Record stores in L.A.?

Also, there are a few listed here:

ILX Lists The Best Record Shops In The USA

"Also, Sea Level in Echo Park is great. Headline on Melrose is good for obscure punk rock."

"Fingerprints in Long Beach is the best record store in California."

"in los angeles
don't front: ritmo latino
on broadway KICKS ASS"

i'll second Rhino in westwood. Aron's is occasionally good.

what happened to Penny Lane. i used to work there after college and now i visited and it seems to have turned into a pr0n store?

House of Records on Pico (or is it Olympic?) has good records.

what's the one in the "hip" area on Ventura blvd next to Coldstone? Moby Disc? i don't think that's the name, but i always find cheap used cds there.

house of records is on pico near the freeway and the grammy hq.

Moby Disc isn't there anymore, I fear.

I'd rank em like this: 1) Amoeba 2) Aron's 3) Fingerprints 4) Record Surplus 5) CD trader

Rhino doesn't really do it for me because they're way too expensive, but their 99 cent LP bins have lots of gold in em.

yeah, when i lived in the neighborhood (*gulp* 10 long years ago) it had kinda started to go downhill. NoLife was a good (albeit shortlived) store as well (for all you oldtimers reading at home).

RE: "...what's the one in the "hip" area on Ventura blvd next to Coldstone? Moby Disc? i don't think that's the name, but i always find cheap used cds there.

-- JaXoN (jaso...), June 29th, 2004 2:17 PM."

Second Spin is right next to AAHS, which is right next to Coldstone, on that strip. You can find good stuff there often in the "new used arrivals" bins.

There are lots!

A pale shadow of it's former self. Hasn't been the same in five years.

Ugh. I hated that place and the people who worked there were the worst examples of "indie snobbery" ever (even more so than Arons a couple years ago). I don't miss them at all.

they have a ton of cheap used vinyl and a record player to let you listen to everything. about 5yrs ago when they were higher up on Westwood, the used cd collection was pretty good too. i don't think i ever bought a new cd there.

Rockaway was much better even six months ago, now the only thing they're really good for are their used concert tees maybe.

Aron's has some snobs working there still, but a few nice people as well. Really good used CD section, and their used vinyl has yielded some good finds. Good prices on DVDs usually.

Amoeba is a haven of incestuous soap opera-dom, if I believe what a friend told me. Not sure I'd want to work there but any place that I can find lots of Oblivians CDs used is okay with me. They're more expensive than Aron's but strangely their import CDs seem to be cheaper. Huge used DVD section, one of the best I've ever seen. So many import DVDs...

there's this newish one in the valley called Freakbeat, on Ventura near Fulton. Pretty decent used vinyl selection, overpriced new vinyl, okay used CD selection.

I would like to emphasize more strongly that the trip to CD Trader on Ventura Blvd is worth it if only for their wall o'used DVDs and the off chance that you can find the new Fiery Furnaces sealed for $3.99. Cheap as hell on their DVD box sets I noticed. Band of Brothers, a sealed but "used" copy, will run you 75 at Amoeba and 44 at CD Trader.

another friend of mine is obsessed with a couple of the girls who work there, some ridiculous hottie who works in the hip hop/soul/techno area and this "Kylie Minogue w/a Marilyn Monroe body" who works the floor.

Devandra Banhart used to work at Aron's.

What happened to Rockaway? I haven't been there in years, but why does it suck so badly now?

:-D

Tell my Korean brethren "ha say-yo" for me

So what's still open other than Amoeba?

Obv no more Tower bargain bin trawling for me heh.

RECORD SURPLUS ON PICO AND CD TRADER IN TARZANA THAT GEAR MENTIONS UPTHREAD IS STILL OPEN. FREAK BEAT IN SHERMAN OAKS IS COOL.

what happened to the cute girl working at record trader? she's been missing the last three or four times i've been in there. there are lots of cute girls working at lots of records stores, but the cute girl at record trader was one of god's better jokes.

