Record Store Quotes

“I always tell the girls never take it seriously, if you never take it seriously you never get hurt, if you never get hurt you always have fun, and if you ever get lonely just go to the record store and visit your friends.”

— Cameron Crowe

“I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It's more important to confirm the least sincere. The clouds get enough attention as it is ...”

— Frank O'Hara

“The record store was a place of escape. It was a library and a clubhouse - Cameron Crowe quoted”

— Gary Calamar

“There's a vast fraternity of record collectors, and the record store was their hub. There was not a lot of information on these groups or the labels so you'd gather [there] and it would be like a library. - Lenny Kaye quoted”

— Gary Calamar

“Have you never met anyone who works in a record store? There is no greater repository of unjustified arrogance in the world.”

— Christopher Moore

“A lot of people see a Nissan ad and they see a finished product in a record store or on iTunes and that's the face of the band.”

— Patrick Carney

“I did find some time to go to a record store and check out 'Headstrong' actually in the racks. It was pretty cool; I never thought I'd see my own CD sitting there with everyone else's. I made my Mom take lots of pics!”

— Ashley Tisdale

“I worked in a record store, but I realised I didn't want that. I still wanted to pursue a career - or a life - that my songs provided for me.”

— Jamie Lawson

“Whether I'm doing music or I'm walking down the street or I'm in a record store buying a record or I walk into a comic store and I'm buying comics or having a drink with my friends, it's the same me.”

— Glenn Danzig

“Certainly, R.E.M. grew out of the Wuxtry record store in Athens, where Peter Buck was working and Michael Stipe came in to visit. And even their later manager, Bertis Downs, they all met and congregated at that record store. So I'm sure we wouldn't see those without the record store.”

— Gary Calamar

“Whenever I go to a new city, whether visiting or vacationing, I would always make that a point to get to the record store early on, just to get my bearings and see what was going on around town.”

— Gary Calamar

“It's a great meeting place, community center, art gallery, singles bar, music venue. The record store really covers a lot of ground.”

— Gary Calamar

“Even as a kid, if I would come across something cool in the record store, that would be how I found out about bands. It's kind of the same way these days. In a way even less because there are no record stores to go to anymore.”

— Scott Ian

“I miss the experience of walking into a record store and find old stuff without expecting to.”

— Mark Hoppus

“However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes-I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they're missing? Uh huh.”

— Frank O'Hara

“I became Iggy because I had a sadistic boss at a record store. I'd been in a band called the Iguanas. And when this boss wanted to embarrass and demean me, he'd say, 'Iggy, get me a coffee, light.'”

— Iggy Pop

“One thing that did get me into a lot of different types of music was when I was very young, the local record store went out of business and they were selling off all the vinyl. I remember going in - I was probably 16 or 17 and I'd just gotten a record player as a present. It was like hitting the jackpot: all these records for $3 apiece.”

— Imelda May

“Once at a record store in San Francisco, over a thousand kids showed up. They pushed forward and broke a window. A big piece of glass fell on top of this girl. And the girl's throat was slit. She just got slit. And I remember there was blood everywhere. Oh God, so much blood. And she grabbed her throat and was bleeding and everyone just ignored her. Why? Because I was there and they wanted to grab at me and get my autograph. I wonder whatever happened to that girl.”

— Michael Jackson

“For decades, Billboard had to rely on record-store owners and radio stations to report the most-bought and most-played songs. Both parties lied, often because labels nudged or bribed them to plug certain records, or because store owners didn't want to promote albums they no longer had in stock.”

— Anonymous.

“I used to work in a record store. I'm kind of a record nerd.”

— Patrick Stump

“I always knew I'd be in music in some sort of capacity. I didn't know if I'd be successful at it, but I knew I'd be doing something in it. Maybe get a job in a record store. Maybe even play in a band. I never got into this to be a star.”

— Bryan Adams

“One of the first things I picked up when I was very, very young out of a record store was work from Peter Saville - the early things he used to do for Factory Records.”

— Raf Simons

“My days of being the tardy employee at the record store gave me a cultural and musical understanding that was more unique than if I'd just listened to garbage-y pop on the radio my entire life.”

— Sophia Amoruso

“When I was growing up in the early '70s and really getting into music, waiting outside the record store for that 45, waiting for a single from The Dead, The Clash, David Bowie, or T-Rex or something to be there. There was something about that that was so special.”

— Dave Gahan

“I love the classic crooners, but I got that from my mother - she worked in a record store.”

— Tori Amos

“Other kids would take their parents to the toy store and I'd take my mom to the record store.”

— Daron Malakian

“We are drowning in a sea of Myspace, blather, and too much information. Music is everywhere and nowhere. The independent record store is the solution, a place staffed by friendly (or not) people who are actually paid to weed through this crap and help you find the good stuff.”

— Dean Wareham

“The Independent Record Store is the reason why i STILL do music ... It seems like they're the only ones that Really care about the real music lovers ... we need them ... they're our balance to all of the music we are FORCED to listen to ... they're the only ones that may still suggest something NEW and FRESH instead of just what's popular.”

