The beauty of things like amazon.com and iTunes is that picking through whatever reasonable music your local FYE or Best Buy accidentally got along with their last shipment of Pussycat Dolls CDs is nowhere near as necessary. However, much less happily, the growth of the online music industry has been hard on independent record stores, many of which have either sold out or closed up entirely.
Which is why it’s such a bracing breath of cliched fresh air to walk into a place like The Princeton Record Exchange in Princeton, New Jersey. It’s the sort of store that seemes to be constructed solely out of fragments of the wildest dreams of independent music lovers. Their specialty is independent music and imports, and the magic is that, not only are there racks and racks of stuff you simply can’t find in any other brick and mortar store, but none of it is listed at import prices. Essentially, no matter where on earth it was recorded, it’s $16 new, $7.99 and lower used. And when they say they specialize in independent music, they mean it. Out of curiosity, I checked to see if they had anything by Jandek, who, for any of you who don’t know him, is a determinedly reclusive avant-blues musician who releases all of his albums out of a private PO Box on Corwood Industries, a “label” that has no other artists, no public office, no website, and still prints its “catalog” on a manual typewriter. Princeton Record Exchange had, not just a Jandek CD, but an entire Jandek section. With a little tab and everything.
There’s an entire wall plus several bins devoted to “budget” CDs. But, whereas most places’ budget collection is twenty copies of the Hanson Christmas album, I walked in and picked up a copy of The Blurred Crusade by The Church…for $1.99. I am not making this up.
The store also features boxes and boxes of used and rare vinyl. I don’t have a turntable, so I didn’t look at that section very closely, but analog lovers out there would either start foaming at the mouth or crying uncontrollably.
I’ve been in dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of music stores in my life, and I’ve never been in a better one. They don’t handle mail orders, but if you’re anywhere even remotely close*, you need to check them out.
*for the record, I drove 120 miles to go to this place. Each way. And I’d do it again next weekend if I had any money left.
4 Comments »
dude, I am salivating into my morning chai. Damn you.
I know where Sound Exchange is, but curiously, it’s the only indie store in Houston I’ve never visited.
The best place for stuff I listened to was the Record Rack. They sold me a UK promo of New Order’s Get Ready a month before you could buy it in the US. But they’ve also been out of business for about five years now. Go figure.
[...] has Amoeba. New Jersey has the Princeton Record Exchange. New England has… Newbury [...]
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Comment by amber — October 10, 2006 @ 3:58 pm
*cries uncontrollably*
*foams at the mouth*
i wanna goooooooooo!
did you ever go to sound exchange (not soundwaves, they suck) when you lived here? its the only houston indie record shop i think is worth a shit, and i love it dearly. which is why, i theorize, i moved into an apartment 4 blocks away.