I thought I would find some good stuff for fair prices, and certainly lots of my favorite genre, prog. Unfortunately this was not the case. First off, the used LP selection in all of the stores I visited was terrible if not non-existent. Now, that being said, I don't mind new records at a reasonable price...but these records were expensive! There was barely anything worth buying under 25 pounds which is about $30 in the USA where I live. At the first three stores, I bought nothing and was immensely disappointed by their collections as I thought there would be lots of rarer prog records. At Phonica, there was a small used rock and pop section. The best I could find was "Chicago VII" for 8 pounds. It is a double album, and they gave me only one of the LPs...It wasn't even the right album (instead they accidentally slipped in a Vinyl from Chicago VI). After this disappointment, I thought I'd hit one last store, being Fopp records. Fopp has absolutely nothing outside the plastic wrap. That being said I was very pleased by their selection of prog bands and records. I ended up opting to buy 5 great CD's instead of 1 or 2 expensive ass records. My CD pickups were Camel's debut, Mirage, Moonmadness, Cant Buy a Thrill (Steely Dan), and Quadrophenia (The Who), which all came out to about 33 pounds. 

Here's a link to the full haul:

http://https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NEhIlk6Y63H3RKqnHU_FEh19aMcRAMqG/view" rel="nofollow - http://https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NEhIlk6Y63H3RKqnHU_FEh19aMcRAMqG/view

Even though I'm a bit surprised by this turnout, I want to hear from you guys what some of the best record stores are in London, so that I can be more prepared next time. Happy listening!

Been a few times in London over the decades (GF's shopping spree and concerts for me) and I never did find much - especially at decent prices, unless it was on one of those super/megastores like the two HMV on Oxford street (the one towards Marble Arch has been closed for quite a while and I'm not sure the one close to Piccadilly is complete in their offer anymore) or Tower Records (which has closed down as well).

AJ Junior wrote:  My CD pickups were Camel's debut, Mirage, Moonmadness, Cant Buy a Thrill (Steely Dan), and Quadrophenia (The Who), which all came out to about 33 pounds.

That sounds reasonable prices, though I wouldn't have interested in those since I've owned them for decades, though I am looking at buying Quadro in a satisfying edition (like a Mini-Lp cardboard sleeve), but all I can find in B&M stores is the old fatboy jewel case edition - which looks so 90's. .

How was yours?

I have zero interest in going to a physical record store at this point, it's just too frustrating. Used to do that a lot in the 2000s, but times are changing ...

Not surprised. Portland used to have 2 of these, one on Burnside (can't remember the name) and the other also on Burnside, Everyday Records. Everyday is gone. The other one I have not driven by to find out, but likely not there, but it was big on CD's and a lot of music, and once in a while you could find something worth while there. Everyday, was a hit and miss thing. Had a huge rock and jazz sections totally separate, but the jazz section died down quickly and the last time I went there, the jazz section was a row in the back of the store. And in the rock section new and old was mixed together, with the LP section now as big as your hand.

In the 70's, specially in the early days of Space Pirate Radio, it was Moby Disk (then in Van Nuys), The Tower on Sunset, and on occasion the Warehouse in Westwood, which had a lot of classical, soundtracks and jazz, and you could find a lot of neat things there, but they were not exactly an "import" store at that time that I can remember. Moby Disk, was, consistently the best of these, and it kept up with the new stuff really well. The Tower was bizarre ... it had a couple of things there, but you could get the "import" version of almost all the big names in England ... for a good reason, ALL OF THEM were better sounding than the American versions that were COPIES of the original, for a long time. If you bought the "import" you got what you hear on many of the remasters, which tells you that the American releases were designed to make big money and the record companies did not care about anything else ... even the White Album was better and cleaner as an import, and it helped understand what Revolution #9 was, you could hear the walking, whereas in the American album it was all muddled up and to make sense of it was ridiculous. 

When I came north, there was a Tower in Portland, and it started cutting down the imports in 1999, and I told them ... you're store will be dead in a year or two, and it was! They went for the top ten, and you have to be stupid to compete with the big name stores that also had the top ten, a dollar cheaper! They didn't know the difference, I guess, but NY owners were known to be so greedy, they thought less sales with a higher price would average out, and in a low level area it didn't make it ... and the store died. Saw the Tower in Seattle and it was garbage and left overs ... I asked if there were any stores that did imports (1999/2000) and two guys in the stores not only didn't know, they didn't care and one of them made a stupid comment about some of the things in the "imports" ... and I took offense ... it was about Tangerine Dream of all things! Most of it, at that time, was still an import, and their store did not even have the USA release of the albums from the 90's.

