Class Act, Cool Cats

(The Village Vanguad, still the vintage jazz-lover's Mecca it always was. Image from I Blog What I Hear.)

Continuing with my appraisal of those places that weathered Greenwich Village’s transition from low-rent bohemia to swank opulence – all while retaining their charm and distinction – I’d like to point out a tiny but internationally-renowned jazz club on Seventh Avenue near Sheridan Square.

To an unknowing eye, the plain red awning and neon sign outside might not seem worthy of much attention, being situated in an area bloated with must-see hotspots. But down the narrow stairs, in a tight basement space, 75 years of invaluable jazz history have transpired, during which countless giants in American music performed, recorded and debuted for the world.

The Village Vanguard, opened by Max Gordon in 1935, is for many musicians a jazz Mecca, having seen nearly every well-known name in the genre pass through its doors and wail on its cramped, barely elevated stage. (Black and white photographic portraits on the walls depict only a handful of the legends that once called it home.) It gives off that unmistakable Old New York vibe – dim, slight, and understated. A bit worn, but with taste, preserving a mélange of grit, class and intrigue that every jazz club ought to have.

And living up to its bold title, it has stayed inarguably relevant. A surprising number of people can squeeze into the main room to sit at the low tables and chairs, but the Vanguard usually fills up on a nightly basis, even when (or especially when) its stellar house band performs each Monday. Patrons should reserve tickets in advance. Shows generally cost $30, which includes $10 toward a two-drink minimum – not a lousy deal, considering the regular cocktail prices. In keeping with the music’s traditional practices, each night offers two sets from the same act – one at 9 p.m. and one at 11 p.m. – which the artist in question will repeat over a tenure of several days.

When the performance begins, be it a long-established luminary or promising up-and-comer, the room fills with a refreshing wave of silence. Popular music lost something over the past few decades, and it has to do with the how the audience receives the art that it pays for. Attend any medium-profile gig or open mic at a lesser-known venue, and bear witness to the sheer amount of talking that goes on while the musicians play. (Once, while checking out an open jam session at HR-57 in Washington, I suffered through a din so loud that it drowned out everything but the highest notes from a trumpet.)

I don’t want bash appropriate socializing, but certain mediums demand a certain degree of reverence. DJ nights allow for loud conversation. Not jazz. But with an ever-shrinking pool of aficionados and traditionalists, many ignorant (thought well-meaning, I’m sure) listeners treat frequenting a jazz club as they would a noisome wine bar.

This does not happen at the Village Vanguard, and I hope that this aphorism drives home the sort of landmark it is. In that dark, enigmatic room, where I imagine a cloud of thick tobacco smoke once hung over crowds of rapt enthusiasts, one pure factor reigns above all else. Even when I once saw Tony Bennett in the audience, checking out a Bill Charlap concert, the humbled, ordinary schmucks held their tongue until after the show. In the Vanguard, it is about the jazz happening right in the moment. And it is only about that.

Mobtown's Own Private Megastore

Note: College life can trap a student into a narrow geographical location for many weeks on end, so it is with pride that I present my first profile outside of Washington, D.C. More from other cities to come.

(Photo by Mike Unger at About.com. Available at http://baltimore.about.com/od/neighborhoods/ss/FellsWalk_3.htm)

Occupying a large storefront in one of Baltimore’s quaintest and most culturally immersive neighborhoods, The Sound Garden has been a Fells Point independent music bastion for over 15 years. Its name was the first music-related term I heard uttered upon my arrival in the city, and repeated suggestions made it seem inevitable that I would eventually visit this local treasure trove. So while strolling with friends on the cobblestone streets through a light rain, the taste of my first experience with Old Bay seasoning (it treats everything from eggs to crab cakes to chicken wings) lingering in my mouth, we took a detour down Thames Street, and entered the renowned enterprise.

