That's good to hear! I failed to mention that our store manager used to sit in the back and watch us all on monitors. She hated "leaning". If she saw anyone leaning, she'd come out and chew them out.

I was friendly with the manager, and actually worked. Nobody worked, except the inventory drones, and they didn't associate with anyone. I think this contributed to my lack of popularity.

I did shop there prior to my job, and liked the store. I remember buying a 3DO system, and a bunch of games.

Why?

I was out of my freaking mind. I also had a Turbografx!

The mall I lived near had a Sam Goody's and a Musicland, always thought that was kind of weird.

As a kid, I'd go into the Musicland more often as they had more cassettes and I'd hum them a song or describe a music video and they'd point me to it. Got Bjork's Human Behavior and two-fer Genesis tape that way.

Camelot was the only game in town where I grew up in Alabama.

We were lucky in the Boston area, because aside from all the great one off indie stores, we had/have Newbury Comics and actually Strawberries was a pretty decent chain that had reasonable prices compared to TWE/Record Town stores.

I remember the Wall opened two stores (Burlington Mall and Fanuel Hall) and neither lasted very long.

I did browse in those stores a lot in malls, but I very rarely bought anything.

Never went to the chain/mall stores. Bought all my music at the head shops. Curiosity Shop, Seventh Heaven, Tiger's Records, Second Coming, etc.

I can't remember if I shopped at Musicland.

But when Camelot music was mentioned, I had a flashback of when I lived in Pensacola, FL in the mid-late 70's. There was a rock radio station that would play entire albums during their release week. At Camelot, they had a special rack with that weeks albums. Made them easy to find. It was the first time I heard Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and bought it the next day at Camelot. I thought it was a pretty spiffy set-up.

Camelot was the best mall store. They had a lot of obscure music and imports that you wouldn't expect to find at such a store, and they also carried laserdiscs. Their cut-outs were the best too- Got lots of CDs averaging $2 each, and laserdiscs from $3-15 (they normally sold for $35 an up, so these were insane deals.) I was sad when FYE took them over and eventually closed the store near me.

Count me as another one who went to Camelot. We had a Musicland at our mall. I would go to it on occasion, but Camelot had a lot more of the music I was looking for. This was in the early to mid-'90s. Camelot had a much better selection of alternative and obscure bands. Their staff was fairly knowledgeable, too. I got some good recommendations from them, although I never looked at this one guy the same after he told me Momentary Lapse of Reason was one of his favorite Pink Floyd albums. I also got plenty of freebies with the punch card Camelot offered. I made many special orders there as well. Hard to believe it used to take weeks to be able to get something if you couldn't find it in store. It took weeks, and we liked it because we felt lucky to even get it! Aside from Camelot and Musicland, the only other options I had in town were big box places like Wal-Mart.

I grew up in Socal and was big into CD's from 1990 to 2000. We had every chain mentioned here except for FYE which is apparently an east coast thing or something, I've never seen an FYE.

Anyway, we had a Musicland at one mall and a Sam Goodey (and a Suncoast) at another mall. While they were never my primary source for CD's (or DVD's) I can remember a few frustrating situations where nobody had what I was looking for on release day except for Sam Goodey. I can remember driving from store to store (Tower Records, Virgin Megastore, Blockbuster Music, Wherehouse) and none of them had Peter Gabriel Secret World Live on release day. Sam Goodey had it and I'm sure it was a rediculous price too Probably $28.99 since it was a double album.

Suncoast was a rip off, but at the one by me you could tell someone who ran the place knew what they were doing. That was the only place that stocked letterboxed VHS during the few years before DVD came on the scene. I bought the letterbox "faces" Star Wars trilogy there and it was the only place I ever saw it on a store shelf.

In 1998 when Criterion released Time Bandits on DVD the Suncoast at Fashion Island in Newport Beach was the only B&M store in the entire LA/OC area that had a copy on street date. I called every record store, not even Tower Video on Sunset had a copy.

