
Besides LOCAL*, almost all other delineations of sections in a music store are based on the concept of genres (jazz, blues, country, glow bounce, dream slam, def zef, ya’ll-ternative, rastabilly, etc.) and not geography. Indeed, you could anomalously point out that perfectionistic assholes will say they sometimes get World music sub-divisions like “Brazil” or “Africa” or “Indonesia” (or other countries who have won Grammys in the tribal chanting category), but this is mostly due to the laziness of snivelly-ass record store clerks who think music from the third world tends to be “kind of same-y.”Anyway, the point is: What does “local” really mean? It surely doesn’t mean “This is the section of the store for all artists from the general geographic region within a reasonable radius of where you happen to be standing at this very moment.” You surely won’t find the Stooges in the “local” section of a record store in Ann Arbor or, say, Dylan records intermingling with other Duluth start-up bands. What I have discerned is that your local section in a music store basically means, “This is where we put shitty, amateurish bands who happen to be from this city and who are nice and probably shop at the store, and, so… well, fuck it, we’ll let them bring in a few of their crappy CDs in order to give the store the appearance of being ‘community-oriented’ and ‘supportive of the local scene,’ but, hey, just make sure they don’t take up any prime real estate in the store—preferably put ’em back over there by the unsold Kozik toys.”
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