at work Last Friday I had business in another state. My job needed me to inspect a stadium where I’ve been designing a drink rail installation for over two years now. The concrete was getting poured and it was time to make final measurements on the difference between the architects plans on paper and how it all goes down when the construction finally happens. Suffice to say. no -one wants a six figure surprise when the stadium opens for baseball season in April.

We had 8 hours in the stadium accounted for but when we arrived there were quadrants still waiting for their concrete pour. We measured what was ready and 2-3 hours later we were ready to return home. But wait… two blocks from the construction site was a record store: Hub City Vinyl. Maybe we could sneak a peek. It looked very large online and my co-worker buys LPs. So with eight hours to pass before the flight home it didn’t take much convincing for my compatriot and I to have a look.

Hub City Vinyl is a colorful and large store in the heart of Hagerstown Maryland. We walked into a huge, well-stocked and clean establishment. I chanced a glance at the used LPs to scan for prices. I was seeing $3.00 to $8.00 albums as common. Encouraging! I saw Ian Hunter solo albums (I had on CD) at roughly the same prices I would have paid 40 years ago. Nice.

The huge room we walked into was clean, comfortable, well lit and organized with none of the “Rock Cooties” [thanks to Sparks for this term…] possible in such an establishment. The stock seemed to be aimed at all sectors of the record buying public. New LPs were there in abundance, but so were used LPs at good prices. It was almost a little overwhelming, but I started looking at the used bins and quickly saw something…weird to me.

Did you see those dividers? What record store you have ever shopped in had a Debby Boone section… in anything but 1977? Jim Capaldi? Irene Cara? The Captain + Tennille??! It was as if the minds curating this store [because all record stores are an act of curation] had tastes which were diametrically opposed to mine. This was a record store that was almost 100% stuck in the Pre-Punk 70s. As If Punk Never Happened. The [tiny] Boomtown Rats section there being hugely anomalous to the whole of the store.

Here’s a vivid picture. The David Bowie section had a single copy of one LP; “Pin Ups.” I sort of drifted around the large room never seeing anything that was attracting my eye, in spite of the copious amount of product here. There were a few CDs on a ledge along one wall but I didn’t see much else. I saw no used CDs. Then when I passed the offices and restrooms, I noticed a doorway to another room as large as the one I was in. Surely this was where the interesting stock was! I went in.

As I entered I saw non-music goods. T-shirts, and several game devices of a decidedly analog bent. A “Zoltan” fortune telling machine. The official Rush pinball machine. T-shirts. Posters. Used DVDs. And then I saw impossibly long rows of 7″ and 12″ singles…and all of the used CDs I had been hoping for. It was actually a little pulse-quickening.

But although the overall view was amazing, the devil was in the details. I tried the 12″ singles first and all of it was exactly the music that I was not looking for on 12″ singles. No imports of any kind seemed to be there. It was all US product of a decidedly MOR dance perspective. I looked for anything by New Order but only got New Edition.

All of the boxed sets in the place lived in the back room, but the hefty three figure monolithic slabs of music were on the licorice pizza only. It was if the 90s never happened and only boxed sets of records were here. All for insanely high amounts of cash. $168 for “Armed Forces!” The still repellent “Toy” box by David Bowie for $111″ The closest thing in the entire store to a moment of wonder was spying the Bryan Ferry Island 7″ singles box for a reasonable $35…but this was neither something I needed nor wanted.

Then I saw the used CDs. Another vast selection that dwarfed what passes for record stores in my city, if not my own Record Cell. Just have a look at that vast expanse of the silver discs.

Once more there was noting in the huge new arrival section with sufficient gravity to ensnare me into its orbit. That Cars CD of “Shake It Up” was as good as it got. Was everything in this store this middle of the road? I looked at the sorted used discs and started with the “S” section, like I usually do. Oooh! I saw a Suede section! Maybe they had the album that came after “Night Thoughts” that I needed [and didn’t know its name]?

So with about 40 minutes spent drifting listlessly without any mooring whatsoever, I asked my co-worked if he was ready. He was finding LPs that he needed of Boston, Marshall Tucker Band, and Laura Branigan. So that about sums things up for me. Never had I seen what was on the face of things, a superb, best-of-breed record store fall down so precipitously when it came to the crucial factor of the actual stock they were selling. Which is just as well, since we are still saving for our upcoming vacation. Perhaps a worst-case scenario would have been to have found $500 worth of things I could not live without.

But should you find yourself with five hours to kill in Hagerstown, Maryland, maybe you should have a go at it and see if it’s more to your liking than mine,. As the saying goes, your mileage may vary.

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