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Aug. 9--Tower records is gone.
And as of last month, Virgin Megastore is too.
So are scores of local independent record shops, slaughtered by the iPod, iTunes, Amazon.com and "big box" stores like Best Buy and Target.
R.I.P. record stores, you old dinosaurs you. Right?
Wrong. Independent record stores are alive and well in the Chicago area. Some even claim to be--gasp--making money. Some crazy folks are even opening new ones.
Customer service is one reason. But another, perhaps more surprising factor is the growing demand for LPs.
Two of the newest record stores--Permanent Records on Chicago Avenue and year-old Revolver Records on 18th Street in Pilsen--opened specifically to specialize in vinyl, carrying thousands of used and rare records.
It's a quest for tangibility that is, in some ways, driving the vinyl craze. To some music lovers, CDs, at about 16 grams, feel less substantial than a 180-gram audiophile vinyl record. And that's not counting the record jacket, with its poster, perhaps, and liner notes and art on the back and front.
There's something alternative, even subversive, about vinyl, especially when everybody is carrying around iPods.
"If everybody from your mom to your grandparents has ear buds in their ears, how do you differentiate who's cool?" said Eric Levin, president of the Atlanta-based Alliance of Independent Media Stores. "The girl at the end of the dorm hall spinning records is infinitely cool. It's a huge youth movement. Vinyl is just out of control. It's like somebody pushed the cool button again."
Elliot Pence--a 19-year-old sophomore at DePaul University who sports an inner-lower-lip tat that reads "romantic," a nose ring and an occasional pompadour--concurs, noting a trend toward nostalgia among his peers.
"I think vinyl is definitely coming back, along with vintage clothes and just wanting something different," he explained.
Pence said he had only ever been to Virgin once. "And that was to buy movies," he said.
"I like to buy from independent places, to try to keep them open, 'cause I like them better than giant corporations. They're so much more personal and the staff really knows their stuff and actually cares about the music."
The Jazz Record Mart on East Illinois Street was looking pretty alive on a recent Tuesday afternoon with a half-dozen customers sifting through its bins, including Gustavo Verdesio, a University of Michigan professor with a collection of 2,500 albums in his Ann Arbor, Mich., home.
On this summer day, Verdesio was looking to add three or four more. In his hands he had CDs by jazz pianist Fred Hersch and jazz saxophonist Chris Potter and a rare album by jazz pianists Tommy Flanagan and Kenny Barron that he didn't even know existed before he spotted it in the bin. It was $7.99.
Verdesio was thrilled.
"It's the sensual experience of touching the records," he said, explaining why he goes online for music as a last resort. "If it's secondhand, it's the arbitrariness of how the records are located. And there are people around you, so you get a feeling of community. Buying online is a lonely experience. I have nothing against lonely experiences but it is nice to alternate."
A few aisles away, Ashley Crawford was clutching a CD by jazz saxophonist Cannonball Adderley. In town from Mystic, Conn., to visit family, Crawford said she prefers visiting record stores to ordering on the Internet.
"I try not to buy records online," said Crawford, a high school music teacher with a collection of about 200 records and so many CDs she has lost count. "I like seeing and holding what I am about to buy."
Somehow, there's just something more real about a record or CD as opposed to the kilobytes that make up an MP3, record store customers said. How do you give someone a download as a gift, anyway?
About 3 miles west, Lance Barresi, co-owner of Permanent Records on West Chicago Avenue, copied onto a Post-It note a quote from a Detroit publication that amounts to an anti-download manifesto for the independent record store: "Is that what music is to you: undersized, inconsequential and disposable?"
"Most people don't care about that kind of thing," said Barresi, who, with store co-owner Liz Tooley, owns more than 10,000 albums. In the store on this particular afternoon, he was listening to Caribou's "Start Breaking My Heart." "But the kind of people who are interested in it are devout."
Levin of the Alliance of Independent Media Stores said that when he throws a record on a turntable in his Atlanta stores, people sometimes look confused.
"They say, 'Hey, that doesn't sound like my download,'" he said. "And it is inherently different. There's magic in that groove."
Take a favorite album, one from before all music was recorded digitally first, play it on CD and then play it on vinyl, said Val Camilletti, owner of Val's Halla in Oak Park, a store packed with used records of every genre, from ballet to classical to hip-hop to rock.
