The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Record Store

Gina Arnold is an author, music journalist, and adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, USA. She has been a writer for Rolling Stone, Spin, the Village Voice and many other publications, and is author of Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville (Bloomsbury, 2014), Half a Million Strong: Crowds and Power from Woodstock to Coachella (2018), and co-editor of Music/Video (Bloomsbury, 2017).John Dougan is Professor in the Department of Recording Industry at Middle Tennessee State University, USA. He has published essays and reviews in Rolling Stone, Spin, All Music Guide, American Music, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Popular Music and Society, Salon, and Perfect Sound Forever. He is the author of The Who Sell Out (Bloomsbury, 2006), and The Mistakes of Yesterday, The Hopes of Tomorrow: The Story of the Prisonaires (University of Massachusetts Press, 2013).Christine Feldman-Barrett is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University, Australia. A youth cultural historian, she is author of "We are the Mods": A Transnational History of a Youth Subculture (2009) and A Women's History of the Beatles (Bloomsbury, 2021). She is also editor of Lost Histories of Youth Culture (2015).Matthew Worley is Professor of modern history at the University of Reading, UK. His more recent work has concentrated on the relationship between youth culture and politics in Britain, primarily in the 1970s and 1980s. He is the author of No Future: Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture, 1976-1984 (2017) and co-founder of the Subcultures Network.

Once conduits to new music, frequently bypassing the corporate music industry in ways now done more easily via the Internet, record stores championed the most local of economic enterprises, allowing social mobility to well up from them in unexpected ways. Record stores speak volumes about our relationship to shopping, capitalism, and art. This book takes a comprehensive look at what individual record stores meant to individual people, but also what they meant to communities, to musical genres, and to society in general. What was their role in shaping social practices, aesthetic tastes, and even, loosely put, ideologies? From women-owned and independent record stores, to Reggae record shops in London, to Rough Trade in Paris, this book takes on a global and interdisciplinary approach to evaluating record stores. It collects stories and memories, and facts about a variety of local stores that not only re-centers the record store as a marketplace of ideas, but also explore and celebrate a neglected personal history of many lives.

Evaluates record stores on a global scale: from Rough trade in Paris to Reggae record shops in London, gentrification in Portuguese and Spanish record shops, and record stores in post-war Japan

IntroductionPrologue: The Record Store That Saved My LifeMark Trehus, Independent Scholar/Record Store Owner, USAPart 1: Record Stores as Community1 "We 'Bout it 'Bout it": The Independent Record Store in Post-Katrina New OrleansJay Jolles, College of William and Mary, USA2 Firecorner: The Importance of Reggae Record Shops in Black London and the Cultural Confluence of West Indian MusicKenny Monrose, Cambridge University, UK3 Journey of a Girl in a Plaid Skirt and Knee SocksHolly Gleason, Independent Scholar, USA4 The Cult of the Record BarStephen Shearon, Middle Tennessee State University, USA5 Magic in Here: Brisbane's Alternative Record Stores From the 1970s to the Digital AgeBen Green, Griffith University, Australia6 High Fidelity Across Twenty-Five Years: Record Shops, Taste, and StreamingJon Stratton, University of South Australia, Australia7 Reflections from the Girls Behind the Counter: Women and Independent Record StoresLee Ann Fullington, Brooklyn College CUNY, USAPart 2: Cultural Geography of Record Stores8 "Ways of living": Touristification and Gentrification in Spanish and Portuguese Record ShopsFernán Del Val, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain9 Living Popular Music in "high fidelity:" Portugal's Independent Record Stores 1998-2020Paula Guerra, University of Porto, Portugal10 Music on the Turntables When the Tables are Turning: A History of Record Stores in Romania from Late Socialism to the PresentClaudiu Oancea, New Europe College, Romania11 Jazzhole: How a Record Store Became the Lone Priest of Nigerian Oldies' Pop CultureEromo Egbejule, Malmö University, Sweden12 The Influence of Imported Records and their Stores on the History of Popular Music in JapanKen Kato, Osaka University, Japan13 Recording the Irish Experience: The Record Shop and Fair as ArchivePaul Tarpey, Limerick School of Art and Design, Ireland14 The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, It Will Be Taped: Popular Music Acquisition in Pre- and Post-Revolution TehranLily Moayeri, Independent Scholar, USAPart 3: Sites for Fandom and Performance of Subcultural Capital15 Making Indie Noises in the Corporate Outlet: Beating Capitalism at Its Own GameRoy Montgomery, Lincoln University, New Zealand16 Rip Off Records (Hamburg) and the Microhistory of CapitalismKarl Siebengartner, Independent Scholar, Germany17 Soul Bowl: Rare Soul UncoveredChristopher Spinks, University of East Anglia, UK18 Lucky Records - Music Makes the People Come TogetherMariana Lins, Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil19 Rough Trade Paris (1992-1999): The History of a SceneJean Foubert, LARCA Université Paris-Cité, France20 Musicians in the Record Store: Celebrity Encounters Through Amoeba Music's What's in My Bag?Christine Feldman-Barrett, Griffith University, Australia21 "Contents Expected to Speak for Themselves:" A Preliminary Understanding of North American Self Service Record RetailTim J. Anderson, Old Dominion University, USA22 Lost in the Booth: British Record Store Listening Booths as Atmospheric Sites of IntimacyPeter Jachimiak, University of South Wales, UKContributorsIndex