First things first: If you haven’t seen Empire Records then you need to drop whatever you’re doing today and watch that movie. I don’t care if you have a big presentation at work, TPS reports are due, your kid has First Communion practice, whatever, cancel it all. Because Empire Records is one of the most underrated ‘coming-of-age’ movies of the 90’s. Dazed and Confused, American Pie, 10 Things I Hate About You, Clueless, Can’t Hardly Wait, those get all of the headlines. But Empire Records laps them all.
Anyway, in an article that is littered with 90’s nostalgia: The Exclusive Company record store, a chain of stores that I honestly didn’t even know still existed, officially announced a few weeks ago that they are closing their remaining locations. I think I’ve only been in an Exclusive Company store three total times in my life, but the second I heard the name I immediately remembered their radio/TV ads from the 90’s:
‘Say it with me: The Exclusive Company.’ Iconic. The story behind the closing of their remaining locations is a sad one: Their owner, James “Mr. G” Giombetti, passed away. In a statement on their Twitter page, the remaining family members said that Mr. G embodied everything about the stores, he WAS The Exclusive Company, and without him it didn’t feel right to keep the franchise going. He opened the first location in West Bend all the way back in 1956.
It’s honestly amazing that this many stores were still operational and profitable given the way that purchasing music has changed in the last 10-15 years. In it’s heyday, people HAD to buy entire albums, even if that meant you were buying it for 1 or 2 songs. Now you can just purchase those individual songs for $1.29 a piece and download it directly to your device. Or you can pay for a monthly subscription to Spotify or Apple Music and have access to just about every piece of music ever recorded at your finger tips 24/7/365. Vinyl has made a comeback recently, Lindsey and I have bought into it’s renaissance at our house, but still, you would have to imagine it’s been difficult to run multiple record stores in 2022.
Well as someone who fondly remembers buying a CD for $21 a pop in 1995, I hope that the employees at the Greenfield location are successful in their endeavor. If all else fails maybe take the profits from the upcoming Record Store Day, take it to Potawatomi, and double it at the craps table. Just make sure to not roll the dice again after you double it.
PS: Random: Remember when CD’s first started to become mainstream, and for whatever reason we were TERRIFIED of touching the back of the CD? Why was that? From 1982-1991 people carried around CD’s like they were the last remaining copy of the Bill of Rights. And then slowly we cared less and less about it. Live look at the last mixed CD I made in 2005:
