There have been quite a few record-shop eulogies making the rounds of late — including our own Virgin Megastore closing-sale expedition — but few raise a lump quite like PopMatters new interview with Atomic Records’ founder Rich Menning. Menning waxes rhapsodic about living the music-nerd dream and offers a paean to the community forged at his Milwaukee music mecca, while maintaining an unexpectedly upbeat sense of humor.
Our own love affair with record collecting began at a Toronto vinyl emporium called Rotate This, which recently upgraded to new, larger digs — death knells be damned! Maybe Canadians are just cooler than everyone else. Or maybe it has something to d0 with the fact that the Canadian government has officially acknowledged since 2007 that P2P file-sharing actually boosts music sales.
Perhaps if the music biz can come to terms with the 21st century, then the rest of us will continue a quaint social tradition of the 20th: buying records in person.