Poo Bah records in Pasadena is worth it if in the area.

House of Records is closing in two weeks. Discount is down to 40%, so if you want to go there, I would go soon. There's some good stuff in the bargain bin there -- I saw Masters of Reality's Sunrise on the Sufferbus for five bucks, and that thing is way out of print.

Don's Music in Eagle Rock is small but terrific, and Don is a really sweet guy who used to own a shop in Brooklyn and has a lot of great stories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6os5Tsu2aE

Wombleton is nice store but only open half the week. Alex In SF and I wandered into Permanent and Scream were doing an in-store. They were terrible!

RECORD SURPLUS ON PICO AND CD TRADER IN TARZANA THAT GEAR MENTIONS UPTHREAD IS STILL OPEN. FREAK BEAT IN SHERMAN OAKS IS COOL.

^^

the ppl who work at cd trader are really nice. i think it's because they're in such a far-flung location that they don't want to jeopardize having actual customers who come in and buy things (and i've never bought fewer than three cds any time i've gone there).

the freakbeat guys are pleasant but sort of in their little collector-mentality protective bubble.

Record Surplus is alive and well, but it moved to Santa Monica blvd. Havent been there in years tho =\

http://www.recordsurplusla.com/

Atomic Records in Burbank is pretty great. Everything is priced pretty fairly and they have a sometimes killer $.50 bin.

there's a tiny store called mono records on glendale blvd just south of the 2. if you're coming off the 2, it's on your right. you can almost blink and miss it. pretty decent selection.

there's also a new record store on hillhurst in los feliz right next to lucifer's pizza, i think it's called high fidelity? not bad.

there's a new place in atwater village called jackknife records. i can't tell if they're really overpriced or if the records are rare pressings? i suspect a little of both.

cd trader has some epic vinyl deals. their new stuff is pretty well-curated and cheaper than anywhere else in town. picked up some fresh roedelius reissues for $15 a pop.

atomic is good. very small store, but easy to spend a lot of time in.

i like canterbury records in pasadena (near the big target). immense classical section -- some good finds w/r/t 20th century/avant stuff.

http://canterburyrecords.com/

fingerprints in long beach moved to a new location and i feel like they doubled their vinyl selection as well. the new place is a *lot* nicer.

Amoeba has a bit of a scare today:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-amoeba-music-20160913-snap-story.html

so strange that they owned the property but sold it.

Not uncommon if the idea was to bank a lot of cash and try and get a long lease instead. Seen it before.

They say they want to stay in Hollywood. Can they find a comparable space?

I don't have any inside info, but I think their chain is suffering. Weren't they reduced to trying to sell marijuana at one of the Bay Area stores...? Did that actually happen?

Amoeba Records’ Pot Club Plan Gets A Second Spin

i moved to San Francisco in 1995 and at that time the Berkeley store was the only Amoeba at the time. so, of course, i fell in love with it. i would take the BART over and go to Mod Lang and then make my way over to Amoeba. i will always love them. the San Francisco store was something when they took over an old bowling alley on height Street.

i paid the rent at the San Francisco store a few times as i got up to about 4000 or so CDs.

Hollywood, even moving back to the Los Angeles area was just too far away.

The lighting in the Berkeley and Hollywood locations is really bad

The SF one is holding steady enough from what I can tell but there was definitely a shift in recent years -- you heard about reduced hours, they'd pay less for used CDs. Typical enough given the industry but still -- also being out in the Haight instead of the Mission has meant it's a little out of the loop now, I figure. But I still go there regularly; they're quite happy to accept what promo CDs I still get and I'm quite happy to accept credit from them. (None of this is LA per the thread but there we are.)

this has nothing to do with Los Angeles but the store in Berkeley:

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Amoeba-Music-Berkeley-gets-license-to-open-9379927.php

After almost a year of plotting and petitioning, Amoeba Music on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley has just been granted permission to open an in-house marijuana dispensary.

