Shot a few pictures in shop in Long Beach that reminded me of the record shops of my youth. Those shops were bulging with vinyl and every inch of wall space was a shrine to the great pops stars and musical movements of the time. Only now with the passing of time am I beginning to understand the impact these places had on me and thus lament the fact that they all seem to be disappearing. I spent every nickel I had in those places but it’s the stuff that didn’t have a price tag that was so valuable to me. I didn’t just buy LP’s of music but I also got ideas or ‘ideals for living’ with every trip there. I came from a family of limited resources and so I got know how the rest of the world lived through my records. We couldn’t afford a holiday anywhere in those days but London, Manchester, Kingston, Memphis, Paris, New York, Chicago, Miami, Detroit, Bristol, Liverpool, San Francisco, Berlin, New Orleans, Tokyo, were places I was familiar with because of music. In the age of digital media this may sound completely overblown since the MP3 has made endless volumes of music available at the push of a button but in that pre-MP3 age vinyl was much more than a way of delivering media. Entire summers were spent with a single LP going over single note in the music, the credits, and the ideas expressed. My life has not been one of earth shattering books but rather earth shattering records that formed my world view and brought the various distance cities of the world together to form a cohesive map of our world. The lead singers were my poets that taught me the beauty of the English language and planted in me the idea that we should concern ourselves with a cause bigger than ourselves. This experience was not unique since all of my friends had a similar one but I wonder if music today has the same profound influence or if kids have simply moved on to their gaming consoles . My favorite shop was not one store in particular but any record I could get into, spend my lunch money and lose myself for a few hours.
