Shopping for LP's/CD's in New York
Posted by: NPR on 01 February 2005
I am planning to visit NY in March and would appreciate any suggestions on the best places to shop for LP's/CD's
Thanks,
Neil
Thanks,
Neil
Posted on: 01 February 2005 by undertone
Here's a good place to start....
Village Voice Best Of NYC
And you can have a look here for any city...
Recoed Store Review
There are 47 record stores in NYC reviewed.
Village Voice Best Of NYC
And you can have a look here for any city...
Recoed Store Review
There are 47 record stores in NYC reviewed.
Posted on: 01 February 2005 by BigH47
The Thing sounds fun a cellar full of 1000s of UNSORTED LPs.
Howard
Howard
Posted on: 05 February 2005 by NPR
Thanks for the suggestions so far, they will give me some good ideas as to where to shop.
Cheers,
Neil
Cheers,
Neil
Posted on: 06 February 2005 by Squonk
If you want an excellent choice of CD's at very good prices go to J&R world in lower manhatten - I use them regularly and always leave with loads of CD's. They also sell lots of other good stuff - ipods, cameras, software etc etc.
http://www.jr.com/
I am not a great fan of Virgin in Time Square as you pay tourist prices there.
Tower on 64th (I think) and Broadway on the upper west side ain't bad either and stays open till midnight.
cheers
adrian
http://www.jr.com/
I am not a great fan of Virgin in Time Square as you pay tourist prices there.
Tower on 64th (I think) and Broadway on the upper west side ain't bad either and stays open till midnight.
cheers
adrian
Posted on: 06 February 2005 by Roy T
A note from the FT (a bit old but may still be of use) about Mooncurser Records in NY.
Sure sounds a fun place to visit.
Who knows a record shop like Mooncurser Records?
ARTS: Music, please, not machinery
By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Financial Times; Jul 13, 2004
Go to a small island at the furthest edge of the Bronx in New York and you will find a second-hand record store that stocks more than 100,000 vinyl records and not a single CD. Called Mooncurser Records, it is a badly lit place, with shelves of LPs receding into gloom at the back of the shop. On the Sunday I visited recently, I was the only browser; it felt somnolent and empty, like a church without worshippers.
The bustling modern world, with its iPods and annoying mobile phone ringtones, seemed very remote. In fact it was as if time had stopped in 1983, when CDs were first sold in the US. A Nick Hornby-ish wave of vinyl nostalgia swept over me at the sight of all those 33s, 45s and 78s, although my enthusiasm drained away when I found they were asking $20 for a second-hand Bryan Adams album.
Mooncurser Records is evidence of how dramatically the way we experience pop music has changed. The transformation is far greater than in any other art form.
If Johannes Gutenberg were to visit a 21st-century bookshop, for instance, he would see that books had not changed that much in 550 years (the threat posed by e-books has proved non-existent). If the Lumière brothers were able to make a ghostly trip to the cinema, they would be astonished by the sound, colour and special effects but would recognise the basic principle of images being projected on a screen.
Imagine Thomas Edison going shopping for music today, however: the inventor of the phonograph would reel from one shock to another. Why have records shrunk to compact discs? How do you download songs from computers? How can thousands of them be stored on a tiny personal stereo? As for a portable telephone that plays the latest Britney Spears single - well, at that stage he would probably need a long lie down.
The danger of grumbling about these new technologies is that you sound like a mildewy old vinyl bore who thinks records are intrinsically superior (which, let's face it, they are). Yet there's a perfectly sound, non-Luddite reason for resenting the attention iPods, ringtones etc are getting: they divert attention from pop's content to its format. Previous generations were defined by music scenes such as punk or acid house; this one is in danger of being defined by a computer file, the MP3.
It does not matter if record companies show as much interest in music as they do in how we listen to it. Last week Bertelsmann announced plans to launch three classes of CDs, cut-price, standard and deluxe. That is fine for successful bands that can afford to put out albums full of enhancements such as videos, but less good news for newcomers who risk being shunted into the cut-price category.
The example of the effect when CDs were launched is cautionary. In the mid-1980s manufactured pop and power ballads plunged pop music into slushy, pompous awfulness. Meanwhile record companies sought to profit by persuading people to rebuy their record collections in the new CD format. New music festered, back catalogues boomed. And is it coincidental that the two genres that have done most towards pop's recuperation since then, hip-hop and dance music, were based around DJs playing vinyl records? Technology transforms the way we consume music, but at what cost?
© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd
Sure sounds a fun place to visit.
Who knows a record shop like Mooncurser Records?
ARTS: Music, please, not machinery
By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Financial Times; Jul 13, 2004
Go to a small island at the furthest edge of the Bronx in New York and you will find a second-hand record store that stocks more than 100,000 vinyl records and not a single CD. Called Mooncurser Records, it is a badly lit place, with shelves of LPs receding into gloom at the back of the shop. On the Sunday I visited recently, I was the only browser; it felt somnolent and empty, like a church without worshippers.
The bustling modern world, with its iPods and annoying mobile phone ringtones, seemed very remote. In fact it was as if time had stopped in 1983, when CDs were first sold in the US. A Nick Hornby-ish wave of vinyl nostalgia swept over me at the sight of all those 33s, 45s and 78s, although my enthusiasm drained away when I found they were asking $20 for a second-hand Bryan Adams album.
Mooncurser Records is evidence of how dramatically the way we experience pop music has changed. The transformation is far greater than in any other art form.
If Johannes Gutenberg were to visit a 21st-century bookshop, for instance, he would see that books had not changed that much in 550 years (the threat posed by e-books has proved non-existent). If the Lumière brothers were able to make a ghostly trip to the cinema, they would be astonished by the sound, colour and special effects but would recognise the basic principle of images being projected on a screen.
Imagine Thomas Edison going shopping for music today, however: the inventor of the phonograph would reel from one shock to another. Why have records shrunk to compact discs? How do you download songs from computers? How can thousands of them be stored on a tiny personal stereo? As for a portable telephone that plays the latest Britney Spears single - well, at that stage he would probably need a long lie down.
The danger of grumbling about these new technologies is that you sound like a mildewy old vinyl bore who thinks records are intrinsically superior (which, let's face it, they are). Yet there's a perfectly sound, non-Luddite reason for resenting the attention iPods, ringtones etc are getting: they divert attention from pop's content to its format. Previous generations were defined by music scenes such as punk or acid house; this one is in danger of being defined by a computer file, the MP3.
It does not matter if record companies show as much interest in music as they do in how we listen to it. Last week Bertelsmann announced plans to launch three classes of CDs, cut-price, standard and deluxe. That is fine for successful bands that can afford to put out albums full of enhancements such as videos, but less good news for newcomers who risk being shunted into the cut-price category.
The example of the effect when CDs were launched is cautionary. In the mid-1980s manufactured pop and power ballads plunged pop music into slushy, pompous awfulness. Meanwhile record companies sought to profit by persuading people to rebuy their record collections in the new CD format. New music festered, back catalogues boomed. And is it coincidental that the two genres that have done most towards pop's recuperation since then, hip-hop and dance music, were based around DJs playing vinyl records? Technology transforms the way we consume music, but at what cost?
© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd