Rare Breed Getting Rarer

One of the local funky little music stores, Ear Xtacy, went out of business this week.  It's in the Highlands, which is about as hippie as you get in Louisville.  I've been in there a few times, and it was a throwback to the days when you had to go somewhere off the beaten path to get good music.

One of the few upshots of moving to California during high school was being able to go to Berkeley* and spend a few hours at Rasputin Records.  It was the first place I heard Nirvana, Green Day, and a bunch of other music that you don't get in suburbia, both new and old.  The guys who worked there usually looked like they'd stepped right out of Woodstock.  I think they made as much money on tee-shirt and poster sales as they did on selling vinyl, but it was one of my favorite places as a teenager.  There's something about just flipping through albums to find something that you haven't heard before that you just don't get from iTunes.

Of course, with the advent of digital music, these places are starting to become rarer and rarer.  One good thing is that a lot of music that never got past these little places is accessible to a wider audience.  The bad thing is that there are fewer places for small bands to get a toehold.

If you all will excuse me, I'm going to go see if I can find the turntable and listen to that old Hendrix album I've got around here somewhere.

*What can I say?  Telegraph Avenue was a lot of fun back then once you got past the politics.