Here in Greenpoint, we’re pretty lucky to have some seriously great record shops around. For this Sunday Snaps, I decided to drop by four of my favorites and ask employees and owners what recent items had come in that they were especially excited about. The shops I visited included Record Grouch (986 Manhattan Ave.), Academy Records Annex (85 Oak St.), Captured Tracks (195 Calyer St.), and Co-op 87 Records (87 Guernsey St.) Here are some of the albums they showed me, complete with a few pictures of these excellent local record stores!
“One side is live and the other side is the studio versions of all the same songs. I love the great Bauhaus-y cover; there’s rhythm, perspective, movement, a landscape. My favorite song on this album is called ‘Rubber Miro’.” – Ron at Academy Records Annex
“This Walker Brothers 7-inch has all the best cuts from their 1978 album ‘Nite Flights’. It’s chic meets very dark disco rock.” – Ron at Academy Records AnnexThis J.F. Baldassare album is a very rare folk psych rock album from the seventies. Captured Tracks currently has it for $250, which is a steal considering most copies I found online right now are priced at over $400.Captured Tracks record shop.The Record Grouch at 986 Manhattan Avenue.“Oliveros was unique figure in the world of contemporary, experimental and modern composition, she had an unusual practice in that she was about deep listening, getting the audience to engage the body, the ear, there were lots of famous performances where people did these chants and everybody created a tone with the people next to you, it was a really active combination of the body and the mind. She was a great teacher too, she had lots of generations of people who studied under her, she wrote and lectured and was a huge figure in the greater New York area. Sadly she recently passed.” – Brian at the Record GrouchCo-op 87 at 87 Guernsey St.Rinder and Lewis were a production duo that made a bunch of disco records, some under the name Rinder and Lewis, this one under the name ‘Discognosis’. They had a bunch of other production projects and it’s really cool, often weird disco stuff. This is a particularly hard to find one. They did a group called El Coco and you see those records all the time. I had never seen this one before though, this was 1977.” -Ben at Co-op 87
About Erik Keithley
Originally from just north of Baltimore, Erik became enchanted with the country-tinged outlaw folk of Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, and Guy Clark while studying journalism in North Carolina. As a direct result, he moved to Austin as soon as he could, where he saw a lot of music, recorded a little of his own, and honed a strong appreciation for brisket, New Orleans, and a generally slower and more inquisitive approach to life. Having just moved to Greenpoint from Austin, Erik aims to explore the mellow charms of his beloved new neighborhood with the same quietly searching eyes.