— DJ Jazzy Jeff

“I grew up working at a record store and listening to vinyl. Even if it's side A and B, there's always this continuity that really turned me on about music.”

— Amos Lee

“As an experience, as a listener, for me, I miss the record store. I miss going in and knowing the guy at the counter and being like, "Hey," knowing that he was going to hate the record I put on the counter, and still buying it. That takes some guts.”

— Amos Lee

“I think record stores play a huge part in discovering new music. When I was growing up I would spend hours going through all the bins looking for something new that seemed interesting to me and that could relate to what I was listening to at the time. This is why I want to support National Record Store Day.”

— Joe Principe

“I definitely didn't have a lot of money. I had been fired from a record store. I was just trying to get by. I was on unemployment. I didn't have anything going full-time.”

— Avey Tare

“[Columbia House] magazines were how I found out about the punk world going on in New York. Because of what I read, at the age of 15, I hounded the local record store to order a copy of Horses [1975] for me by Patti Smith.”

— Michael Stipe

“I guess I probably took New York for granted. Growing up, playing in the street, going down to the Avenue to the record store and to the grocery store and stuff like that.”

— Noah Baumbach

“The 'cool' record store. It is where you can talk to people who are like you. They look like you, think like you and, most tellingly like the same music as you - the only comparable experience these days would probably be an art museum - an actual place where you can stand and simply be surrounded by your heroes.”

— Wayne Coyne

“The idea of, 'The journey is the destination' is put into action by browsing in an indie record store. Besides, a human being is a much better guide than a 'More Like This' link on the internet.”

— Patton Oswalt

“My advice is, don't spend money on therapy.
Spend it in a record store.”

— Wim Wenders

“There's nothing as glamorous to me as a record store.”

— Paul McCartney

“The decision to change the name meant we were getting serious, because we couldn't make a record if some other band had the same name as us.
I told the boys I was in a record store, thumbing though 45s, and I'd seen a record with the name the Warlocks on it. I've often wondered whether I hallucinated it, because I never saw the record again and I never heard a word about any band called the Warlocks.”

— Phil Lesh

“When I was a kid, I would go to the record store, where there was a bin of things they didn't know quite how to classify. Those were my choices. That's where you would find Captain Beefheart or an early electronic album.”

— Mark Mothersbaugh

“It's like the iPod playlist has killed the way we think of the normal album, so let's think of this as just saying you go into your record store and all those categories and all those different ways of segregating music have been thrown out the window, so the difference between myself in real life in that is that I'm the opposite.”

— DJ Spooky

“Try this experiment: one day go in a record store and just try and guess what the music sounds like by looking at the album cover.”

— DJ Spooky

“I went to a record store, they said they specialized in hard-to-find records. NOTHING WAS ALPHABETIZED!”

— Mitch Hedberg

“When I discovered blues - I was 12-years-old - I didn't discover it in America where it was from; I discovered it from Fleetwood Mac - the original Peter Green Fleetwood Mac, Saveloy Brown - like British blues interpretations of it,' which then, when I started the liner notes and seeing all these names, I was like, 'Who's Willie Dixon?' Then I go to the record store and ask the guy there and he goes, 'Oh, you don't know anything.' And so, to me, that's the root of most of it anyway.”

— Paul Weller

“They have removed the struggle to find anything. And therefore there is no genuine sense of discovery. Struggle is the first thing we know getting along the birth canal, out in the world. It's pretty basic. Book store owners and record store owners used to be oracles, in that way; you'd go in this dusty old place and they might point you toward something that would change your life. All that's gone.”

— Tom Waits

“I was introduced to lots of great music through my local record store. It was a place where people knew music and they knew me, and could make great suggestions and discoveries. Whether it is in the physical world or on-line, the value of a great and knowledgeable record store has not gone away”

— Peter Gabriel

“Music is very, very important in my movies. In some ways the most important stage, whether it ends up being in the movie or not, is just when I come up with the idea itself before I have actually sat down and started writing. I go into my record room ... I have a big vinyl collection and I have a room kind of set up like a used record store and I just dive into my music, whether it be rock music, or lyric music, or my soundtrack collection. What I'm looking for is the spirit of the movie, the beat that the movie will play with.”

— Quentin Tarantino

“I found this really fantastic used record store in Japan, and I bought all these different records and different 45s. And one of the 45s was just, it had the theme, "Green Leaves of Summer," the theme to "The Alamo" on one side, and then on the flip side was a theme to, the theme to "Magnificent Seven."”

— Quentin Tarantino

“I have watched independent record stores evaporate all over America and Europe. That's why I go into as many as I can and buy records whenever possible. If we lose the independent record store, we lose big. Every time you buy your records at one of these places, it's a blow to the empire.”

— Henry Rollins

“When I was a young comic in New York and I wasn't getting any work, I was wandering around the Lower East Side with my notebook. I would stop at the guitar place on St. Mark's and talk to that dude for a while, then I'd go to the bookstore and talk to that dude for a little while. I had a guy over at the record store, and I'd talk to him for a while. It kept me connected to life.”

— Marc Maron