For the Record
Record stores run the risk of becoming physical media’s skip track. Owners are trying to keep up.
BACKMATTER: When did you get the idea for B Sides?
CATHERINE ARAIMO: When I was an undergrad, I did a summer research program where I created a story map of record stores in New York City that have since closed. It is hard to find photographs and advertisements from that time because they predated the Internet and there are very few relics. But finding those things and creating a narrative is a lot of fun. You can pluck away at the map, and it will show you where these stores were and what is there now.
The film grew into not just the historical part of record stores. It’s about looking at the way they used to exist and the way they do now. I’m looking at how people collect records over time through different generations and the sense of community that does not exist as much anymore. You’re going into record stores not making friends, or you’re not really engaging in the same way. It is looking at record stores as they used to be and record stores as they are now.
BM: How did you select the record stores that you went to? Are they just the ones that you could find?
CA: That’s been challenging, but I knew from my original outline last year that one of the segments I wanted to film was at a record store on Long Island called Moonshot Emporium. I have become friendly with [the owner] a little bit, just from shopping there. The kid who runs it is a freshman in college.
To the young employee who owned the store, it was about having a full collection and being a completist on the hunt for records, where he needed every cover and every issue that ever came out. I think a lot of older people maybe have more of that [collecting] in them than younger people in terms of patterns of how they consume records or buy records.
For me, record collecting has been about my identity and ways to relate to music. That is what I wanted to share in the film. It is a physical representation of myself and ways that I think about myself or want to consume art that speaks to me. I read that [physical media] is almost a photograph in that it is emblematic of a moment in time. Those are really things that I think anyone can speak to, how art and memory and your nostalgia are all related and have the most impact on a personality or an experience.
BM: I feel like you are talking about something very universal. When you get to a point where you love the record so much, not only do you want to purchase it, you want to own the album in the largest format available. When interviewing your subjects for the documentary, you asked, “What do you think a record store does for the community?” I am curious to know how you would answer that question.
CA: Another interview I did for the project was with my uncle’s friend, Alex, who helped me a lot with the original research that I did for the story map. He has a blog that historicizes NYC and places that do not exist anymore, like record stores, museums, music venues, and really interesting cultural spots. He grew up in the eighties and nineties and his experience was that you could go to twelve record stores within a mile in Greenwich Village. And if you did not find what you were looking for, you could go two blocks over and there was another option. That’s not the case at all anymore. For him, it was like an event—to meet up with his friends and hunt for the latest bootleg of whatever eighties punk it was. And, like I was saying before, the record shop clerks got to know him and his friends and could anticipate like, “Oh, I think Alex will really like this. I’ll put this aside for him.”It was just a wider network, and there was a sense of camaraderie where it was just about music for them. And I am guilty of this, too. I already know that I like this Sufjan Stevens album, so I am going to go into the record store and buy it. I do not typically go and pay full price for a record that I am not already familiar with unless it’s by an artist that I really love, and it is their new album, and it is hyped up. I am more of a regular at this record store in Sea Cliff. I go in there, and [the owner] does not care to recommend music for me. That curation, I think, is definitely gone.
BM:I recently learned about the concept of third places; home is your first place, school and/or work is your second place, and then a library, barber shop, salon, friend’s place, or somewhere extracurricular is your third place. We have lost a lot of our third places to the Internet. I was thinking about how record stores provided a space for fans and listeners, but now I really do not know anywhere except for the Internet where I can talk with strangers about music.
CA: I’m trying to schedule a couple of more interviews, and one of the places is in Greenpoint called For the Record. It seems to be more of a coffee shop than a record store, but it is both. I spoke with the owner, and I realized every person I speak with then takes the film in a different direction because they all have different ideas about what it means to collect records.
He did speak a little bit about how, for him, it was not like he had been collecting records for a long time or he was even a super big, passionate music fan. He created this kind of third space where it is a coffee shop, so people congregate. But every Wednesday, he will have a chess night and people can go and buy records. He said, “Sometimes it’s only six of us, and we all know each other really well. And then sometimes it’s much bigger.”