It's no secret that the economic paradigms of recorded music have changed in recent years. Here in little Montpelier, Vermont, we at Buch Spieler find ourselves among the last record stores standing. We started our mission-- selling music to color the silence; all kinds of music from all over the world for all kinds of people-- more than 35 years ago. We're still in the same building, on the same street, as we we were back then. But the world has changed around us, with downloads and mp3s coming to supplant the hard copies of sonic art that have long been our bread and butter.
Every day we hear from customers who value cover art, liner notes, spinning discs: the ancillaries to recorded music that help bring cultural, aesthetic context-- not to mention a sense, perhaps illusory, of permanence-- to the ephemeral art of organized sound.
I came to work at Buch Spieler in the autumn of 1987. Before that, I'd been a customer for a while. I still remember the first record I bought here on Langdon Street. It was Van Morrison's NO GURU, NO METHOD, NO TEACHER, a perfect album for the hot hazy nights full of fireflies that I remember from my first summer in Vermont.
We'd love to hear from you. What was the first album-- LP, Cassette, CD-- you bought? What do you remember about it, about the times surrounding it? Give us a sentence, a paragraph, an essay; whatever you'd like.
We will return with more rambles soon!
-kmb
The first album I purchased was one of about 500. That is the estimated number of records (yes, vinyl long playing records) that was the starting inventory of Buch Spieler.
ReplyDeleteSome of the records I remember being part of that first purchase are (in alphabetical order):
all available records by The Beatles
Dave Brubeck - Time Out
Cream - Disraeli Gears
Mile Davis - Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain
Bill Evans - Sunday at the Village Vanguard, Waltz for Debbie
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
Al Green - Let's Stay Together
Jimi Hendrix - Are You Experienced
Janis Joplin - Pearl
Carole King - Tapestry
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin, II
Mott The Hoople - All The Young Dudes
Otis Redding - The Dock of the Bary
Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon
Elvis Presley - Elvis Presley
all available records by The Rolling Stones
Santana - Santana
Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water
Cat Stevens - Mona Bone Jakon, Tea for the Tillerman, Teaser and the Firecat
War - The World Is A Ghetto
Stevie Wonder - Talking Book
Neil Young - Neil Young, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After The Goldrush, Harvest
And, of course, many, many more which were very important to have then and many which have stood the test of time and are still essential to any good collection.
I definitely bought my first and last vinyl at Buch Spieler; lots of Talking Heads and Prince (it was the 80's!). I also remember some cool bongs, rolling papers, and punk rock memorabilia. Ah, the old days.
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, the old days. What happened? Things do change. The '70's were a lot more spontaneous and carefree. Near the end of the decade, the bongs and rolling papers were in high demand. Norwich cadets were regular customers. They bought the biggest bongs. I always wondered how they got away with using those things.
ReplyDeleteThen the '80's and the Reagan era and the beginning of the fall of the empire. We didn't recognize it back then but now we are all paying the price. Trickle down leaves us with nothing more than the excrement of greed.
But the '80's did give us some good music. Like you said, Talking Heads and Prince among many.
Along the way came the format changes - from records to cassettes to CDs. Now that we're living in a digital world and the download dominates, what's next?
But if you've got any good Buch Spieler stories from years gone by, please feel free to share them here. Ah, the good, old days!
I think I started visiting Buch Spieler more after you all took over the space where the metaphysical bookstore used to be, in the mid 90's. Remember that place? I think I might have bought cassettes when you sold them for a dollar, in a box on the sidewalk outside the store. Of what I don't remember.
ReplyDeleteI didn't start buying books or music until about five years ago. I think the first CD I bought was Beck's "Seachange". I listened to it in the store with Fred. I always loved that part of deciding should I or shouldn't I, and how it was a throwback to the listening booths of 40 or 50 years ago. Maybe a year or two later I bought Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue". Mostly what I've bought since then has been for other people, so they haven't stuck in my mind.
Before that what I had I was either given to me or I inherited. From John-David Perkins I inherited a lot of Talking Heads, Brian Eno and Phillip Glass. From my mom soundtracks and whatever struck her fancy - Godspell, Leonard Bernstein's Mass, West Side Story, Hair, American Graffiti, Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie, The Weavers, Woody Guthrie, Jim Croce, Neil Diamond, Don MacLean, Cat Stevens, Professor Longhair, The Meters, Bill Withers, Joni Mitchel, Bob Dylan, to Simon & Garfunkel, and the Kingston Trio. Joan Baez. The Grateful Dead (OK, one Grateful Dead record...I think it was sent to her by mistake by the record of the month clud and she decided not to send it back.). Elvis Presley. The Jackson Five.
I bought my first music on cassette (!) at Buch Spieler when I was in junior high (circa 1990). Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, and the Pet Shop Boys were among those initial purchases. Nearly twenty years and half a dozen states later, they're still rattling around in my moving boxes. Sadly, I don't own a tape deck to play them on anymore.
ReplyDelete