was in downtown Minneapolis. Garage D'or is another one -- I see it's listed, but there isn't a write-up that goes with it. Nevertheless, it's a really cool site.

     
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  6. Fastnbulbous69

    Fastnbulbous69 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Rancho Bulboso, TX
    30 years ago today I bought Pixies - Doolittle. I don't remember the name of the store because it was an unsung hole-in-the-wall off of University Ave near Snelling in St. Paul, but I can just about picture it and the bikeride over from my Bigelow dorm room. Unlike Cheapos and Northern Lights, they would hold CDs for me, and were a better price, so that's where I got my Sonic Youth, Feelies, NoMeansNo, (the) Melvins and Dinosaur Jr. CDs. This was my most highly anticipated album of that year, but I actually felt it was a letdown at the time compared to the ferocious Surfer Rosa, but it's grown on me...a little!

    I doubt anyone will remember the name, but it was a couple blocks west of Snelling, south side of University Ave. Northern Lights was a few blocks east on Snelling. There was another store north of University by a couple blocks on the east side, that wasn't it.
     
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  7. lambfan68

    lambfan68 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Minnesota
    I remember both of those places but I don't remember the names either. They didn't last long. I remember buying the first two Petet Gabriel albums as UK imports from the place on Snelling north of University. There was alsona video store near the same area that sold used CDs.

    I worked at Montgomery Ward's on University when I was in high school. Spent a lot of my paycheck at the little CD store inside Northern Lights. I think it was called CD Establishment?
     
  8. aceman400

    aceman400 Power to the Metal

    Location:
    mn
    I remember that store. I think it was called Digital Only or Discount Digital. It was on Snelling near Prior.
     
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  9. Blue Gecko

    Blue Gecko Peace

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    Definitely something "Digital", maybe "All Digital". I recently ran into a price sticker on a used CD from the store. I'll look for the CD, but I may have removed the sticker.
     
  10. Fastnbulbous69

    Fastnbulbous69 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Rancho Bulboso, TX
    Discount Digital vibrates my memory, I think that might be it! Not a sexy name compared to Northern Lights and Oar Folkjokeopus, Garage D'or, etc., but it served me well during college!
     
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  11. jamesc

    jamesc Senior Member

    Location:
    Dallas, TX
    I didn't catch this thread until now but I worked at that Northern Lights around the corner from First Avenue in around 1988-89. I was going to the University at the time and had a lot of fun working at NL. We got comp tickets for shows at First Avenue all the time. I usually worked in that little CD room.

    I used to love going to the Cheapo locations. They had tons of great used vinyl and you could often find rare promo stuff. I remember going to Let It Be and Electric Fetus here and there too. It seems like I remember hearing a story about the owner of Let It Be paying to fly Matt Johnson of The The in to hang out because he was a big fan. Not sure where I heard that or if it's true or if was Let It Be... 30 years ago is a bit blurry!
     
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  12. Holofernes

    Holofernes New Member

    Location:
    Denver
    What a fun thread, thanks for starting it! Man I miss Northern Lights from 80's and stopping there before a concert at 1st Ave to spend my limited college era funds. To us vinyl junkies from St. Cloud, this was the holy grail of large, cool as heck 'Cities music stores.

    I am late to the party here but wondered if anyone can help me remember the name of a music store that I loved visiting in Minneapolis...

    What I remember, correctly or otherwise, was that it was somewhere not too far South of Downtown Minneapolis, I think on Nicollet, and on a corner... and (here's the key detail) - to enter the store you had to take a few steps downfrom the sidewalk to the entrance. The store was sunk halfway below street level, so the dark-tinted upper windows were at street level but inside the store you were below the windows. The windows were typically plastered with posters. This would have been late 80's to mid 90's?

    I liked it because it had a huge selection of alternative CD imports (Goth, industrial, 4AD, Bauhaus/ Death in June/Siouxsie)... I can't remember if it had vinyl too in there.

    Anyway, thanks to anyone who can spur my memory. I looked at Googlemaps streetview of Nicollet from the IDS south and nothing jogged my memory or had that crucial step down from street level. Maybe at some point they remodeled the location and brought it up to street level or moved the door, idk.
    Thanks in advance!
     
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  13. lambfan68

    lambfan68 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Minnesota
    Sounds like Let It Be.
     
  14. jamesc

    jamesc Senior Member

    Location:
    Dallas, TX
    Good timing on this thread re-surfacing because I found a nice picture of the front of the downtown Northern Lights Music and scanned in the negative over the weekend. I think this would've been taken around 1990.

    I may have some video from inside the store. Will have to try to find that...

    [​IMG]

    Close up of same pic:
    [​IMG]
     
  15. Vikings28

    Vikings28 Forum Resident

    Location:
    MN
    Down In The Valley in Golden Valley.
     
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  16. grantbarrick

    grantbarrick Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Plymouth, MN
    I'm a huge fan of Mill City - I highly recommend it to anyone interested in vinyl, although I know they carry CDs as well. Outstanding selection and staff.
     
