Post-Punk Monk

[…continued from last post]

The main store was next and the space was maybe three times as large as their original space on Park Avenue. One major difference to shopping here was that I never knew the owner, Sandy Bitman and he was unlikely to be here on a bustling Sunday evening at any rate. Mr. Ware noted that the store was packed with shoppers at what is normally a dead time for retail. 6 p.m. on a Sunday night! As I flitted through the store, getting my bearings, I couldn’t fail to notice that I was hearing shoppers speaking languages other than English. Is there any better indicator of a record store’s vitality than the presence of foreign shoppers?

Like many a modern record store, Park Ave. CDs has gifts and pop culture tchotkes all over the place, but the store was more than large enough to successfully encompass such things. I’d estimate that no more than 20% of the merch in the place wasn’t actual music. Apart from actually listening to music, the next best thing is reading about it, and to that end the store functioned as a decent indie bookstore as well; albeit with books that went far beyond the topic of music.

Of course, the place was filled with periodicals as well as books. Periodicals are something I might look at in a good newsstand but in a store this packed with music, I completely ignored the racks here.

The balance of stock in the store was admirable; things looked about 55/45 with LPs having the slight edge over silver discs…maybe. Making their retaining of the late 80s name non-ironic. With so many CDs here, I pretty much glossed over the new LPs. I didn’t think I saw much in the way of used vinyl in the store, but there was a small section on the back of the store, just to test the waters. I glanced in the bins and saw assiduously sleeved discs with pricing on the polysleeve and a large, informative sticker showing the record/sleeve grading as well as having other potentially interesting info noted.

The FGTH “UK 12” #1 of “Welcome To The Pleasuredome”‘ cost me $5.00 when new…40 years ago. Here it was a VG+/VG+ copy for $10. Pretty good when compared to a similar copy with shipping on Discogs. There it will set you back $11-$33 from American dealers. Obviously, Park Ave. CDs isn’t about to turn into the dreaded Museum Record Store waiting for someone with more money than sense to buy pricey goods no matter how long it takes. I wasn’t getting anything back here so I went to the CDs.

I noted that boxed sets were set above each row of bins; LP boxes, all of which were cripplingly expensive owing to the trends in the business…and by that I mean The Industry. I mean, really, who has a spare $150-400 to buy these things! For many families, that’s a week or two of grocery bills. I moved quickly to the CD rows in the store. There I noted Boxed sets of actual CDs! A scarce sight these days. I noted with approval that the recent “Talking Heads ’77” ultrabox was there to be had, but it still didn’t really call out to me strongly. And with so much TVLKING HEVDS live sets out there [and in the Record Cell] I question whether even a “Remain In Light” set could get me to vote with my dollars. I already have substantial live materials from that fecund period, and I don’t expect much in the way of unreleased rarities when that one may roll around. At least judging from what scraps were on the Dual-Disc 2.0/5.1 edition I have.

However, once I made my way to the start of the CD section, I found high value goods that I’d already been asking for at my stop at Rock + Roll Heaven earlier! The Blondie 3xCD “Against The Odds 1974-1982” boxed set of only rarities was in front of my face and I snapped it up greedily. The two color design on foil looked glorious, and the inch thick hardcover digibook in the slipcase spoke in my ear of glories to come. This copy had hit the bins nearly a year prior and I’m glad the philistines in Orlando left it there for me!

I was happy to see that the metal fabricated artwork that had made the last incarnation of the store so memorable was still a part of the new locale. I’ve never seen a store that quite looked like Park Ave. CDs and I’m glad that they’ve not abandoned their taste for a unique décor. The bomb logo was about as zeitgeisty as one could get in 1984; the year the store opened with nuclear anxiety at an all-time high. What worked for Frankie Goes To Hollywood worked for the store as well.

Metal sculptures and mobiles helped to transform the interior from Euclidean geometry to something a little more wild.

As I began poring over the CDs from A-Z I quickly found another release that I had been looking for earlier that day. The new John Cale album, which I was dimly aware existed owing to an email I had gotten from the artists’s mailing list earlier this year. It was a fast follow up to “Mercy” which I found to be excellent though it was the first album from the artist in a decade. This followup came so quickly I wasn’t prepared for it…until now! “POPtical Illusion” would definitely be coming home with me.

It was encouraging to see the new Futurismo compilation of DEVO in the bins. As I thought this was a re-jigging of the contents on the “Hardcore DEVO” volumes of the 90s, I passed on it on this day. I now see that this was folly on my part, but today I would not have bought it in any case. The one DEVO disc that I’m gunning for was “Something More For Everyone” and then I can finally get to that DEVO Rock G.P.A.!

Speaking of Rock G.P.A.s, my eyes widened as I saw the expanded edition of Duran Duran’s “Danse Macabre!” Commenter Gavin sent me a copy of the DLX “Future Past” and once I get “Danse Macabre,” the next chunk of the Duran Duran Rock G.P.A. can also flower forth. I plucked this from the bins to add to my stack. I saw an Ian Hunter section and my pulse quickened as I saw a new 2xCD pressing of Hunter’s divisive [but loved by this Monk!] 1981 opus “Short Back ‘N Sides!” The only previous CD pressing of this dated back 30 years and the one time I had ever seen it, at Time Traveler in Akron, natch, I demurred on that day and have been regretting it ever since. Boom! I pulled the title!

