At least, something I can agree on with Rolling Stone magazine! They did their top 25 of the best record stores in the USA, and Amoeba got their number 1 spot. No surprise there!
I spend so much time in this store as they have several free concerts every week, I have the feeling I know every row and every square foot of that place.
The Hollywood branch is the largest of the three California locations and has about everything, every vinyl, every DVD you are looking for, it is really amazing.
Recently I have noticed they have rows of rows of used CDs which are so cheap ($ 2-3), I want to buy something every time I’m there. They are not new releases of course, but it is always great to see all the possibilities.
However, I’m always wondering how long this will last, since all the other record stores have disappeared everywhere.
Geoff Barrow who was playing there recently with his band Beak> said that all the small record stores in the UK were gone, and in an interview with LA record he explained the survival of stores like Amoeba by the fact that America is an enormous place, with still ‘a movement of freaks that still want to buy records and vinyl’, and because of the US size ‘there are so many people that it adds up to be worth it’. Sure, I see many of these freaks around and I thank them.
But Amoeba is not the only place where you can buy vinyl in LA, there are also other places like Origami vinyl, a tiny store in Echo park which sells only vinyl, hosts in-store performance in its mezzanine, and which is also a label!
There is the Echo Curio, not a record store per se, but rather a multi-purpose curiosity shop and art gallery which hosts live eclectic music shows almost every night.
So times are difficult for these places, but Amoeba seems pretty strong and they have had the biggest stars: Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, The Flaming Lips, Conor Oberst,… hundreds of them and, browsing their archives, I can’t believe how many shows I did not go to.
