Closed

The music store closed.

Which was, and was not, a surprise.

Not a surprise, of course, because people don’t buy music at stores these days. They buy it on-line. Of course. Fast, cheap and easy.

A surprise because it was so sudden. The store, part of a minor chain of music stores called ‘Music4Less’ and located in a local ‘shopping village,’ was shuttered unexpectedly and (according to the employees) without warning.

All this was duly reported by the local daily paper, of course. Big news in a little town.

I had actually patronized the store in recent years. I took a break from reading the article to recall what I had purchased there, and why...

“Well...” I said to myself, “There was that Tool album, “10,000 Days,” which, in addition to wonderful music, came along with some captivating and very cool art only if one bought the CD... And there were those Nine Inch Nails CDs that I bought because I wanted copies of certain songs in their original form (NOT the ‘radio edit’ version)...”

That’s right. I wanted to hear the naughty words. Sung loud and proud, not sheepishly ‘bleeped’ out. One can probably get such un-edited tunes in the internet, but I’m not sure where... not at the sites I usually buy from.

Anyway, yeah, the store. It was small, and each time I perused it’s wares I couldn’t help thinking that it needed a good ‘Spring housecleaning,’ and a little creative decor. The CDs themselves were displayed in an un-original, almost sloppy, manner, and each had a large ‘in house’ label affixed to it that almost always obscured info that I wanted to see on the cover of the CD itself.

And there was always a bin of cassette tapes on sale at the front of the store. Remember cassette tapes? They’ve gone the way of dinosaurs. Just like Music Stores.
.