Crowds welcomed us – unexpected sizable crowds of the sort I haven’t seen in music stores since the early aughts. Granted, it was Saturday night. But Virgin and FYE once drew crowds this big, not your esoteric music and video shops. In fact, The Sound Garden resembles the behemoths of the business far more than it does the nook-and-cranny reserves of obscure records that collectors hold dear.

It has an enormous interior – one huge room extends maybe 50 feet back, incorporating a stage for live performances and endless racks filled with CDs, DVDs, Blue-Rays and posters both generic and unique. In the front, to the left of the entrance, one finds a smaller space holding an extensive vinyl collection, among which I found albums of the highest caliber in rock, soul, R&B, hip-hop, psychedelic and folk. Their cost was the only setback – with a disappointingly miniscule used section, prices generally fell between $15 and $20. I haven’t paid that much for vinyl since I naively shopped in the megastores.

It matters little, though, because the Sound Garden doesn’t specialize in old-fashioned records. Uncharacteristically CD-based, this small business seems to support itself with an endless cache of the shiny discs. Many music stores that embraced CDs, including the most towering giants, could not survive into the Internet age (see a previous post discussing the issue here). Baltimore’s premier shop, however, with DVDs wholly lining an immense wall, and jewel cases arranged into entire archipelagos of shelves, soldiers on magnificently.

What’s responsible for its longevity? The CDs remain pricy – $8-$14, something I wouldn’t pay for an album with so many available alternative means of getting it. A few $1 bins up front and a decent deal on movies (two for $10) couldn’t possibly bear the continued success on their own.

No, the distinguishing factor here is content. Though the megastores boasted comparably vast CD collections, they also maintained mainstream pop sensibilities. They never took risks with arcane titles. One could conceivably scan the racks and name every artist listed on the narrow paper strips jutting above the cases. Such an unremarkable approach would fail to attract the favor of serious music fans, those customers who will provide much of the business.

But The Sound Garden could ensnare the snootiest hipster, the obsessive collector, or the cynical Gen-X pop culture nerd with the breadth of its offerings. Sure, The Beatles have a huge section allotted to them, but so do the indie bands that only a handful have heard about. Jazz, folk and country lovers have more options here than anywhere else. Completists could actually complete their many discography quests here.

What The Sound Garden has done is eliminate discriminatory stocking practices. The staff will put, it seems, literally anything on their shelves, refusing few based on popularity or standings in the charts. Employees who drink Jim Beam from the bottle while behind the counter and in full view of customers, as several did during my visit, probably don’t care much for mainline pretenses. If an album sounds good – if at least one person will listen – it’ll take its place somewhere on the racks. And the clientele, more diverse than lesser establishments would imagine, is thankful for that, and will express its gratitude with support.

The Record, the Biz and the District

(Som Records' interior. Image from somrecordsdc.com)

