1986 Record Hunting
I wanted to give everyone a day in the life of a music fan in the ’80s.
So, if it’s the mid-‘80s and I’m a carless teen and I’m looking to buy records, here’s what would happen.
Backpacks were not a cool thing. People may disagree with this, but it’s absolutely true. Not until the ’90s did backpacks come in vogue for all students and the like. A few of us brought them to college, up and to the early ’90s, I just carried my crap in my hands.
Anyway, maybe you wouldn’t take a bag, ‘cause you could get one at the store, and then if you didn’t buy anything, which happened a lot, you could just ride back.
So before I found out about the Record Rack and the cool places downtown, I had two spots. Each a Sound Warehouse. And sometimes, I would hit both in one day. Very unlikely chance that my older sister would take me since I could probably stay for two hours, who could blame her?
Anyway, I would go knowing that I was going to get something, but no idea what I was gonna get. I listened to the radio all the time. I don’t think I had, or maybe I did have, a Walkman at the time, but I don’t think I was ever riding around with headphones, as the idea seemed kind of stupid at the time.
Because I’d already been hit by a car on my bike.
So I’d go, I’d dig through the bins. In fact, I dug through the bins so much, at one of the stores, I got the cops called on me. Which is weird, because you couldn’t really stuff a record down your pants, and cassettes were in these huge plastic things where you couldn’t get away with those either.
And also I wasn’t a thief. It just wasn’t what I was going to do.
Anyway, you browse around for hours, and these suburban stores just kind of had the main stuff. Like, if you were after Molly Hatchet, or Kansas, or Boston, you were in luck. But if you’re looking for The Cure’s Standing on a Beach, you just had to get lucky.
I was super into other stuff, not just alternative. Van Halen. A real favorite of mine, obviously.
But generally, you got what you got, and that was it. Unless you were doing the Columbia House scam, which we were all down with. But that was just to fill in the catalog. The good stuff you had to hunt around for. Never occurred to me to keep a list.
So, you get what you get, hopefully get a bag that fit well over your handlebars, and although it swung around, the bags were good enough that you didn’t have to worry about them breaking. You just had to worry about your knees and throwing them into a wheel, and the wind and stuff like that.
But normally, I had just one arm-it to get home. And given the condition of the sidewalks and everything else, which hasn’t changed on either of these routes, I don’t know how I made it back home.
Especially in the heat and the humidity of Houston, Texas, just sweating. It’s a wonder the records didn’t melt, or the tapes didn’t just turn into a plastic ball.
So, I mean, that was a four-hour thing on any given day. You got about an hour to get back up there. There was a U-Totem convenience store I stopped at on the one that I went to most, which was over by Memorial City Mall and the high school. Hang out there for a bit. And then make it to the store, to the Sound Warehouse.
And browse my ass off.
Because you really did sometimes just buy the records for the cover, or there was a new release by somebody you liked. There was no news source, so you just kind of had to go to the record store and figure things out.
And then you go home and you play it, and hope that it’s not full of a bunch of crap surrounding the good songs, which was always possible.
And this is something I think about when people bemoan albums not being a thing. As if everyone back in the day was trying hard. Sure, the good albums we all remember as great experiences. But, man, some of those album cuts were spotty by new artists. You just knew nothing good was gonna come out of anything they ever did again. So you didn’t buy the next one.
Like I always say, wasn’t better or worse. This was just our experience and the way things were.
I’m sure it wasn’t 100% fun at the time, but I only have the best memories of it.
But isn’t that how it works?