Top Five Friday

With two and a half hours until "deadline," i've struggled to find a good Top Five for this Friday. Mrs. Blue has given me a bunch of possible topics that I've cruelly shot down one by one much to her dismay.

Finally, she picked one that I had kind of thought of earlier in the day. So, with options running out, I present...

The Top Five Places To Buy Music [All-Time Edition]

5. Best Buy
Oh come on. Sometimes you just need to find something fast and somewhat cheap. However, Best Buy was much cooler when they first opened when they were actually trying to run out all the music store chains. The prices were cheap, the racks were well-stocked and organized. Now, they just don't care because they figure that you can't go anywhere else. So, basically, they suck now but they had potential once upon a time.

4. Virgin Megastore
And I'm talking a very specific Virgin Megastore - the one that formerly existed in the Triangle Square shopping center in Costa Mesa. I have very fond and vivid memories of going to that store with my friends for a few years [about 1994-96.] It really was unlike any store we'd ever seen. So massive, so many choices... and all those awesome listening stations where you could hear all the stuff that you'd never heard of before. It was expensive as shit though. I remember going there before my first concert [Stone Temple Pilots at formerly Irvine Meadows] and buying the Beastie Boys disc that had "Sabotage" on it. I don't even own that CD anymore I don't believe but at the time, it was the shit. That store is gone now like most music stores seem to be but the memories live on.

3. Tower Records

Whether it was the Tower Records in Costa Mesa or the historic one on Sunset, most people miss Tower Records. Me? I miss the one that was in West Covina. You see, that particular Tower was off the freeway on the way from my aunts' house going back home. So, if I was really annoying, I could sometimes get my mom to stop there on the way home so I could race inside and spend some money. I was way too young to appreciate the awesome selection and basically ended up dropping money on some cassette singles at $3 each [see, even as a kid I knew that the record industry was putting out shit for full albums.] In my later years, I didn't shop there so much because the prices were so high but I never thought the whole chain would fold up like they did last year. I went in to the local Tower to pick up some "going out of business" stuff but it was so sad being in there. I might have even shed a tear if it was at _my_ Tower.

2. The Mad Platter

I think that everyone who goes "away" to college has their local music store that brings back so many fond memories. The Mad Platter in Riverside was mine. Tucked away on a side street in the "not-so-nice" side of town, the Mad Platter sold tons of local bands, tons of ska and punk, and tons of used CDs that I could thumb through for hours trying to find what to spend my hard-earned Work Study money on. They would even open the CDs for you to listen to on the in-store CD players if you asked. For a youngster, the most eye-opening thing to discover were bootlegs. I'd always _heard_ of bootlegs but actually discovering that you could get an entire concert of your favorite band for $20-30 bucks was amazing. I still treasure the Pearl Jam Rarities bootleg that I bought there that had their entire MTV Unplugged set plus "Sonic Reducer" that I used to shove in the face of people who thought they were hardcore PJ fans. Ahhhh, the innocent days of being a music snob. The Mad Platter was also the source to discover all the shows coming to town... you know, before the Internet. This store is gone too. Sounds like a broken record, huh?

1. Amoeba Music

In the heart of Hollywood, I had heard of this store for ages but never actually made it up there until May of '06. Needless to say, I instantly fell in love with it. Two stories of greatness, tons and tons and tons of CDs everywhere to be found. New CDs, used CDs, local CDs, big time CDs. There's racks of vinyl [something I'm efforting to get into very soon.] There are little side rooms that cover Jazz and Soundtracks. There are sections for country, for international, for... just about anything you can imagine. They even have DVDs upstairs if that's what you're looking for. The walls are absolutely papered with posters for bands and movies and... yeah. I can spend hours in the store digging through the entire used music section, wander upstairs with a handbasket overflowing with CDs pulled off the racks, and then listening to them all on the listening stations upstairs that scan the barcode to pull them up in the system. Yeah, sometimes that system doesn't work but dammit, it's the thought that counts. Honestly, it's a good thing I live an hour away from Amoeba because if I was any closer, they might get almost every dime I have. Oh, and they also feature in-store concerts from time to time... something I've failed to see so far but intend to remedy soon. It's still open... for now. Show 'em some love and keep it that way, okay?

And that's that.

On a side note, I had an internal debate on whether or not to include iTunes Music Store in this list seeing that's where I buy most of music nowadays. I decided not to because it's an uneven playing field for convenience but if you're looking for music in a hurry and at [usually] the most reasonable price you can find, you can't beat the ITMS. For those of you who prefer an actual disc or piece of vinyl in your hands, head on down to Hollywood.