Back in 1988, with a handful of bills gathered from the weekly chores, cleaning the house, mowing the lawn, taking out the trash (yes, this already sounds like one of those stories your grandfather told you about having to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow!), my friends and I would hop on the BART in Hayward, after a few bus connections from Livermore, and we’d make our way either to Telegraph Ave in Berkeley or Haight Street in SF to buy new records and compete for the best unique audio score.

When we got to the record stores (Rough Trade, Rasputin’s), I remember wanting to taste it all. Hoping I was making the right exploratory decisions as I stood for long minutes gazing at each album cover –trying to translate the artwork and pictures into what the band, I hoped, would sound like. It was a gamble. Sometimes you found gems and sometimes not –but at 10-15 bucks a pop, as a 16yr old with limited budget, that was a heavy addiction to carry.

Hours were spent on our feet, digging through bins (punk, gothic, indie, new wave), walking up and down the streets, searching each store for the complete discography of our favorite artist, (rare singles, picture discs, memorabilia) and hopefully as affordable, in good condition, used copies. Typically quenching our hunger with a Coke and some Fat Slice Pizza.

The whole BART/bus ride home, we couldn’t wait to hear what we had picked up. Just staring at the album covers for whole the journey in anticipation, thinking to ourselves, “I hope this is the best fucking music of my soul ever!”

Sometimes there were winners and sometimes sheer disappointment; “Really, but they looked so cool!” Later we would trade or sell to each other what we didn’t like. I would always sell my Hard Core music purchases to Mike S., cause I was still testing out if I wanted that to be my style of music.  

If your friend wanted a copy of your album, typically you’d let them borrow it so that they could record it onto cassette tape. People who were valuable at that time, were the ones with the best stereo equipment, which had to contain a high quality record-player and dual-cassette recorder with high-speed dubbing and auto-reverse. Many hours were spent watching the wheels of these tape machines go by so that a song wouldn’t get cut in half at the end of a tape side – super important!

Note to self: Do not mess up your relationship with the people with the stereo equipment!

That’s how it was in ’88 for me and my high school homies.
>>>Is the archaic ritual of the new music hunt over?
>>>Does it happen at all? 
>>>What was your process pre-internet for finding the music that was your soul? 
>>>Let’s hear it!  

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Photo Credit: Thanks to fensterbme for the unsolicited use of his Flickr image.