Rocky Mount Telegram
Sunday, April 08, 2007
On a recent trip to Georgia, I spent about an hour in the record shop where Michael Stipe met Peter Buck in 1979, beginning a friendship that led to the creation of R.E.M.
That's the kind of name drop that 15 or 20 years ago might have triggered a response along the lines of: "You were at Wuxtry Records in Athens?!"
Today, the more likely reaction would be: "They still have record stores somewhere?!"
Baby boomers left behind plenty of embarrassing artifacts in our long-ago youth – butterfly bowties, AMC Gremlins, plaid everything – but we knew how to celebrate, worship and respect the almighty album.
Record stores weren't just places to spend paper route money. They were practically houses of worship – incense hitting you as you walked through the doors, black-light posters framed like stained-glass windows, the holy soundtrack of our generation on a turntable, always spinning near the cash register.
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