101 Musicians Discuss Their Favorite Record Stores

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11. Bethany Consentino
Best Coast

Store: Rooky Ricardo’s
Location: San Francisco, Calif.

I love Rooky Ricardo’s in SF. We filmed something there for Yours Truly about two years ago and it was so much fun. It’s a record store that sells all old-school vinyl, and the owner makes these comps of lost tracks from the ‘50s and ’60s. I try to go there every time I’m in SF.

12. Brent Knopf
Ramona Falls, Menomena

Store: Music Saves
Location: Cleveland, Ohio

I didn’t think anybody would find the anagram fragments we hid inside Menomena’s Friend and Foe artwork, piece them together, and decode them all, but Melanie and Kevin of Music Saves did just that. Later, they invited me to Music Saves’ 5th Anniversary, where I performed the first ever concert under the name Ramona Falls. So nurturing, so gracious, so exceptional.

13. Zach Carothers
Portugal. The Man

Store: Music Millennium
Location: Portland, Ore.

It’s our hometown store, we’ve done a bunch of in-stores there, and the last one we did was absolutely huge. It feels better when it’s your favorite store and the one that you go to see other bands and to buy records at.

14. Peter Silberman
The Antlers

Store: Streetlight Records
Location: Santa Cruz, Calif.

I had my first record-buying experience here when I was maybe 16 and visiting my sister who had just moved out to Santa Cruz from New York. I spent that trip absorbing a totally unfamiliar boardwalk mini-city of leftover hippies and willfully-but-necessarily homeless kids. I found Streetlight wandering down the main drag and killed a few hours there entertaining the idea of buying a record, despite not really owning a turntable. After a lot of deliberation, I bought My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anything and flew back home to New York with it a few days later, taking care not to let it get fucked up on the trip home.

15. Glenn Tilbrook
Squeeze

Store: Rough Trade East
Location: Brick Lane, East London, United Kingdom

Best memory: Seeing Tame Impala.

Chris Difford

Store: Grammar School Records
Location: Rye, East Sussex, United Kingdom

Buying a Prefab Sprout album—a very happy record which I enjoyed listening to.

16. Michael Benjamin Lerner
Telekinesis

Store: Sonic Boom Records
Location: 15th Ave. E on Capitol Hill in Seattle, Wash. (now closed)

I am so partial to this store, mainly because I worked there for a year. I was sad when it shut its doors (though a wonderful sonic boom still resides in Ballard, Wash.). I learned so much about all kinds of music working here. I heard Guided By Voices for the first time. Fell in love with every Kinks record. Listened to Talk Talk when no one was around and felt like a character in the movie Empire Records. It was a very formative time in my life! Hooray for Sonic Boom in Capitol Hill, may you R.I.P.

17. Shayde Sartin
The Fresh & Onlys

Store: Amoeba Music (1855 Haight Street)
Location: San Francisco, Calif.

I have far too many memories with that store. One memory that sticks out immediately is the time they loaned me a thousand bucks to move in to an apartment. Took forever to pay that off.

18. Michael Timmins
Cowboy Junkies

Store: The Record Peddler (original location on Queen Street East)
Location: Toronto, Ontario

[Cowboy Junkies’ bass player] Alan [Anton] and I would make a weekly trek over to the Peddler to go through the weekly influx of indie imports from the UK. This was in the late ‘70s. If an album had a cover that struck us we would buy it to see what lay inside. And then one day, there on the wall, was an album with a textured black cover and this odd squiggly pattern in the center… and that was how we were introduced to Joy Divisions’ Unknown Pleasures.

19. Rich Aucoin

Store: TAZ
Location: Downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia

While Obsolete Records in Halifax has started a new legacy, TAZ is an undeniable staple in the musical hearts of Haligonians. I grew up listening to and bonding with the then surly owner over our mutual love of Dick Dale, Ventures and other surf instrumental groups. Since then, the store has not only been an amazing source for discovering older music but has embraced the current waves of new musical genres so it’s really a store where you can get anything you’d ever want on vinyl.

Maybe the day I bought the majority of my Motown records, I remember just leaving with a stack of records which I went home and immediately consumed. I still can’t get over how amazing that era of recordings and songwriting is.

20. Kamtin Mohager
The Chain Gang of 1974

Store: Amoeba Records
Location: Los Angeles, Calif.

To be honest, my favorite memory was seeing my album have its own vinyl section and as a ‘Staff Pick.’ Having so much respect for a store and what they’re all about made that moment very special.