By “And I went down to the sacred store, where I heard the music years before….” as one of the lines reads in Don McLean’s “American Pie.”
To many young people the “sacred store” has to be explained, but to most people who grew up in the 20th century, it was a common place, the neighborhood record store, where people went to hear music, buy music and talk about music. It was part store and part community, where the clerks played the music that their customers liked and where you could translate the experience of what was heard on the radio into what you could bring home and play for your family and friends.
It was where you could find the latest compact disc, but was more the home of the record albums and 45rpm singles, which actually held two songs. And as 33 1/3 was reportedly killed by the compact disc and the compact disc is being run out of the market by digitally downloaded music, the “stacks of wax”, the vinyl records, never really went away.
Beloved by those who felt that the analog recording were warmer and more true than digitally-sampled tracks, they continued to be pressed for audiophiles and bought by anyone who still had a turntable and access to a source of used platters. Just look at the listings for turntables which retail for between 100 dollars and many thousands more and it is evident that someone, somewhere, must be making records, which they are in a number of pressing plants across the United States and overseas.