Before you bemoan the oft-heralded demise of music retailers in the internet age, take a walk along the 2300 block of 18th Street NW in Adam’s Morgan until you hear gritty rock and roll playing outside a storefront.
Turn and look up. Manikin legs clad in brightly-colored stockings dangle over a ledge beside a neon sign belonging to Smash, a music and lifestyle store that’s also a wildly successful District staple.
Look down. Crooked Beat Records, specializing in vinyl, sits in a lower adjacent space and fares just as well. Down 18th street, before the incline, Red Onion Records and Books, yet another steady music distribution business, stands tucked next to a drycleaner. Further south, DJ Hut and Melody Record Shop serve Dupont Circle. Over on 14th Street, Som Records stocks only vinyl LPs and faces no serious financial trouble to speak of.
So is this city some sort of anomaly, housing a formidable number of successful music enterprises at a time when others around the country are closing in droves?
It might have something to do with what products the District stores choose to emphasize.
“It’s an accepted theory that the CD industry will not survive,” says Red Onion owner Josh Harkavy, explaining that what sets thriving independent businesses like his apart from failing chains like Virgin and Tower is the small places’ focus on vinyl. He argues that the business model embraced by mega-stores, being CD-based, precipitated their own doom. In the meantime, he adds, vinyl “isn’t going anywhere.”
Matt Goyner, a Crooked Beat cashier with noticeably highlighted hair that seems to explode in a mushroom cloud above his head, agrees. CDs, he says, are more disposable and not as “aesthetically pleasing.” While he admits that LPs will never again achieve the popularity they enjoyed in their heyday, he has noticed an increased interest in the medium that Crooked Beat relies on – though its stock includes all sorts of music products, revenue comes primarily from vinyl. (A seemingly antiquated sign in the window reads, “We sell turntables!”)
“They [LPs] are probably hipper these days,” Goyner says.
National statistics appear to back up these assertions. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, the organization behind the manufacture and distribution of 85 percent of the country’s recorded music, LPs are the only physical sources of music that saw a spike in sales last year. It was a considerable jump – 147.7 percent. Digital sales, by comparison, were up only 16.5 percent. CD sales fell 26.6 percent, and revenue from music videos and DVDs was cut down by more than half from 2007 to 2008.
Total sales for all physical music are down about as much as those of CDs, accounting for the horror stories usually associated with running a modern music business. But for longtime District establishments that never embraced the shiny round phenomena of the 90s, times aren’t so harrowing.
“We’re up and down, but we’re alright,” says Alec Budd, a part-time cashier working sometimes at Smash, sometimes at Som Records, with mutton chops that extend at least and inch and a half from his cheeks. Som deals exclusively with vinyl – large dark LPs decorate its interior like wallpaper – and Budd says that the store puts new products on the stands every week. Like Goyner, he finds the vinyl aesthetic of a higher quality than their smaller, silvery counterparts, citing the superior sound and packaging.
“CDs,” he says, “didn’t even last a generation.”
Over at Red Onion, Harkavy says that in addition to being a better product, vinyl enjoys popularity because it represents a “backlash against the digitalization of music…a return to something real” – something a music fan can hold in his or her hands, a visible piece of culture to add to a collection.
In fact, collectors are the reason independent record stores continue to survive into the twenty-first century. Goyner explains that all the stores in the area “are targeting niche markets” – vinyl collectors, almost without exception – to establish themselves as “destination shops” for the subculture.
Budd expands on this idea, saying that the availability of multiple record stores within walking distance from one another has secured the city’s Northwest quadrant as a place where collectors want to be – music enthusiasts from the suburbs can drive in and make an event out of expanding their collections.
Budd concedes that sometimes changing media can bring about a low period – claiming to have worked in District record shops since the mid-90s, he can recollect a handful popular local stores no longer in existence – Phantasmagoria, Orpheus and Vinyl, Inc. are among the many. Although they tanked, the community they served – the same one now frequenting Som, Red Onion, et al. – stuck around.
“I sure spent a lot of money there,” says Budd.
A report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the recording industry in 72 countries, shows that digital music now makes up 20 percent of the music market worldwide. The U.S. is responsible for half that market, but the most pernicious menace to retailers seems to be music downloaded illegally – 40 billion files around the world were obtained without payment in 2008 alone. For every five albums purchased, 95 are pirated.
But these startling numbers don’t phase local record shops. They are fully aware of the juggernaut that online downloading and person-to-person (P2P) file sharing has become. It bears little consequences on their intended clientele.
“No one will buy a CD for $10-$15 when they can download it [the album] for free,” says Harvaky, but “vinyl never went anywhere.” The collectors he caters to don’t want intangible albums. They want real products for their stashes at home.
The District’s music community also does what it can to keep its record stores – and in some cases, its lifeblood – open and bustling. Local bands play occasional in-store performances at Crooked Beat and Som, and the publicity they offer is rewarding in turn – all the stores mentioned here stock albums from local acts, opening the bands up to a market they need. The retailers do what they can to embrace the community, hoping to maintain their images as hallmarks.
“We’re going to keep going with what we are doing,” says Goyner as another two young, bearded customers descend the steps to enter Crooked Beat. “People aren’t going to stop listening to music, and they probably won’t stop buying it.”