"Play the CD and you will hear that it sounds perfect and it sounds fine," Camilletti said. "Put the LP on, and what happens to me is a kind of tingle in the back of my neck and a feeling in the pit of my stomach. I can't describe it. It is literally the warmth or the actual expansion of what sound is."
Permanent Records even started a label, also called Permanent Records, to press 180-gram records of CDs by bands like psychedelic rockers Warhammer 48K.
"We've always done well with vinyl," said Brian Smith, general manager of Reckless Records' three Chicago stores. "If they want a mainstream release, they're more likely to go to Best Buy."
Three miles south of downtown is Revolver Records, opened in June 2006 by Marlon Hernandez, a man with a 30,000-album record collection. On a weekday afternoon, the store was filled with the smooth soul of the Stylistics.
Revolver, like Permanent, is banking on vinyl for survival. The focus is on soul, funk, jazz, rock and hip-hop.
"We're doing fairly OK," Hernandez said. "I make most of my money off of vinyl and rare stuff ... We sell a lot of soundtracks, particularly Blaxploitation stuff, 45s."
For Camilletti of Val's Halla, vinyl is key to keeping the store, which has been open 35 years, afloat. "It is the cushion that helps us survive financially. And it is the fun stuff for us."
Levin said: "People think that people aren't shopping [at record stores] anymore. It was rough going for awhile for a lot of us. But I am working on a 20-year plan, not a two-year plan. We haven't had a downward trend in sales."
In some ways, the tangibility factor goes beyond a record or CD simply being something solid compared to a song downloaded on an iPod, customers and owners say. The experience of actually going into a local record shop feels like a more authentic experience.
It's part of what Camilletti calls "the mystique of music."
"If you want to learn about music, you've got to do it in a store," said Rick Wojcik, owner of Dusty Groove America, a store that actually got its start on the Internet in 1996 before moving into a good old-fashioned bricks-and-mortar shop in Hyde Park, and later, in Wicker Park. "Stores allow customers to connect to the music in a way you don't get from sound samples on a blog."
Back at the Jazz Record Mart, deejay Jeremy Williams was browsing albums looking for some to add to his collection of 500 records.
He does buy online, he said, but loves browsing the record stores.
"I probably wouldn't buy a CD here because of MP3s. They are a lot cheaper," he said. "But I look for dance records. You can't buy records at Best Buy."
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Want to get your groove on? Search the racks at these survivors:
Dusty Groove America, 1120 N. Ashland Ave.; 773-342-5800, www.dustygroove.com. The storefront for this locally based e-business that's popular worldwide is just as organized and unfussy as their site, making for easy navigation amid the tables of soul, funk, jazz, hip-hop and world music.
Jazz Record Mart, 27 E. Illinois St.; 312-222-1467, www.jazzmart.com. New digs or not, you can almost smell the history soaked into the stacks of jazz, blues, gospel and R&B albums in this large room filled with warm tunes, friendly staff and good vibes.
Permanent Records, 1914 W. Chicago Ave.; 773-278-1744, www.permanentrecords
chicago.com. Visitors are welcomed to this new shop -- which specializes in independent and underground music of all genres, with a focus on rock -- by robin-egg-blue walls, and lots of posters and records on display, along with books, magazines, DVDs and other music paraphernalia.
Reckless Records, 3161 N. Broadway Ave.; 773-404-5080, www.reckless.com (plus locations in Wicker Park and the Loop). Savvy hipster employees serve up a side of guidance -- when prompted -- with the stores' heaps of vinyl, DVDs and CDs in genres from rock to underground hip-hop.
Revolver Records, 1524 W. 18th St.; 312-226-4211. This intimate storefront in Pilsen is packed with jazz, rock, hip-hop, soul, R&B, and rare and reissued vinyl. There's an impressive graffiti-inspired mural emblazoned on one wall, plus T-shirts and a listening station.
Val's Halla, 239 W. Harrison St., Oak Park, 708-524-1004, www.valshalla.com. A year ago Val's moved to this one-room space with new and used CDs on one side and vinyl on the other. All genres are represented, with a slight emphasis on pop and rock. The walls are pretty much covered with posters, memorabilia and vintage magazines for sale. And then, of course, there's the Elvis shrine bathroom.