I stopped buying stuff, and traded out many LP's (over 1500 of them for the corresponding CD) and started cutting down the heavy weight of it all.

In the past 10 years, it has been mostly the used purchase of CD's which are much cheaper, and still provide the color and beauty and finally in the last 6 months, my bank stopped having issues with Bandcamp and I was able to purchase a couple of things ... I have no issues with digital, except that I find the quality, that is supposed to be excellent, is actually very low, and sometimes muddy as hell!

Record stores, these days, are a joke, and just one acquired taste, that will die in the next 5 years. It looks like some folks are trying to improve it, but in the end, only one LP is not enough ... I can't remember a single music store visit that I only got one album. 

Best experience? Rasputin's in Berkeley, which used to have the classical store a couple of blocks south with just as many LP's ... I can not say what it looks like today if at all. But it was so huge when I went in at that store on Telegraph, that I got a headache, and now ... you are at the mercy of the  used bin  gods ... you might find something or other. I did find some neat stuff ... Streetwalkers Live ... a solo album by Chappo (Hyenas ... great album!!!) ... and one or two other things that I can not remember right now ... but it was difficult and more luck finding anything ... I went through the "regular" bands, and did not find anything, and I was hoping to find some German stuff, but nothing came up.

But all in all, many of these only highlight how valuable and important Guy Guden's show was on the local rinse and repeat FM station. He found so many new things and played them straight out, and the rest of the folks had no taste whatsoever, which meant they only stuck to the songs marked on the records as hits to play, so they did not have to listen to it. But Guy's impression was maliciously and ridiculously ignored, when the folks at the station went on to play many things ... and Guy should have received a Golden Disk for Golden Earring, Gentle Giant, Supertramp, Average White Band (for which he made an insanely fabulous commercial for the record!!!), Hawkwind, Roxy Music, Man, Nektar ... and many others ... to this day, Guy continues and you can tell by the number of artists that say hello and do a promo, that many of them appreciate what he has done for a long time, and continues to do so ... something a record store, or bandcamp (or equivalent) could never do, and never will!

The past couple years the trend has been much opposite of this.......Almost anything physical in media has been on the rise, heck even books have seen an increase away from ebooks. More of the population wants to see, feel, hold what they are spending their money on rather than paying for space on a HDD.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/26/24112369/riaa-2023-music-revenue-streaming-vinyl-cds-physical-media" rel="nofollow - https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/26/24112369/riaa-2023-music-revenue-streaming-vinyl-cds-physical-media

Your better off looking On Discogs for that 70s prog record.......many of the sellers are brick and morter stores but at least you don't have to drive all over the country visiting stores to find what you want.

Back in 2015 we were in Barcelona and I found a few record stores and bought some decent records as well a couple prog records, exchange rate was good back then so I got some deals, and the store owner shipped them to my abode in 'Merica for free too....such a deal. 

This is great to hear! I was actually born in LA, so I have some opinions on the current record stores there. Unfortunately Tower Records has long been eradicated, but there is one saving grace in LA...If you are ever in Tarzana, there is a store called "CD Trader" on Ventura Blvd, and it has the best progressive rock collection I have ever seen. In one trip I picked up every ELP record through Brain Salad Surgery, Nursery Cryme, Tresspass, and Thick as a Brick all for $60!!! 

Funnily enough, I have actually had the privilege of going to Rasputin records as well in Berkley, as my dad went to college there. We were up on vacation in San Francisco, and we stopped by. I was really young, but I just remember the sheer size of the building and them having all the records I came for. Amoeba records is also really awesome, and I got pretty much my entire Beatles collection from the one in Berkley as well as LA.

These days I reside in San Diego, and I have yet to find one record store near where I live. It's a massive hippie town near the coast with a passion for live music and events (heck, we've had some pretty rare RPI bands play here before), but I still can't find anything within 10 miles. As unfortunate as it is, I guess it is a fair trade off because our local music venue (The Belly Up) is a hot spot for great bands.  

As much as I love streaming, there's nothing quite like spinning a vinyl 

You do you! I am focusing on the music itself, while appreciating nice cover art that complements/augments it.

EDIT: Since I'm receiving attacks left right and center, let me clarify that "were invented" is not a good way to put it. Of course vinyl records were "invented" as a way to record music onto a physical medium (as a successor to shellac discs). It would be more appropriate to say that they were used heavily as a way to market and promote music. 

