The first indie music store in Texas was in Austin and it was called "The Inner Sanctum". It was a glorious place where you could find new and exciting music that was unavailable anywhere else in the state. When I was a very young man, I frequently travelled from my small, conservative, rural hometown of La Grange to the relatively larger, very liberal, city of Austin. Back in the late Sixties and early Seventies, the Hippie vibe was strong, outlaw Country music was still in its infancy, armadillos roamed in great herds, and Austin was just beginning to establish itself as a Music Mecca. Psychedelia and High Times prevailed. Grassroots counter-culture politics, environmentalism and freedom of expression were just beginning to sprout. Today, you can buy tee-shirts that proclaim, "KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD". Some of us remember when things first started getting weird.
Before I found "The Inner Sanctum", my record library was limited to whatever Mr. Schroeder would stock in the back of his Pharmacy, or whatever Mr. Adamcik would stock in the back of his appliance store. Mostly easy listening records, like Andy Williams and Perry Como, or Polka records by the mighty Leroy Matocha orchestra or The Vrazels, were my choices. Reading Rolling Stone and other music magazines, I noticed an advertisement for a free record catalog from a company called "Dedicated Fool". I began ordering strange and wondrous gems from the Mothers of Invention and the Velvet Underground. It was revelatory stuff. It prepared me for what I would find inside "The Inner Sanctum". (For more about "The Inner Sanctum", check out www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_Sanctum_Records and for more about "Dedicated Fool" see www.dedicatedfool.com/index.htm.
Time passed and, during my college years at Texas A&M, I spent some time as a record reviewer for the university's student newspaper The Battalion. My main recollection of that experience was when I wrote a particularly scathing review of an album by the group U.F.O. and was bombarded by a ton of hate-mail from irate U.F.O. fans. The other things I remember was all the free albums I got for doing the reviews and the fellow record fanatics I met during my stint as reviewer. One of them told me about a great record store in Houston, Texas, called "Infinite Records" and about the travelling record shows that would come to town annually. The record shows were chock full of interesting new music, bootlegs, and plenty of other stuff I never saw anywhere else, and they helped to expand my musical horizons.
Luckily, my current hometown of San Antonio, Texas, now has an excellent indie record store called "Hogwild Records". They don't have a website, but you can learn about them at www.nationalgrooves.com/hog_wild.html. They remind me of "The Inner Sanctum", although these days the vibe is generally more DEATH METAL and less FLOWER POWER. If you're a collector, Hogwild is the place to go in San Antonio.
These days I am downloading tunes for my iPod and musing about its storage capacity. Just the idea of carrying around so much great music in my pocket is truly amazing, and something I would have craved as a young man. That said, as an old man, I am still glad to see that many mainstream contemporary artists like U2 and Pearl Jam are still releasing their album on vinyl. And those vinyl records can still be found at great record stores like Hogwild Records in my hometown and Amoeba Music on the West Coast. A couple of years ago, my wife and I travelled to Hollywood for one of my scientific conferences. Of course we took the tour bus the Hollywood sign, Mulholland Drive, Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive. Of course we put our hands and feet in the imprints at Grauman's Chinese Theatre and followed the stars down Hollywood Boulevard. But, the trip would not have been complete for me without visiting Amoeba Music
(www.amoeba.com/). It has to be the largest indie record store in the world and, if you are a collector, it is definitely worth the trip.
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