According to their website, there are 23 of them in California now.

They're drying up out here but they are in California. All the ones here closed. They weren't really prevalent until after you stopped buying CDs. Only in the past decade did they pop up after all the Musicland restructuring.

Whenever I looked through the overpriced selection at Musicland, I'd usually get someone there asking "Are you finding everything OK?" I usually responded "Yeah, just looking" but had always wanted to say "Actually, I'm finding everything very fucking expensive!"

Yes kids there was a time when you could buy bongs, coke scales, coke mirrors, pipes of all shapes and sizes, coke vials etc in the frigging mall!!!

We had the Scorpio Shoppe and Licorice Pizza

"For tobacco products"

And Rolling Stone was an underground magazine only available at head shops. You'd find it right next to the undrground comix like Zap!, Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Wonder Warthog. The shops that sold Rolling Stone had a shingle hanging outside the door that read "Rolling Stone sold here".

I actually remember Musicland a little bit. We had one in our mall for a while and it later became a Sam Goody. I used to like going there but more or less for looking around. I didn't buy a ton of stuff from there though since the prices were always a bit spendy. I remember they had a bunch of Star Trek VHS tapes and I bought a few of them from there. I'd love to have a store like that around again though the only places I can go for music and movies now are Walmart and Target pretty much.

My favorite record stores were Turtles Records & Tapes and OZ Records.

Turtles had great prices and frequent store wide sales and an excellent selection of Punk and Metal imports. Saving stamps too.



OZ had a great section of .99 cent used vinyl in the late 70's/early to mid 80's.

I was assistant manager for one back when I was in school.

And yeah, I was surprised how many people paid so much for everything.

All these mall stores were for rank amateurs. Here's a video I found on Youtube of the record store I used to blow all of my money at, right about the time I would have been a regular (starts at 2:30)
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XODc8iJs-lo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Jesus that brought me back. They had a downstairs with more stuff as well.

When I worked at Record Town, I considered every customer an idiot... because the Best Buy halfway down the hallway sold everything $7 less yet they were forking their money over to me.

I would have been SO happy if there was a Best Buy in my town. For those who didn't have a place like that, places like Camelot and Musicland were about the only recourse if places like Wal-Mart didn't have what you wanted. I trip out on how accessible everything is today. I frequently say that kids growing up in small towns today have no idea how good they have it. Between Netflix, YouTube and all the streaming/downloadable music sites, they have access to pretty much anything, and they can even have it delivered to their doorstep within a few days. I remember really having to work to find a lot of the stuff I wanted. I remember a lot of waiting for packages from orders that would take 6-8 weeks to come in. I remember flipping through the big Camelot Music catalog for that obscure title I needed. But I guess all that has made me that much more appreciative for that.

When I was growing up, places like Musicland and Record Town were often the only game around - there were no Best Buys or Wal-mart in our area, yet. Believe it or not, these were seen as the real music stores back then (the 70's and 80's), and they were the hip places to go - especially if your only other option was the record department at the local K-mart, Woolworths or Sears.

The only "local" places were in the city and too far away, and often small with not a lot of stock. Even when you could get there, they were no cheaper than the chains. Sometimes, they were even more expensive.

Of course that all completely flip-flopped over the years. The local indie stores realized they had to do something to compete with the chains, and started offering up things the chains didn't carry - while the chains just rested on their laurels for too damn long. Then the big boxes came in, forever changing pricing by making music sales a loss leader. Eventually, the internet and downloading came along, and just killed it all for most brick and mortar parties. Kids today really don't know what they missed out on.

We had a Music Land("give the gift of music")at the Blue Ridge Mall.
I remember everything costing too damn much.
In all my years of going there (early 80s to mid 90s or so),I only ever made 2 purchases;
Gary Numan-Telekon LP(this was a cut out)
Howie Mandel-Fits Like A Glove cassette(I think I paid the ridiculous amount of 11 bucks.I must have wanted it really bad)