New York Recordstores

When I visited New York last weekend to escape from this great festivity called Karneval I used one day explore some of Manhattan's and Brooklyn's recordstores. In fact the ones I went to were tips from Andrew Hogge who I annoyed with emails a few weeks before.

The first destination on my list was Academy Records in Manhattan 12 W. 18th St. and being completely honest i didn't spend much time neither money in there. Academy is basically about classical music and even at the risk of coming out as a philistine I have to say that this was not what I was looking for.

My next stop was Academy Lps (415 E. 12 St.)
Just like Academy Records the East Village store is specialised. You predominantly find second hand jazz records next to some rock and pop. The atmosphere in there was kind of oppressing due to missing customers and aggressive instructions that told me how to touch the records which should obviously be funny but reminded me of overblown coolness.

A1 Records (439 E 6TH St) was at 12:30am still closed so that I went on to "Other Music" at 15 E. 4 St. which serves almost every genre and is more commercial than the previous ones. They also sell Cds and the vinyl section is comparatively small. I finally made my way to the cash desk together with Kreidler's faboulos Weekend, Glass Candy's Miss Broadway, a 1 Dollar single that doesn't even have a name and two Justus Köhncke 12". I especially fell in love with his track "Homogen" which gains a lot if you play it on 33rpm.

I now went to Brooklyn to look for so called Dope Jam's (580 Myrtle Ave. Brooklyn). There was no subway station near so that I had to walk half an hour through a droll African-American quarter until i finally stood in front of the recordstores black door. I had to knock and wait till the owners opened. In there it was really dusky and frankincense smell that rapidly made me feel dizzy was in the air.
They carry loads of disco records which are partly second hand and partly re-released, some techno and house. After a long to and fro I decided for Tango-Saty by Klaus Schulze, the melancholic Multi Track Suggestion by Vangelis, Walking On Thin Ice, a Yoko Ono disco-track from 1981, Washing Machine and Got The Bug by Mr. Fingers, Cerrone's Where Are You Now and the long overdue 12" of Pilooski's Re-Edit of Frankie Valli's Beggin.


Klaus Schulze - Tango-Saty

Vangelis - Multi Track Suggestion

Yoko Ono - Walking On Thin Ice


Further Recordstores advised by Hogge are:

Halycon (57 Pearl Street,Brooklyn)
The Thing (1001 Manhattan Ave.,Brooklyn)