Is the independent record store truly dead? Over 3000 of them have closed shop in America over the past decade, bumped off most brutishly by mp3 technology. The tactile intimacy of walking into a record store, perusing the selections, and plunking down cash seems to have lost its charm for many. A new documentary, I Need That Record!, examines this sweeping purge--and the repercussions both immediate and remote--using found footage and interviews with musicians and retail owners.
The trailer is already up on Youtube, and in addition to ratcheting up my anticipation level several percentage points, it also posits the quintessential artistic absolute: 80% of all your favorite musicians, writers, filmmakers, painters, etc. will be insufferable pricks when removed from the role by which you have come to find them worthy of your time. I mean, isn't Glenn Branca a raging accumulation of smegma when he's not orchestrating thirty guitars to play the same chord for seven minutes? Do not the sounds of the vast ocean spring forth from his gaping yawp? Am I really saying anything that people don't already know here? Hearing him yabber in first the Sonic Youth doc Silver Rockets and Kool Things and now with this quick clip from I Need That Record, I am left with the nagging feeling that Branca is the type genius who interviews himself when alone, then plays back his answers and analyzes everything from his tone of voice to his pauses, and maybe even the content of his words if he still has the time, then redoes the whole thing until it comes out to his satisfaction.
Glenn Branca record stores
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