The Record Stores of my Life

by editor Michele Catalano

I went record shopping by myself a few months ago. I don’t do a lot of things on my own, especially when it means driving 25 minutes in the rain. But I was itching for some new music to listen to. I know Spotify and YouTube and Apple Music and Bandcamp are right there, but that doesn’t bring me nearly as much joy as going to a record shop and browsing around.

My record store of choice is Looney Tunes Record Store in West Babylon, Long Island. Sure, there are closer shops for me to browse in, but Looney Tunes is truly special. I’ve seen Kevin Devine and Foxing and Taking Back Sunday play on their small stage. Over the course of time, I’ve spent many hundreds of dollars there. 

No one bothers you at Looney Tunes; there are no salespeople on the floor asking if you need help, no one judges you for poring over the REO Speedwagon collection when Roxy Music is right there, no one is trying to make a hard sell of the latest CDs. It’s just you and the records and whatever is playing on the store speakers. They have a great collection of new and used vinyl and CDs, and, while I never know exactly what I’m looking for when I go in there, I always find a treasure.

This particular day, I had a bunch of doubles to trade in (I have a tendency to get high and order things I already pre-ordered or own), plus some albums I knew I would never play again (goodbye to my collection of records by the 1975). So I had credit to burn, and man was I going to really burn it. I spent a good half an hour rifling through the stacks, pulling albums out, reading track listings, contemplating how much I would play them. There’s something about trading in albums for store credit that makes me even more careful about what I’m buying. The records I turned in were giving up their space in my home. I had to honor them by replacing them with worthy choices.

A good record store has a very specific smell to it. I’m assaulted by it, in the best possible way, the second I walk into Looney Tunes. It brings me back to working at Record World, to shopping at Jimmy’s Music World and Uncle Phil’s and Mr. Cheapo’s. I can’t define that smell, but I just know it brings me an inner peace, a sense of being home. I’m not usually relaxed when I am out alone; my anxiety keeps me from being comfortable in those situations. But as soon as I walk into a record store, that smell makes me feel as if I’ve entered a sacred place. I breathe deep, take it all in. I am home.

I have no set routine for shopping in a record store. I usually just pick an aisle and start browsing, even if it’s in the middle of the alphabet. I look for records that I’ve heard of but would be new listens for me. I look for records I owned as a teenager or young adult that need replacing. I look for records I forgot about, records that were suggested to me, records that would complete discographies for me. 

I take my time, looking through each artist in case I find some hidden gem, flipping through every single album behind the singular letter cards. I never know what I’m looking for to start out with, but just like adopting a dog or a cat, the record chooses you. Like I knew immediately when I saw Siamese Dream that it was something I needed in my collection. It called out to me. It found me.

My first record store was actually just a section in Modell’s department store (before it became a sporting goods store). I bought so many cassettes and 45s there. It’s where I bought my first music with my own money, a cassette of David Bowie’s Young Americans. The record department also had a T-shirt maker, and sometimes I would get a good Led Zeppelin iron-on shirt when I bought an album. 

After Modell’s closed, there was Jimmy’s. It was at Jimmy’s that I really honed my love of record stores. It was different from Modell’s, whose record department was flanked by old ladies in housewares and kids rummaging through the toys. Jimmy’s was its own. Everyone was there because they wanted to be. I was 16 or 17 when I frequented the place, taking my meager minimum-wage earnings each week and plopping down some cash for the latest Police or Talking Heads album. 

But it was about so much more than buying records. Going to Jimmy’s was an experience, a holy pilgrimage. It was every high school music fan’s dream to have the clerks at Jimmy’s talk to them about music, to tell them their musical taste was cool. I would take my purchases to the counter and hope that the cashier would notice what amazing albums I was buying, tell me I have good taste, and maybe offer me a job. That never happened, but the idea that it could happen brought me back to Jimmy’s every week.

People talk about their first time hearing certain songs or albums. I talk about buying them. Those are the memories etched in my brain. Lining up in the morning to get a much-anticipated new release was just as exciting as lining up for concert tickets. Now I get up at midnight and load up Apple Music when I want to hear a new record. That does not have quite the same fanfare as walking into a record store at 9 a.m. with the record you are intent on buying already blasting on the sound system, with everyone running to the same spot on the wall to reach for it. 

I remember going to Uncle Cheapo’s to get Big Lizard in My Backyard; rushing to Uncle Phil’s the first time I heard Deftones’ White Pony, and Phil had put a copy aside for me because he knew I’d want it; or being in a basement used record shop in Old Sacramento (RIP), finding a great Supersuckers record, and wondering how many albums I could take home on a plane with me.

In 1983, I went to work at Record World in Roosevelt Field. I felt like I had won the lottery. All those nights dreaming about working in a record store, about being the one giving the opinions instead of asking them, and here I was, living that dream. 

It was a great job, I was in my element and excelled at anything they asked me to do. I can pinpoint my four years there as some of the happiest and most fulfilling of my life. I valued that job and took care to be my best at it. And because I had spent so many years trying to get record store clerks to talk to me, I made sure to be approachable to the kids coming in the store. I talked to them about Van Halen, and I talked to them about the Circle Jerks. I offered my expertise on new wave records to any customer who would listen. I had customers come back to thank me for introducing them to the Jam or Aztec Camera. I truly treasured and loved working in Record World. It was the culmination of years of preparing myself by studying the clerks at Jimmy’s.

I miss shopping weekly at a record store. I would probably still be doing that if I could afford it. It’s funny that when I was a kid making minimum wage, I was working strictly to buy albums and cassettes. I couldn’t wait until I was older and had more disposable income to buy even more records and tapes. 

But now I am older and don’t have the income to buy records every week. If I did, I’d be at Looney Tunes every Monday, getting therapy of sorts. Between the smell of the vinyl, the friendly faces, the way I feel safe and at home in those aisles, the joy I feel from searching through the stacks, and the moment when a record finds me, my dopamine reserves get replenished and I feel healed and whole. Long live Looney Tunes, long live record stores.

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