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Record Store Chicanery

As a loyal denizen of several of northern New Jersey‘s respected independent record stores, it’s with a heavy heart that I hereby call shenanigans on some shady-type business practices going on around here. I won’t name the stores, because the indie record shop is a dying breed (not that anything I said would have the power to kill it anyway) and I do genuinely support both establishments. Knowing what I know, I not only still bought their products, but I would and undoubtedly will do it again too.

There are two instances I wish to report: the first at a shop not too far from the valley to which I’ve been going for years now. Last week I went to pick up a new Black Sabbath bootleg, just for the hell of it, and after failing to obtain the legendary Paris 1970 show, I opted for a collection of demos from what would become Dehumanizer. Hardly Mmm, look at those pixels.the best tradeoff, but whatever. I’ll take what I can get most of the time.

You can see from the front cover (and the back cover after the jump), it’s an inkjet job. That is, whoever distributes the disc probably also manufactured it with an inkjet printer and CD burner. The decline in quality of printed bootlegs is an unfortunate consequence of the digital age, but it’s also a gripe for another time. I’ve come to accept that it’s the way things are now. When you shop for bootlegs, you’re probably going to get some homemade crap.

It didn't even print straight! Why do I buy these things?That’s not my issue. My issue is when I finally opened the case, not only was it a green-backed CDR (come on man, at least spring for silver!), but when I played it, the tracks had that tinny digital compression sound that comes from low-quality mp3s. I had just dropped $19.99 for a poorly printed cover and someone’s crappy download. I felt like an asshole. Now, I don’t think the owner of the shop is responsible, but it sucks that someone who’s going to take the time to print out and assemble the bootleg D.I.Y. style wouldn’t also take the extra minute to make sure the sound doesn’t totally blow. $19.99 for something I’ll never listen to. Great. Onto the shelf it goes. Hope you like your new home.

Even shadier were the practices at another shop — this time one I’d never been to before a ways north of me specializing in rare and out of print stuff. The guy running the place (and this I do blame on the owner, though he was a nice guy) had clearly sometime in the past purchased a shrinkwrapper and was putting it to good use wrapping used CDs and selling them as new. Just take a look at the scan of a Kyuss promo CD single for One Inch Man I picked up:

Bent to hell. Obviously not new.

The cover is creased along the left and bottom right-hand sides (click “View Image” to increase the size of the picture), and the disc is still shrinkwrapped! These two things do not make sense. In all my years of buying CDs, I’ve never encountered a brand new jewel case disc, still in the wrapping, with a damaged cover. Not only that, but as someone who’s been getting specialty promos for over half a decade now — either press or radio-only releases — I’ve never seen one come in shrinkwrapped. Why the hell would they? They’re free! There’s no asset to protect because they’re not for sale, they’re for promotion!

Plus, in addition to the Kyuss, I grabbed two Dio radio promos from 1990 and a CD advance of the self-titled Karma to Burn album, all of which had the exact same shrinkwrapping on it. My issue isn’t even necessarily with the wrapping, because this stuff is rare and the guy selling it has a right to protect his product any way he sees fit, but if that’s the case, don’t charge me $16.99 for a one-song promo I know for a fact couldn’t possibly be new. Don’t stock Different artwork and all.it in the “New” section. Sell it for what it is: used.

It’s the trying to pass something off for what it couldn’t possibly be that bothers me. The guy had a whole host of Monster Magnet and other singles and promos I’d have gladly taken with me if they were priced where they should have been — minimum $10 less than he was charging for all — but as it was, I felt like I was being taken advantage of. While checking out, I saw an old Sony Discman CD player shrinkwrapped with its instruction manual. Are you kidding me?

I understand it’s reprehensible to say anything bad about indie record stores these days, but shouldn’t it also be reprehensible for these stores to either passively or actively rip off their customers? Maybe it would be in the retailers’ best interests to help renew their customership by not trying to trick patrons out of their money rather than pull a fast scam they think no one’s going to pick up on. Rumor has it that suckers like me who are willing to walk into a shop and be robbed blind are something of a rarity these days. I’ll keep going back for more and feeling like crap about it later, sure, but there’s only one of me and even I’m only willing to spend so much before I’ve had enough. At least in theory.

So yeah, support your local record store. Fine. Just don’t necessarily expect that support back.

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