Writing on Facebook that the permit was approved on September 20, 2016, local marijuana industry vet Debby Goldsberry said that the managing team at Amoeba Records and the Berkeley Compassionate Care Center group were "so thankful" to receive the necessary permitting to open shop.

The store plans to transform its jazz section into a dispensary called Berkeley Compassionate Care Collective, and give it a separate entrance from the record store. It may take several months for the store to make the changes in accordance with Berkeley's planning department.

The idea behind the change is to pump a little extra money into the store's income to help keep it running. Last year, co-founder Marc Weinstein said Amoeba Berkeley only earned about 50 percent of what it did in 2008, and was forced to cut its staff by more than half. Weinstein believes that adding another business into the mix might just save it.

"[Marijuana is] one of the few products that a brick-and-mortar retailer can get into and consider making a living at," he told Billboard.

There's also the added benefit of the link between an interest in rock 'n' roll and an interest in marijuana, which some believe may help promote music sales.

"[Marijuana] works like a psycho-acoustic enhancer," says Dr. Jörg Fachner, a professor of Music, Health, and the Brain at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. "That means you are more able to absorb, to focus on something, and to have a bit of a broader spectrum. It doesn't change the music; it doesn't change the ear functioning. Obviously it changes the way we perceive ear space in music."

The move follows a business strategy first implemented locally by San Francisco's Amoeba Records, which added a pot dispensary called Green Evaluations above the store in 2014. The revenue that Green Evaluations earns helps to cover half the annual rent payments made by the Upper Haight's landmark record shop.

it does sound like the Amoeba here in L.A. has its eye on a handful of locations in Hollywood and will likely be moving within a year or so. i hope they stick around, generally speaking the other stores in that area are mostly trash. I just read some article about the best record stores in L.A. and they were naming places like Poo-bah and Canterbury and Record Parlour, i mean just the types of places I've walked into after not going for awhile, thinking I should give them a second chance, then walking out having wasted my time.

my recent trips to Chicago and Madison kinda confirmed the scarcity of awesome record shops in other cities as well.

Amoeba (Hollywood) is looking at doing the pot-shop thing, too (in addition to changing locations). I posted an article about it in an Amoeba thread awhile back

i really don't understand the love for canterbury

it has consistently been bad for me every time i've been there

i haven't been to poo-bah in a while

I think the thing is most people don’t know what makes for a good record store. It’s not the fact that they have some records for sale. Most of the record store listicles are completely untrustworthy and were probably written by people who thought VNYL was incredible. But I really do probably have a super high bar to clear. I think there are about half a dozen stores in L.A. that are worth going a bit out of the way to hit up, and half of those are in the Valley.

I guess Canterbury is fine if you want to go buy classical or jazz CDs and you live in Pasadena and don’t want to travel far, but they have hardly any LP stock.

always had good luck at amoeba. vacation vinyl and the permanent records on york blvd are also great imo

Amoeba is my go to

I wouldn’t be able to do the drive to the valley unfortunately

And i was sometimes in pasadena so I’d check canterbury every so often

The Last Bookstore dropped the prices on their vinyl stock, they used to be price gougers down there. It’s still not really very good, it remains a very instagrammable location and extremely overrated.

True

They bought quite a bit of my book collection and paid decent (read: better) money for them than any other store so i sometimes rep for them

Some of their used books are expensive though!

They kind of think they’re the only used book game in town and I have bought a lot of books there (I used to work in that building) but Iliad Books destroys them. I love those curmudgeons and their cats. It’s quite legitimately the best used bookstore I’ve been to anywhere outside of Powell’s and Powell’s only beats them on sheer size.

Book Alley in Pasadena started selling records awhile back and they’re not too bad with the prices but the selection is like that of a very impressive thrift store.

Has anybody been to Record Collector on Melrose?

i went here several years ago, seemed really good for jazz? owner is typical lovely old vinyl curmudgeon

It's a bit out of the way, but Record Jungle in Montebello is def worth the trip. https://www.instagram.com/recordjungle/?hl=en