re: It’s Record Store Day, what are some of your favorite memories at your local record store?

I can't really think of some specific memory, but I do get some occasional nostalgic pangs, thinking back to how much I enjoyed checking out all the various record stores when I'd spot them, back during the LP era. I recall being thrilled at discovering a shop, "Yesterday's Records and Tapes" in Austin in 1984, as it specialized in vintage fare, and I bought stacks of LPs on several visits, mostly early-jazz and big-band stuff. Also have a nice memory of walking at least a mile down the sidewalks on Sunset Boulevard to the Tower Records store in Los Angeles, picking up a few LPs. I made many trips to Houston to go to Don's Record Shop, but since I loathed making the drive there, I never really think of those ventures as being particularly pleasant memories.

What tempers my fond recollections of record stores somewhat is the irritating fact the stores I frequented always had rather limited selections, when it came to my vintage musical interests. Hence, for at least a whopping ten years, I was unaware of a lot of foreign labels that specialized in early jazz, which were putting out slews of releases I would have gone wild over. Labels like VJM, Swaggie, Fountain-Retrieval, Grannyphone, Tax, and many others, all often offering the remastering work of John R. T. Davies. I didn't really learn of these until I got with some mail-order catalogs. At that point, almost everything I bought came via mail, and record stores became rather moot.