Breaking News: Record Exchange closes Blacksburg location

[electricmonk]

I guess I'm really old school. I miss the Rec Ex when it was on Brambleton across the street from the Coffee Pot. Back then they really went out of their way to stock the store with kick ass punk stuff. A little known fact is that in Roanoke back in the early-mid 80's it was easier to find punk stuff here than it was in city's 2 or 3 times it's size. It was a combination of things that brought that about though.

For one the music fans here really knew what was happening in Chicago or Oxnard or Vancouver because we paid attention to the punk fanzines. Also the people that worked at the stores paid attention to what we were ordering so they ordered more copies of stuff that was popular on the streets. It ended up that releases that only had 200 copies printed Roanoke ended up with 10 prints of it. That's pretty impressive that a city this size would end up with 10-20% of a bands entire press run and we would sell them all. Some of that stuff is selling for 1000 bucks or more now on Ebay now.

[StevenRocks]

I have a friend who grew up in Marion and he was telling me about the active hardcore scene they had there in the early '80s. I wonder what it was about punk that appealed to so many people here?

[weill]

well now it seems that rec. ex. doesnt get out to Roanokes many unknown local artist, or maybe the artist arent reaching out to them.

[StevenRocks]

It's a little of both. The artists aren't reaching out as much, and neither is the store.

[weill]

yeah, makes sense. Im glad they exist though

[StevenRocks]

There will always be a place for recorded music. Not everyone will get on the internet, but there's hardly anyone that doesn't have a audio player of some sort.

[weill]

Is the Rec. Ex. Roanoke-based?

[StevenRocks]

No. They're based in Charlotte.

[weill]

Oh ok, i noticed that they were mostly in NC anyway