Used But Never Abused

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about things my daughter’s generation won’t be able to experience, or at least it doesn’t look that way as of right now, and one thing that came to me as being the most depressing is the trip to the used record store. As a teenager, I relished my trips to Coconuts in Evansville. Sprawled out on the floor digging through white rectangular boxes of used CDs. Absorbed in the task at hand like a dog burying a bone. An average haul was four of five disks that I would take home and put into my little grey box of a cd player that served as my best friend during many awkward teenage years. I would sit against the radiator and read the liner notes, the thank yous, the credits, the lyrics, enjoy the weird pictures and inside jokes that filled those early to late 90s CD cases. To be honest, I’d usually only like one or two of the disks I’d end up with, but that was part of the fun. It was gambling in a sense. You’d make a wager based on the song titles and the artwork or maybe a vague familiarity with the band. Occasionally you’d hit the jackpot, and a lifelong obsession with a group or artist would develop. I miss those days where we talked about albums, not songs. People aren’t fans of bands anymore, they are fans of a song. The ala cart market that developed in the early 2000s might have saved a lot of the big record labels, but it fundamentally changed the nature of music consumption, and I don’t know if I have or if I can ever make peace with that.

I know there is a small renaissance of sorts when it comes to vinyl and used record shops and the nostalgic kid inside screams for joy at the thought of a total and complete resurgence but the realistic old man inside knows that the likely hood of such of thing is very, very low. But I hope the old man is wrong. At the very least, I’m going to enjoy showing my little girl how special it really can be to appreciate the music in an active way. Reading the album sleeves and liner notes as the disc spins away on the turntable. I’m never going to give up the trips to the used record store even if that means I’m driving for two hours to find one. I will still go in search of those albums in the dusty old bins looking for the used but never abused.