Music Notes
Record Exchange to join the bygone age it represents

Thursday, July 13, 2006

By Ed Bumgardner

relish staff writer

Reading the tidbit in the newspaper was like stumbling across the obituary of an old friend, fondly remembered, but a presence long removed from day-to-day life.

The Record Exchange, tucked away in Silas Creek Crossing, was to close after 27 years as Winston-Salem's most prominent independent "record store."

The store's anachronistic name alone is a sign of its tenacity - and of its cause of death.

The store's passing was inevitable. It had been struggling for years, clutching at relevancy in a fast-changing market. Across the country, brick-and-mortar stores, as such merchants have been duly dubbed, are being turned to dust by the essentially intangible digital presence of the Internet. A lingering Mom & Pop record/CD store in this downloadable age is a dinosaur, less a place to shop for music than a museum relic to be visited, a symbol of what once was and what shall likely never be again.

So on one hand, the news was a bit like hearing that someone had tripped over and unplugged the cord to the machine that had been keeping an aged pal, long past his prime, alive for perhaps a bit too long.

The suffering was over. Still ... the store's impending demise - it is scheduled to close, at least in its present form, by the end of the month - is an emotional blow.

I worked as a manager at The Record Exchange, then off Knollwood Street, from its opening in 1981 until 1986, when I came to the Winston-Salem Journal to write about music. (The first phone interview I ever did as a writer was conducted, during business hours, at The Record Exchange. I had to ring up customers' purchases while jabbering and stammering at Bonnie Raitt. It did not go well.)

The Record Exchange was my first "real" job, and its small universe of employees (most were musicians) and devoted customers was special in a familial way. The Knollwood version of the store - it has since moved twice - was something new, odd in some ways, magical in others. It created bonds.

There was no such thing as a CD when the store first opened. Pre-recorded cassettes were hawked, but it was more a gesture than a thriving concern. The store's main focus was on the buying and reselling of vinyl albums. It was a funky store, the retail equivalent of a juke joint, as much a fraternal hangout as it was a business. Walls were covered in memorabilia and weirdness. Customers - and there were many at the time - became friends. Some even became employees.

A band rehearsed in the back of the store, and from time to time, an employee, caught in a period of personal transition, might bunk in the back for a bit between the amplifiers and the boxes of albums.

Peter Buck of R.E.M. came into the store several times, as did Willie Nelson, the Meat Puppets, The Del Fuegos, Alejandro Escovedo and Pat Dinizio of The Smithereens. The store was a requisite stop for traveling indie bands playing in town. The dB's once held an in-store album-release party, complete with screw-top wine and lawn chairs. It reached Spinal Tap proportions.

At night, vintage rock 'n' roll films were often shown to select customers and musicians by a gentle giant dubbed Big Giant Henry (Henry David), now dead, who knew everything there was to know about rock's early years.

When the selling of new albums - and eventually CDs - was introduced into the mix, the musical eccentricities and deep knowledge of individual staff members quickly came into play. The Record Exchange became the place in town to buy new albums by obscure bands and obscure albums by old bands. Long discussions about musical esoterica, among and between customers and employees, were the norm. If an album was popular, it was never, ever played in the store.

High Fidelity could have been filmed in The Record Exchange of the early 1980s. The similarities are eerie.

Highly prized albums arrived in avalanches. Business (and record collections) thrived. Then the business got in the way of the fun. People left. The store moved. Things changed.

Now, it's over.

"My original plan was to have 50 stores by 2000," owner Don Rosenberg said. "It didn't happen."

Rosenberg had a ready list of reasons why his store, and others like it, will probably not survive the changes in the music industry. He pointed to the "ridiculously high" prices of CDs that too few people want to buy in the first place.

"There just isn't that much new music that people have to have these days," he said.

He emphasized that the burning of CDs hurt business.

"Twelve kids chip in and buy one CD, burn 12 perfect reproductions, then resell the CD," Rosenberg said. "That's the reality."

And he pointed to the blossoming iPod culture, where buying songs, not entire CDs, is the norm.

Rosenberg is not a stupid man. He maintains a presence on the Internet (www.trexonline.com) that holds its own.

But his days of buying and selling music within walls are over. He will leave such things to new people with new ideas.

"It is not what it used to be," he said. "And it's not supposed to be."

Change happens, and the likes of the Record Exchange may never happen again. But it happened once. I wouldn't trade that experience for all the collectible albums in the world.


http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_RelishArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149189089008&path=!entertainment!music!&s=1037645508978

Well, that's too bad. I wonder if Wax & Facts is still hanging in there in Atlanta.

Fortunately, we still have a good local indy store not too far from my neighborhood in Tampa, Vinyl Fever. As you tell from the name, it, too focused on albums during its early years (as a matter of fact, it also opened in 81). It has always had knowledgeable staff, many of whom are musicians. And, it also features regular in store appearences (the last one I caught was the reunited Camper Von Beethoven about a year & a half ago; Rodney Crowell was scheduled in last fall, among others).

Support your local independent businesses! (music, books, hardware, whatever).

Wax n' Facts is indeed still hanging in there ... Last month, my band joined a bunch of others in celebrating the store's 30th anniversary at the Variety Playhouse. It was great fun (even Danny Beard's mother was in attendance).

Wow. That's some sad news. I spent a lot of my time in the Record Exchange up on Knollwood St. when I would visit Winston-Salem. Found all kinds of cool stuff there, thanks to Ed and to Dale Smith (former Sacred Irony vocalist).

This also comes right after the death of Jeanne Reznick who, with her husband Joe and their kids, ran Reznick's Records. That was my first job, and it was a hell of a place for a teenage boy to be working in Winston-Salem at the time. Mrs. Reznick was a great boss, and even before I started working there, I spent a lot of time in the listening booth. It was there I was turned on to Captain Beefheart and Judee Sill. Whatever desire I had to know about music was certainly stoked there.

There are few things in this life that give me more solace than flipping through bins of records or cds, but now I don't know where to shop for music in Winston-Salem. There's always Borders, but it's sure not the same. Plus it sits on the very real estate in Thruway Shopping Center where my beloved Reznick's used to be.

Thank you Record Exchange and Reznick's (where it's been Reznick's for records for years, their old motto).