[…continued from previous post]

Back when I was still in college, I had a regular roster of record stores that I depended on. These were primarily Murmur Records, Crunchy Armadillo Records, Retro Records, and two Record City and Peaches locations. It’s hard to believe that with a handful of such stores, I was able to get anything I really wanted back when I was hip and living within the demographic zone that was catered to by the business, and by that I mean The Industry. I went with my friends to shop for records and there were certainly pockets of ignorance.

I can’t really remember when I first came across Park Avenue Records, but it might have been in the late 80s. I lived in South Orlando. I never really crossed paths much with fashionable Winter Park; the uptown monied area of Central Florida. But wherever there was a college, by law [pre-Napster], there had to be a record store nearby to cater to its student body. In Winter Park the college was Rollins and even kids paying top dollar for their matriculation still need tunes. And they bought them at Park Avenue Records.

I think the first time I ever saw the place was in 1985 and by that time one could also get the silver discs there. I recall the first thing I bought; this French Vogue import of Petula Clark’s greatest hits as I had been pining then to hear “Downtown.” But that was a rare visit. I don’t think I went back to Park Avenue until the early 90s, when my friend Doug and I would shop for CDs; hoping to score some Blow Monkeys imports. I credit their demo CD players and a used copy of Associates “Popera” with my conversion to being the Post-Punk Monk. So low was their profile in America that without that spur, I still might have never heard the band.

The store really became important to me when Murmur Records transitioned to being a bookstore caller Alobar that also sold music. By 1992 the owner or Murmur was stepping out of the store’s hipster-magnet status, and all that entailed, both good and bad, to something a little more sedate. By then the bins at Park Ave. CD as they were then called, were the best place in town to get the silver discs. I went to Rock + Roll Heaven mainly for the records, and Park Ave. CD for the CDs.

By the late 90s it was a regular stop as they always had great used CDs and a wide import selection. Pricing always seemed good, and I liked being able to get the odd Japanese CD without driving to Atlanta [R.I.P. Tower Records…]. I can recall in the late 90s when the store engaged some artist [I think they were actually from Asheville, NC if I’m remembering correctly] to redesign the store décor, and they got a makeover heavy on the diamond plate and rebar welded together like no other store I’d ever laid eyes on. I can remember metal bins for the CDs that were sometimes tricky to extricate what you were interested in.

In the last days of our time in Orlando before moving to Asheville in 2001] many hours were spent at Park Ave. CDs cleaning up on want list items. I can remember holding The Walker Brothers “Night Flights” CD [1st pressing] in my hand and thinking “I’ll get that the next time I see it.” And of course, there was no next time. Following our departure from Orlando, the store moved from Park Avenue [where all of the high end chains were probably driving the rent up to stratospheric levels] to a different location on Corinne Drive, yet still kept their name!

One day, in the early 2000s after Mr. Ware made us a homeburned DVD of rare Split Enz material, we were so inspired by the awesomeness of the Phil Judd years, that we remembered Park Ave. CDs as having the silver and gold Mushroom Records OZ boxed sets of every Split Enz album with a separate disc of rarities. I called the store and by gum they still had the gold box perched perilously on the wall in the tangle of metal that I remembered from a few years earlier! So I bought it on the phone for the not expensive $70-80 asked and they shipped it to me in Asheville. Actually, we were living in now obliterated Swannanoa at the time.

That day would no longer stand as my last purchase at Park Ave. CDs if their history as a Great Record Store was anything to fall back upon. As we approached the site that day, Mr. Ware said that they had [like Rock + Roll Heaven] managed to absorb their next door neighbor in the shopping center to grow even larger with time. What would be there to greet us 23 years later?

PARK AVE CDS AUXILLARY

We arrived around 5 p.m. on a Sunday evening to find the place hopping. Back when I lived here at that day and time you’d be running off to Peaches in a hurry to grab something in the hour left to shop, and that might have been it. Obviously it was a whole new ballgame. The space next to the store had until recently, been a diner. They had acquired the space last year and the little shop was primarily used CDs and used records/DVDs/Blu-Rays. It was a small space so it was possible to look at most of the stock in about 30 minutes. I wasn’t getting anything back from the record bins, and there have been two films that I’ve been obsessed with getting copies of on DVD or Blu-Ray [“The Guard” and “Hail Caesar,” if you must know] so I’ve been looking for them high and low, but to no avail, even here. But I did see a DVD that I really needed to own, “All You Need is Cash,” the brilliant film about the career of The Rutles!

CDs fared better and I saw a couple that I was ripe to buy. I’d been wanting the Japanese copy of Duran Duran’s “Medazzaland” for decades with the rare JPN-only track “Ball + Chain,” but I’m speeding toward retirement age and life’s looming less long, so for four dollars, I was more than down with finally buying the US version from 1997 with its garish pink inlay tray that probably cost Nick Rhodes a point for every sale.

I got a special thrill being able to buy this CD for the $4.00 that I thought it was worth. It was almost as if the last 20 years of rising record prices hadn’t happened. It’s what I would have paid in 1999 in the used bins! Similarly, the first album by The Time was going for $8.00. I am on the Great Prince Absorption campaign, and like the Duran disc, $8.00 was a pretty common price point in the used bins in the 90s. It was amazing to see continuity of pricing after all of these years gone by.

THE BOUNTY

• The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash – Rhino Records – R2 976641 – US – DVD – Park Ave CD/$8.00
• The Time: The Time – Warner Bros Records – 3598-2 – US – CD – Park Ave CD/$8.00
• Duran Duran: Medazzaland – Capitol Records – CDP 7243 8 33876 2 5 – US – CD – Park Ave CD/$4.00

Next: …The Main Event