Hi,

Your comment is very sad, and in my book not quite respectful to the history of the art form.

In the 1960's there were no DOWNLOADS, and that didn't start until the 1990's with Napster and the like. Thus the ability to get ANY MUSIC was not via any other method that you consider a marketing device, is a gross statement about how music was first distributed to the public 100 years ago. 

For all your intelligence and whatnot about everything in this world, not having a clue about the history of things is pathetic. The nature of the "albums" did not become a "marketing device" until the late 60's when it was obvious that in America it was all about the commerce, and not exactly the art ... in Europe, a lot of the "art" survived much better, what with "progressive" and "krautrock" able to make a home for themselves ... artistically, which also included many covers.

But the commerciality of the arts, started 100 years ago, in a manner that we can relate to, since before then it was just a playground for the rich and the richest and the courts that flaunted their "intelligence" with the arts in Europe.

When you start appreciating the art form beyond your numbers, let us all know! 

I appreciate music at least as much as you. Probably more, since my primary focus is music, whereas yours seems to be movies and a thousand other things you talk about more than the music itself. Cheers! 

https://awesomeprog.com/chart?years=2023&prog=prog&types=lp%2Cep&listStyle=only-covers-xs" rel="nofollow - https://awesomeprog.com/chart?years=2023&prog=prog&types=lp%2Cep&listStyle=only-covers-xs

But moving closer to the topic of this thread again, when we purchase music in digital form we do get the cover art as well. All that's missing is the plastic disc and/or the paper booklet (we get it as PDF instead and can look at it on a big TV screen if we want to). Sure, some people can't enjoy it that way and feel like they need something they can touch. But regardless, the essence of the work of art, be it the music, the cover or the booklet, is not in the medium.

But what is clear in your post is that your not seeing the artistic value of what the cover art conveys as part of the music as well the hours that bands put in to create a complimentary part of the actual music.

I am sure that most if not all music lovers would frown upon albums that came in album sleeves with no artwork, no liner notes nor anything else as you mentioned.....That would be boring.

It is marketing, but in a way that gives the people a small view into what they can expect when they open up the package and play the music, it provides a canvas to help you dive deeper into what the band/artist was thinking when they created the music in the first place.

I ask you to simply stare at the PA banner on the home page, and describe what you see in all that artwork that has been created, it would be extremely sad if all that did not exist due to your kind of thinking.....sad.

Don't need to your post was clear enough....You can go edit it if you like.

If the internet disappears today, I can still play all my music without any interruption as well look at all the glorious brilliant artwork that was created for all my albums.......

But of course this is all hypothetical, and the internet isn't likely to disappear any time soon ...

You'd actually be surprised by some of the progressive selections in the right stores these days. I mentioned earlier in this thread, but CD Trader and other various stores in LA are very impressive considering their pricing. Outside the US and London, the only other record stores I have been to were in Canada, which were VERY strong. I went to Beatnik records, and also a small record stand in Quebec city. These are the records I left with:

Steve Hackett- Defector

Triumvirat- Spartacus

Genesis- Spot the Pigeon EP

ELP- ELP

Yes- Drama

Canadian dollars are also a lot cheaper than USD so I got all of this for under $60. 

Hi,

I imagine that there is a lot more these days than before. Before it was concentrated much better, like Moby Disk was the place to go in the LA area, and so on. Today, with the international marketing and Bandcamp, things are different and the availability of music is much wider and you really do not have to take a trip to go get it.

The only thing that is tough, is that many of these are really slow in showing online what they have for sale, and perhaps that specifies to you and I that these things move so fast, that by the time someone lists it on the net, boom ... it's gone!

But I miss the places like Rasputin's ... it was far out and special, and something that not many of us has experienced, almost like Mike's listing of everything under the sun, and you have no idea where to start ... though I dislike the fact that too many of those things are nearly the same, and have the same sounds and features. At least, when I walked into Rasputin's, I knew immediately, thousands of different things and thousands of different genres, and while a bit much, it was still exciting to find things you loved in the middle of the ocean of cardboard and vinyl. You don't even come close to that feeling these days, and finding new stuff, completely unknown to you or anyone, is more of a joke than otherwise for folks that only talk numbers!

I guess you're fairly young or just now delving into prog , given what you're looking for or finding. It seems to me that this is the ABC of 70's prog in the OP or this last post. 

whether those were CD or vinyls, I'd never fork out 60.00 whatever of any money that much for such second-hand albums. None of these albums are rare either to fetch "prices".

