i hate to have one of these at all but my big "WE DRANK FROM THE HOSE" opinion is that people younger than millennials really can't imagine what coming of age in a time of media scarcity meant - like, I would read about records and movies and not actually be able to see them for YEARS
like, at one point I heard of "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash" by the Pogues, and I went to my local independent record store - ALREADY more than most people had - but there was some problem with their distributor so it took me six months and cost me $25 to listen to one relatively well known album
When I worked at an indie record shop in the early 90s I was an import buyer, and that album was only in print outside the US—I could not keep it in stock at $25++ a pop.
I worked in similar video store at turn of century. I basically took the job to have access to their massive collection of rarities that you couldn't find anywhere else, and I had absolutely waited years to see... and now it's all available on streaming!
Yeah, there’s a few things that are still elusive if you don’t own them physically (looking at you, Buckingham Nicks) but by and large I’ve found that nobody cares how many different color pressings of “Love Buzz” I own.
Ironically, I had countless opportunities to buy the Buckingham Nicks album as a cutout for like 99 cents, and I just… didn’t. Still not sure why. Regrets, I’ve had a few.
This is me with those quad (QUAD!) 8-tracks of Metal Machine Music I’d see in the dollar bin at Walgreens after the format phased out. (My Lou/VU epiphany would come shortly, but by then…)
In the 80s, just seeing something was on Slash records was enough to shell out a considerable sum of money. Odds were you never heard anything about the record at all. It could be Pogues, or Wreckless Eric, or Rachel Sweet or Lena Lovich. You had no idea what it would sound like or what genre.
I was a young punk/new wave devotee and found out about the indie record shop in town from a public radio station that played the music I liked
I would get my parents to drive me to the shop and have a HEAVENLY time browsing the stacks, and all the UK imports made me drool
So much weed smell!
Counterpoint, not intended to dispute your experience or the larger point: I was able to get that album as a used CD by 94 or so in the Twin Cities.
A few years earlier in the small Midwestern town I grew up in, it would have absolutely been impossible.
Oh no doubt, and there’s all kinds of reasons some things may have been more available regionally, esp with independent radio that didn’t all promote the same things in every city.
Yeah, we got tons of rare stuff in at the college radio station I DJ'd at, some of which was lifted by the staff and sold--although I don't believe this was that. (I wish I had been less honest in retrospect - there was a Soundgarden promotional Live EP I would give a surprising amount of money for.
Half the reason I was so excited to get my driver's license (late 90s) was because I grew up 100 miles away in Wisconsin, and I desperately needed to go record/comics shopping in Minneapolis more than once or twice a year. That really opened a whole new world for me.
No way my folks would have let me drive to the Cities a 100 miles farther and 10 years earlier. I didn't even really know what I was missing (except that it *was* missing) on the music side. We had a decent comics shop, although nothing like The Source. Coming to a large metro changed my life.
Hilariously, the hardest record for me to the hardest CD to find was a fairly recent album from a local band. I ended up finding the CD booklet at a shop and they said they'd call me if they ever found it. About 2 years later, they found it when they moved to a new building and actually called me!
I worked at an indie record shop in the 90s and I stillhad to go to ANOTHER store to get an import copy of Best of Dexy's Midnight Runners because it was the only way to get Come on Eileen on CD.
I had a guy at another local shop on the lookout for years for a copy of the Replacements’ “Boink!” and it was such a great day when he came through for me. In return I always bought stuff from him at my store that we probably didn’t need, as a professional courtesy.
And so you listened to it closely. Over and over.
And that changed you. Sent you down one route.
These days everyone hears everything and pop music has stopped changing.
It’s like AI art now.
That’s a fair question.
But I’ve asked people rather younger than me and the ones I’ve asked agree the style of music isn’t changing as dramatically as it used to. Where 1994 chart music and 1984 chart music and 1974 chart music are strikingly different, 2024 to 2014 isn’t so clear.
...and though MTV is kind of a punchline now, for those of us that grew up in towns without college radio or indie radio or whatever shows like 120 Minutes, Alternative Nation, Headbanger's Ball, etc. allowed us exposure to stuff we never would've heard otherwise. Game changer.
The extra struggle of being an electronic music fan, hearing a dope track on MTV'S "AMP", and then trying to find it only to learn the version I heard was a remix, or video edit, MTV would never say that, the album version is wildly different, and it may not even be on some kind of physical media...
...AND EVEN THEN, finding the genres I liked at all was a motherfucker because it would all be shoved together in the "Dance" section, which was never that big. Aphex Twin, Dieselboy, The Venga Boys, Atari Teenage Riot, Paul Oakenfold, Underworld, Eiffel65, DJ Rap, all on the same little shelf.
I used to order a lot of obscure albums from local record stores and the clerk would always say stuff like, "If you don't like this, we probably won't buy it back because it'll sit here forever" lol
There are bands that I had heard of YEARS before I finally heard them - Swans, Live Skull, Einsturzende Neubaten, etc. Don't forget that not only was stuff harder to find, but you (or someone you knew) had to actually pay for everything!
i have an essay coming out about some 80s remixes & told the story about how i'd sit up late listening to the 2 radio stations i could rely on playing it & for a second i could see the person i was talking to was confused as to why i had to do that. i couldn't buy every record I wanted to hear!
I had heard a couple of Clash songs before. But I found a 3 disk box set in the used rack and Hastings. Randomly started with disk 2.
First track was Safe European home.
It was life changing.
