Music vet and New Times scribe Lee Zimmerman shares stories of memorable rock 'n' roll encounters that took place in our local environs. This week, trolling for tunes in the days when the record stores reigned.
Publicists these days insist on sending me streams or downloads, and frankly, decent record stores -- make that music stores -- are less and less plentiful around South Florida. There are still some stores of note -- Radio-Active, Sweat, Blue Note, Uncle Sam's and Specs among them -- but the legendary shops like Yesterday & Today, Yardbird, the Magic Minstrel, the Bookworm and CD Solution have been gone more than a decade, and in some cases, several. I remember frequenting those shops on a regular basis, taking time to peruse the new release bins, looking for the coolest trade-ins and simply soaking up the ambiance and chatting with other rabid music enthusiasts like myself. There's not much of a shared experience when listening on ear buds or ordering music from iTunes.