I do think that vendors have accumulated dozens of copies of the same albums over the years for ridiculous prices, but avoid displaying them in their bins at the same time to keep prices up

As soon as you've left the store, the owner pulled other copies of those albums from their basement or cellar shelves to replace the ones you've left with.

?

Although I'm pretty young, I'm an old head at hear when it comes to a lot of the music I like. I've been into Prog as my favorite genre for over 3 years at this point, and although I bought a lot of "ABC" records, that's only because my main vinyl collection up to that point didn't contain much classic prog at all (aside from pretty much every classic Genesis album). As for the prices, it was more like 45 CAD for the records (not CDs) listed above (plus one other non-prog record) which translate closer to 38 USD, which is a great deal whether you are buying in store or online. Though I do love my classics, I also definitely look for the more obscure rarities as well. In the prog community, bands like Triumvirat, Eloy, and UK (just to name a few) are cult classics but its very difficult to find their records in store near where I live. As much as I would love to order online shipping prices sometimes get expensive. 

I really don't want to get in the middle of this argument, but I would like to point out something. You don't need the Internet to play a music file you've already downloaded. That's the point of downloading. Sure, the device you're playing from can break, but so can a record- or CD-player. And discs can get scratched or broken as well. And files can get corrupted, etc. So the longevity of one medium over another is pretty superfluous to this discussion. If you're talking about streaming, that's a different story.

I am relying heavily on streaming services as well. My strategy, since I'm listening to a lot of new music, is to mostly use streaming services for first listens, and also repeated listens if I like a release. Then each month I will purchase some of my favorite releases. So if the internet broke down tomorrow, I would lose access to 90% of all the music I've ever listened to, but I'll still have the remaining 10% that I like best (about 1500 releases at the moment).

Ok, thanks for the precisions. I understand better your plight after a London trip, now. 

Exactly.......and you can't roll a doobie on a flat screen hanging on the wall.....duh!!! 

I have three used record shops near me in northwest Indiana....all within a 30min car drive ....two are literally 1 mile from my house. The one I frequent in my local town has over several thousand used pieces of vinyl including classic rock, prog rock, jazz, and fusion ...etc.....and he buys collections so there is always new stuff monthly.

I guess I'm lucky but most US cities and urban towns have record shops. I'm heading to Indianapolis this weekend so I hope to visit several shops there also.

I envy you! Often times you'll find the best gems where you least expect it. I haven't been able to find much of anything (as I previously mentioned), thus I rely on my bi-weekly trips to LA to get most of my vinyl. I'm actually lucky enough to be heading up tomorrow and I will definitely go get some vinyl pickups and inform this thread. 

Right. I act similarly. I was just puzzled by Catcher's logic in the argument since it seemed the point about the Internet disappearing was not pertinent to the discussion for the above-stated reasons. You can argue over the quality of the media or the presence of a physical cover/artwork all you want. But you can play music through any of those media types without the Internet once purchased.

Hi,

I have a feeling that the Internet's greatest achievement is helping all artists to distribute their own work, and not have to rely on someone else. We can see it today, in various places showing the music, some for a fee, and hopefully this improves in the future, so that one day soon, we will have a top band, that made it through the services, instead of a record company. 

My hope is that the artist progress to receive much more than he/she does now. But we have to fight the monster that continues to deliver the same mac and cheese with no flavor.

My comment is a general comment about the use of streaming services, which is the main vehicle that most people use these days to listen to music. Back in the day we had something similar and it was called FM radio . All of us back then would sit idly by our stereos and cassette decks and hit RECORD when our fav song came on, again we had to intently listen to music without the luxury of picking what we wanted to hear at the exact time of day we wanted to hear it.

One last thing about album covers....Some here will know what I mean when we as kids and teens walked into a record store and started flipping records and came across an album cover art that literally blew your mind, you gazed at it thinking that is so bitchin' and then you noticed that you had no idea what the music was or the artist....but we bought it anyway because of the cover. I have many of those instances that happened to me, and for the most part the music was enjoyable and I did not waste my money.

For the record (sic), I never really liked radio, precisely because it rarely played music that I was interested in. But I really liked creating mix tapes as a kid from borrowed vinyl records from friends and relatives. I own about 1k CDs and 300ish vinyls. I've also purchased MANY releases as mp3 over the years, mostly in the 2000s when for a while you could get good bargains on Amazon and buy a release for like $5. Nowadays I use streaming a lot simply because I am really interested in hearing new releases, and it would be prohibitively expensive if I had to buy every release I'm listening to. I see a service like Spotify as a marketing device (just like vinyls were/are in the old days) to get people interested in bands. Of course everyone knows that artists do not earn much money through these services, so of course I am still buying music, mostly on Bandcamp or through the artist websites.