Moving along, as usual, the “S” section bore much fruit. Particularly in the Sparks section! I was stunned to see both of the recent DLX RMs that came out this year in the bins. I had to have the Nöel DLX RM and also held the 45th anniversary “No. 1 In Heaven” 2xCD, and I couldn’t help but notice that the digibook edition of “A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip” was there for the taking as well! Curiously, “The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte” was nowhere to be seen so we were only three for four this day in my Sparks catching-up sweepstakes.

It pained me that the last Sparks disc I had bought [though it was the weekend of release!] was the “Hippopotamus” album of 2017. Tempus fugit. Since I have the differently configured [albeit poorly mastered] Repertoire 2013 CD of “No. 1 In Heaven,” I reluctantly put that back for today. I could tell I was going to have a great many bin pulls from this visit and I’d only been in the main store for about 20 minutes thus far.

Then I got a wild hair to see if they had any Harold Budd albums on CD. It’s been over a decade since going to every store and asking for the “Budd Box” was a thing, but I’ve still got a lot of ground that needs covering on the Budd front. I looked without success for his music, and finally I found an “Experimental” section near the “Electronica” where your Fripps and Enos were in strong evidence, but curiously, no Budd was there to be had! Not even an empty bin card section! But the Eno section bore substantial fruit!

The store had the “Mixing Colours – Expanded” 2xCD version of the album that Brian had recorded fours years earlier with his brother Roger. I’d tried to special order this on release at my local haunts and came up empty handed. Then forgot about it! Until today. This Deutsche Grammophon opus was coming home with me as my loved one had really wanted to hear it.

Meanwhile, I saw the two recent Fripp reissues from The Drive To 1981. I had bought “Let The Power Fall” in Wales earlier this year [but had forgotten that I had bought it – insert stinger] but this day my eye was most drawn by the “God Save The Queen/Under Heavy Manners” disc! And it was a svelte $9.98 so I quickly grasped it.

Then I went back to the alphabet after “S” in the Pop-Rock CDs to stop, as always, in the “U” section. As it was jutting above the levels of the jewel boxed CDs, I couldn’t help but notice the SDLX 4xCD Digibook of Midge Ure’s first solo opus, “The Gift.” It was there and ready to buy at $31.00! I snatched it up. I next deigned to look at the new LPs, hoping as always, to maybe find a modern Visage album [to no avail]. This store is fantastic, but there’s limits. There are so few modern LP only titles I want, it’s hard to remember what you want at my age. If I had been sharper, I would have looked for the new Vicious Pink LP.

I then passed the Bryan Ferry section and looked; agog at the DLX RM of “Mamouna/Horoscope” on the double licorice pizza. I raced back to the Ferry section in the CDs which I’d not remembered to look at just minutes earlier, but no dice. They didn’t have the CD.

Mr. Ware’s son, Kellan had also been bin diving and he’d just checked out. Now it was closing in on 6:45 p.m. and getting time to eat. I reviewed the pile I had been carrying. I easily had $225-$250 worth of goods and there was no way I was spending that much! I made some hard decisions and dutifully put a little less than half of the titles back where they belonged. This was what I left the store with.

THE BOUNTY

• Blondie: Against The Odds -UMC – 00602508761010 – EU – 3xCD – Park Ave CD/$41.98
• Nöel: Is There More To Life Than Dancing? DLX RM – L’il Beethhoven Records – LBRCD121 – EU – 2xCD – Park Ave CD/$15.98
• Ian Hunter: Short Back ’N Sides DLX RM – Chrysalis Records Ltd. – CRC1326 – CZ – 2xCD – Park Ave CD/$23.98
• Roger Eno + Brian Eno: Mixing Colours Expanded – Deutsche Grammophon – 483 9334 – GER – 2xCD – Park Ave CD/$22.98
• John Cale: POPtical Illusion – Double Six Records – DS178CD – US – CD – Park Ave CD/$14.98

A concise $120 was the limit of what I wanted to spend here. I’d already dropped $70+ at the three earlier stores. The last time I’d spent nearly this much in a single store…that store was Amoeba Hollywood! So I’m going to go out on a limb and say that, pound for pound, Park Ave. CDs is nearly as good as the Amoeba Mothership when shopping for the silver discs!

I cannot remember another time when I found so many things that I had really wanted on the format of my choice in the last decade otherwise. It makes me realize that this store has dropped not a whit in the caliber of their CD stock in nearly a quarter century. The big difference was in its size and the presence of a lot of wax, but I daresay the CD section of the store was as packed with goodness as it ever had been, before the mystifying vinyl resurgence.

Meaning that somehow, Park Ave. CDs have resisted the enormous pull of entropy that normally sees record stores peaking and declining over time. That this place was still so satisfying for this Monk to shop in, was in dramatic contrast to the actually depressing record store visits that have been my experience in the last decade. Where stores in my own city actually anger me and make me think that shopping for tunes no longer has a pull any more. Well, obviously, it’s all down to the stock and there’s still a place in Orlando that’s fairly bustling with the music that an old crusty guy of 61 who’s seen a lot of music cycles happen more than once, might still want to buy.

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