Thankfully the second weekend of the Coachella is not being televised or I would feel compelled to tune in through to the next early Monday morning again. That set me free to get out for enjoy Earth Day, which was coincidentally ‘Pot’ Day and Record Store Day. I thought I’d just slip into the one last remaining, though anachronistic, physical record store in my county: Greywhale Entertainment. I took a walk the long way through the mall to build the anticipation, but when I got there instead of an ‘On Sale’ sign I saw ‘For Sale’ and the store was gone. I admit waiting for a single fabricated calendar date to exercise support for my local brick and mortar record store was lazy, but today it was a heavy to realize the concept of a local, physical record store was dead. Other than Walmart or Best Buy, which don’t count, if I wanted to hold in my hand and look at a record before I bought it, I’d just be left to reminisce about the past.

In the good old days I lived in a basement apartment one block away from Shenanigans, an actual vinyl record store, when that was actually what you used to play music instead of just being ironic hipster. Jim Greene, the mischievous man with a wry smile, stocked the bins with alien artifacts from the far off world outside of Utah. Some time in the late 80’s I bought and spun my last vinyl disc as I dove into CDs, and then MP3s and then Amazon, and at some point I acknowledged that shopping for music in a record store was frustrating and pointless. Apart from the art on the album cover you can’t guess at what the music is like, you don’t have a clue as to any similar recordings, and if you had a specific record in mind you’d be unlikely to find it in alphabetical order or even in stock. With the trend for used record stores you’d feel a twinge of guilt for paying for a record where zero percent of the purchase would benefit the band. Today I still felt like it would be meaningful to try to connect with an actual store and maybe locally ease the imminent death of the entire market.

I did have to get out a map and track down the next nearest living record store in the next county over. After winding through the economically depressed outskirts there I found this rare remnant and stepped inside. There was for sure a lot of activity going on with special RSD sales. It was surreal to see the main displays stocked with vinyl pressings of new releases, though with audiophile specs (2 disc, virgin vinyl, 45 RPM, $40+). I approached the CD bins, in complete misalphabetical disarray, and immediately grew weary of flipping through plastic like looking at white noise on a dead TV channel. It was interesting to look through the vinyl bins, with the enormous cover art. I decided on an Interpol album and brought it home. I happened to have a chinsey, USB-powered record player as well as a long-sealed and stored away box of LPs from the Shenanigans days. I plugged it into the stereo, spun up the turntable, puffed away the lint, and played some Prince and Trio. It sounded utterly horrid and I’m scurrying right back to my iPod, but it was great to open the time capsule and find the contents are not at all out of date. (Just the business model and the absurd needle scraping across dusty plastic.)