If I was a billionaire, of course I would buy all the releases on vinyl and then sit in a comfy chair in my luxury home, in a room dedicated to music, with thousands of vinyls and an expensive sound system - there I would spend the majority of my time handling these magnificent albums, listening to them, contemplating life. But since I'm just a normal working guy with a family to support, I have to settle for a little less luxury. For me, enjoying the cover art on my computer is a reasonable compromise. I get the music (either through streaming or as a download) in really good quality (compared to the radio/mix-tape days), and the cover art as well, and I can still buy my absolute favourite releases as vinyls, and I'm properly supporting the artists because most of my budget goes to them via Bandcamp.

^^^

However, downloads must be done in a real physical (hardware) external drive. If you download on the cloud, and the web goes down, you're about as screwed as a bolt and nut.

I don't trust the cloud for anything. (not even temporary storage, because it will be one day hacked.

Argent- Circus ($5)

Jethro Tull- Thick as a Brick ($8)

Jethro Tull- Aqualung ($8)
The Who- Tommy ($10)

pretty good haul! They also had a lot of more obscure stuff but I opted to get some classic prog instead just to cross off some names on my want list. Notably, I found a first edition "Camel" debut from the UK (although is was $270 ). 

It's funny how you edited your first post that slammed vinyl as an invented marketing tool for music, insinuating that it was nothing else than that.....But yet your putting words into my mouth about this ridiculous "us vs them" picture that I am painting, which I never stated. Whereas you portray a more negative post about vinyl and it's reason for existence.....That's ok. You can look back at other posts I've made about music formats and many times I will state how or on what format you listen to is not important, it's always about the music......Period. 

It seems nobody can discuss your posts without you getting all wound up that someone is picking on you....I have no idea if you are a good prog fan or a bad one, not even sure I know what that means.

Hi,

I'm not sure that folks, today, can relate to the FM Radio experience of 50 years ago, specially in America. (Dave Cousins book take on the BBC attempts at killing it in England!). 

BEFORE the FM Radio stations, most of the music known was on 45's, or singles that were played on the AM stations ... and it took some movies and theater, and film, to blow out the idea ... and rock music followed, and did it better. FM Radio became the IT ... because the music was in STEREO, as opposed to the Mono state of the AM radio ... and this is something that folks here, today, that download and listen, can not relate to ... they can't even imagine the stuff they download in Mono ... and how the quality would probably drive their listening away!

Catcher10 wrote: ... One last thing about album covers....Some here will know what I mean when we as kids and teens walked into a record store and started flipping records and came across an album cover art that literally blew your mind, you gazed at it thinking that is so bitchin' and then you noticed that you had no idea what the music was or the artist....but we bought it anyway because of the cover. I have many of those instances that happened to me, and for the most part the music was enjoyable and I did not waste my money.

I, probably, think more about the covers, since they were advancing the abilities of the art behind a picture. The experiments into creating new things was phenomenal, and sadly, only the HIPGNOSIS books show and explain some of those things, but the sad thing was that the behemoth monsters that own the art scenes in NY, London, and Paris, would not let go of the onions and tomatoes for the kitchen (a la Warhol, of course!!!), for anything new ... and the sad thing? 50 years later a bunch of places have trashed the Roger Dean shows in America ... no appreciation for the art whatsoever, which is a really sad comment about ART and how it is taught in schools, and in some places, art is crap, not important!

To me, the album covers (make sure you get the Album Cover Book that is updated!!!), WERE the modern art, and it was beautiful and had more imagination than most of the art in the places mentioned above ... something that our generation still has not related to, or worked with/on. The big three on art are still showing the worst kind of crap, and not a single Hipgnosis cover. It makes the Hipgnosis special in the last shot with PO really sad, lonely and ... knowing that the appreciation for anything they did, was being wasted ... the worst feeling at the end of one's life! But, they have the pictures to prove the value and one day, it will be appreciated a lot more than it is right now ... downloading is fine ... but no one can relate any of those bands and downloads to an art form ... in fact, there is even no discussion about it whatsoever! Which, to me, takes away the "soul" of the artist ... and the little image that you can barely make out when you download it, is not even hitting you hard, just like you and I experienced.