  17. DeeThomaz

    DeeThomaz Senior Member

    Location:
    In The Felony Room
    Fantastic shop. Something of a hidden treasure in the Twin Cities.
     
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  18. Dan33185

    Dan33185 Dylan/Cohen/Adams/T. Buckley/Holly

    Location:
    Minnesota
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  19. Chee

    Chee Forum Resident

    Location:
    Denver
    Any get looted?
     
  20. DeeThomaz

    DeeThomaz Senior Member

    Location:
    In The Felony Room
    I don’t believe so.
     
  21. DeeThomaz

    DeeThomaz Senior Member

    Location:
    In The Felony Room
    The previous owner (who was an old acquaintance of mine from my college days) set a very high bar. Though I must admit I had an odd fondness for its weird old location when it was one of three (as I recall) separate record shops all in what seemed like a dilapidated old house.
     
  22. Platterpus

    Platterpus Senior Member

    I had a former manager that worked at this store prior to him managing me at another store in St. Cloud, MN.
     
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  23. Platterpus

    Platterpus Senior Member

    Back in the 1990s I hit up these stores once or twice and it was a cool experience. Many of the really good stores are now gone but there are a few good ones left and and some more recent ones like Mill City Sound. I have not been to a music store since last fall.:waiting: Thanks to Covid-19.:wantsome:
     
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  24. Electroliner

    Electroliner Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Portage, MI
    Northern Lights CD store back in 1984 was called "CD Establishment" I remember ordering many import discs. I used to get a list in the mail of new releases.
    CD Establishment was absorbed into the Northern Lights store sometime around Early 87. I miss those days.....
     
  25. Fastnbulbous69

    Fastnbulbous69 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Rancho Bulboso, TX
    For many years, I had a recurring dream about a sprawling record store that included some clothes and books, and then wound up into a cafe. It would exit into a street with a magical array of bars, cafes, restaurants head shops and bookstores. The geography would vary according to what the dreams morphed into, but the layout and atmosphere of the mystery dream store with no name was remarkably consistent, even though nothing I know of in existence exactly matches it. I eventually decided that it was inspired by the unique architecture and layout of the two level Tatters 'n' Platters, and the area of Cedar Avenue in general, with maybe a bit of the cafe that was next to Garage D'or Records where a girlfriend once worked.

    The fall of '87 of my first year of college I had a mission to get three tapes (I didn't own my own turntable, so I left my records at home when I left to college and switched exclusively to tapes, all I had room for in the tiny dorm rooms) - Wire's 154, Gang of Four's, Entertainment and XTC's Waxworks: The Singles. I had to call several record stores around the Twin Cities until one had them all - Tatters 'n' Platters in Minneapolis. Per the store's name, it also sold used clothes. It was located on the "West Bank," the Cedar-Riverside/Seven Corners district next to the sprawling campus of the University of Minnesota, which was considered the Haight-Ashbury of the Midwest with the 60s counterculture and anti-war movement. Dylan spent time there before moving to Greenwich Village.

    For me, coming from Dubuque which only had two record stores, discovering the West Bank in 1987 was magical. It had at the time the West Bank School of Music, cool cafes (Extempore' Coffeehouse, Scholar Coffeehouse, Acadia Cafe, New Riverside Cafe), secondhand bookstores, head shops, bars with small stages where bands played (Cedar Cultural Center, Viking Bar, 400 Bar, 7 Corners, Whisky Junction, The Cabooze), Mixed Blood, People's Center, Southern and Theatre in the Round theater companies, and The Red Sea, where I had my first Ethiopian food. KFAI radio station is there, where I briefly exhumed Fester's Bucket O' Nasties in 1992 before moving to Chicago in Sept. That year is also when the worker-controlled punk vegetarian Hard Times Café opened. Variations of that area became my recurring dream, my happy place.

    I found an 1984 article of when Tatters added the "Platters" portion to the clothing store, where Prince had been known to shop. The manager was Kevin Cole, who used to manage the Northern Lights store when it was called Hot Licks. He'd make mix tapes of current music at the time and Tatters customers would ask what it was, and end up buying the stuff at other stores in the area like Mpls's Northern Lights, The Electric Fetus, originally located on Cedar Avenue in 1968-72, Garage D'or, Oar Folkjokeopus/Treehouse, Positively Fourth Street, Let It Be, Roadrunner, Cheapo, Hymie's Vintage Records, Know Name.

    "To build that atmosphere, Platters has been carefully constructed, both physically and stock-wise. Located on the second floor of Tatters, the Platters record shop is visible to customers entering the store below because half of the floor has been removed, making a mezzanine. Natural light from three sides of windows illuminates the posters and bins. And Cole has been ultra-selective in his stocking choices."

    He went on to talk about how it's a carefully curated selection of 2,000 titles of mostly newer music, import 12" EPs and cassettes, including my 1979 post-punk classics. I spent most of my music shopping time sorting through the inventory of Cheapo in St. Paul, since it was closest to the Macalester campus, probaby spent the most money at Garage D'or. But it was Platters that was immortalized in my reoccurring dream, which I didn't have for a couple years until last month, a welcome visit during my extended lockdown.
     
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