record stores | The Che Underground

The way we listen now

December 14, 2017November 2, 2010 by Mmrothenberg

We’ve talked a lot (sometimes heatedly!) about what we listen to nowadays since heading our separate ways into adulthood. But I’m also curious about where we’re listening to music new and old.

The musical authorities of our youth (from record stores to select radio shows) have given way to whole new avenues for musical exploration, and I have to admit I have trouble knowing where to start. I watch and listen to a lot of music on YouTube; I spend some time with Pandora; I don’t personally own an MP3 player, although my family has a few. Satellite radio is a mystery to me, and I don’t really have much of a line on radio of the old-school terrestrial variety, either.

Then and now: Off the Record

January 1, 2011September 17, 2008 by Mmrothenberg

(Roving correspondent/photographer Kristen Tobiason revisits the scenes of our youth. Today, Off the Record’s original location is roadkill.)

It takes my breath away that the candy store of my youth has been diminished to something as unsavory as a used-tire store. Off the Record has had a history, migrating from its origin on 6130 El Cajon Blvd. to the heart of the Hillcrest shopping district, where a much larger store thrived in the ’90s and early 21st century with San Diego’s indie rock scene and the DJ phemenon. The in-store concerts were memorable and yielded huge turnouts for bands such as The Misfits, Husker Du, Mudhoney and Nirvana. (Check out Nirvana at OTR in October 1991.)

After the original owner Phil Galloway sold the store, it downsized its stock considerably and in 2005 moved to a small storefront on University Avenue in North Park. The end of an era: Music stores can’t compete nowadays with the instant accessibility of MP3s and shareware. Record stores are reserved for the discriminating vinyl collectors who will never sell out completely to technology, no matter how clever those gizmos are!

Records will always be cooler.

Record stores: Unchained vinyl

April 23, 2012August 13, 2008 by Paul Kaufman

(Manual Scan/Lemons Are Yellow vet Paul Kaufman recalls a time when music shopping meant leaving the house.)

If you’re like me, you spent many hours flipping through records at stores, looking for treasures.

As a small kid, I started out locally, on Garnet Ave. in Pacific Beach. The Wherehouse and Licorice Pizza were a couple of blocks apart, so when I was just learning my history, I could spend hours looking at album covers and picking up magazines at those places.

As a 13-year-old, something commercially available was usually on the top of my list (early Badfinger fixation), and those sorts of places usually fit the bill. For a while, Licorice Pizza had a cut-out bin that had some real finds. They also carried imports, and I have distinct memories of saving up the princely sum of $2.50 each to buy the early Sex Pistols and Clash 45s (with real art sleeves! And no big hole in the middle!). It was a double thrill, because it was the closest thing to international travel I would experience until I was much older.