Missing Music Stores

 You all know that I love music.  All kinds of music.  I mostly listen to things that were recorded decades ago, shocking I know, but I do enjoy some contemporary music as well.  To me, good music is good music, and a good artist is timeless.  I almost always have music playing in the background when I'm at home whether it be a record or a cd or the radio.  I like having it a part of my daily life.

Anyway, the other night I sat in bed and put a cd in my cd walkman.  Yes, I have one of those thanks to a Christmas gift from Michael and I still use it.  I was listening to Barbra Streisand's Just For the Record Highlights cd.  It has some wonderful tracks on it and maybe one day I'll find the full album at a good price.  I just stayed in bed and listened to the cd without any distractions.  It's been a long time since I have done that.

It got me thinking about music stores and how I miss them.  I'm not even sure if there are any around anymore because everything is online these days. Now, I'm not talking about Ed McKay's where I can find plenty of used cds and records.  I mean an actual new music store.  Growing up, there was one in the Monroe Mall.  I can't remember than name of it to save my life, but I spent many hours in there looking through all of the music.  And you didn't even have to buy anything.  It really was a good way to kill time at the mall. 

It also made me think of how I miss the old cd packaging.  Yes, it was really completely useless and a waste of cardboard, but I always found it much easier to sort through the cds when they were in those long boxes.  They were a bitch to get into though LOL Sometimes the artwork on the cover box was totally different than the album covers and that was fun. I remember going to Cocoanuts in Raleigh to buy cds when we would visit the city.  I always enjoyed that.

While I am grateful for the used music stores in my area and I do frequent them as much as I can, I miss going to the new music stores. It's a piece of the past that kids today will never have the privilege of experiencing.  And that makes me sorry for them. While there is a convenience to streaming music, it's just not the same as waiting for an artist's new album to come out and scrambling to get to the store to buy it before it was sold out.  Ah, good times.