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(people chattering)
(jazz music)
(fire engine honking)
- Other Music was the quintessential place
in New York City for people that appreciated music.
It just was a place where you were able
to kind of search out things that you had never heard of.
- If I was in New York, I would always make sure
that I would be at Other Music
within the first day of being there.
Per square meter, it probably had more interest value
than any other shop that I had ever been in in the world.
- To be stocked on their shelves
meant that a band was in good company.
- What they did was invaluable for people like me.
- Write a great song in a basement,
go play it at that club, next thing you know,
it's gonna be in that store.
- People have awesome experiences at record stores
all over the country,
but Other Music just cracked my head open.
It just was like (imitates explosion booming).
There's a whole world that you have no idea about
and get ready to learn.
(people cheering)
- Do you remember this band?
- Yeah, it had something to do...
- Hi Rob, hi Puloma, what's going on?
- Hey Josh.
(funky quirky music)
- Other Music, this is Josh.
- Azonto? - Azonto.
- It's kind of like fast house tempo but dancehall-y,
but with African sort of rhythms to it.
- Before the internet and before iPhones or any of that,
people trusted other people.
- These were two tracks
that were on a deluxe CD set of greatest hits.
- Yeah, he did vocals on the original track,
the Sam Kerridge one is really good.
- They're kind of like a bit Darkness vein.
I like the Darkness, don't judge me.
- I have a soft spot for the Darkness, I can appreciate.
- Talk about me when I leave.
- The most exciting in the world for me
is to be around people
who have devoted a massive amount of time to something.
Someone listening to you,
and hearing the stuff that you like musically
and then saying, "Do you know this?"
- This is more experimental.
It's a cool record, but it's not his new pop record.
- The place is reverberating.
It's like vibrating because you just... what you can see,
and what you know is there beyond what you can see,
and it's like, whaaat?
(speaking in foreign language)
- I want to buy a lot.
- Okay. - Yes?
- Getting your records
into good record shops is very important.
They're the hubs for music communities.
(speaking in foreign language)
- And also people who just like listening to records all day
deserve to have a job where they can do that.
People who work in record shops are always weirdos.
Weirdos need jobs.
- If anybody sees me and I'm not listening to records,
what I want to be doing is listening to a record.
Even if it's a record
that I don't necessarily like or care about.
I don't like to take records off even if I hate them.
- I still love the smell of records.
- We can't hire anyone over a certain height
because the ceilings just won't allow it.
- This has not changed pretty much
in the 15 years I've worked here.
(upbeat soul music)
(electronic music)
- Coming to New York and just going to shows sometimes,
it wasn't enough.
I wanted to be bombarded constantly,
I wanted to have my ideas challenged.
And I wanted to be fucked with, you know?
- It was a place that I loved to go
whenever I wanted to find something new
or something I didn't know about.
I knew that there would be someone there
who's pretty invested, who had listened to it.
- We tried to have more of this kind of a holistic view
of all these different things happening in music,
in new music.
Even if it was reissues.
It was definitely like trying
to be on top of what's happening now.
- To go find out what was new
and bands in the area and all that stuff,
Other Music was where you had to go.
When there was a whole batch of new stuff on that shelf
with a bunch of new cards that someone had written out,
that was a good sign I was gonna be listening
to something pretty exciting.
- I would never trade the handwritten signs.
It's done from a place of,
"I had to write about this right now
"when I was listening to it because I loved it so much."
It's the first thing people see if the record's new,
so I want to come in with my personal,
passionate endorsement, as soon as possible.
- Maybe this is the best "From NYC, Made in NYC"
hip hop album you'll hear all year.
Solid, thick, and punchy production
with a firm and meaty lyrical style.
- Sammus is Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo.
Her latest EP "Infusion"
explores the screwed-up world of academia,
finding peace through video games, and more.
Afrofuturism vibes that carry us to the year 3000.
- The epitome of DIY, the couple who ran the label
out of their Bristol home upheld more of a punk ethos
than many who claimed that distinction.
- Recorded live at Matik-Matik,
Bogota Colombia's experimental music hub.
Folk, free jazz, tropicalia, spoken word, it's all in there.
- A perfect menage a trois of voice,
sonics, and texture.
Soaring and emotional.
Political and pure.
- If you only ever buy one record ever again,
this would be a fine choice.
- I like curators, you know.
I like people that are gonna comb through it all
and really are passionate enough
to write 100 words on a little card
and make sure it stays stuck to the shelf.
- A lot of the stuff that we feel really special about
or personal about are things
that we have such limited quantities on
that you can't present it to the whole 30,000 people
who are reading our emails
because we might only have 10 copies.
And that handwritten sign is going to turn more people
on just coming off the street.
- Hello. - Hello, there's a box here.
Other Music, it's kind of like a religious experience
a little bit coming here, picking up new sounds.
After a while they get to know your taste
and sometimes I come in here and just say, "Pick them."
- This is the original cover of it,
but I remember there was a reissue on Rhino Records.
I mean not Rhino, Alligator, years ago.
My first job in a record store was,
I was in high school and it was career week.
I loved the record store I used to shop at when I was a kid
and I'd been working a retail job at my Aunt
and Uncle's gift shop since I was 14.
I love retail and I love music, I'm like,
that's the perfect thing.
And so I went up to the record store
and the guy I used to shop at and I said,
"It's career week next week.
"I could work for free, for a week.
"You need some help?
"You know, I'd love to do it."
He was like, "Sure, come on in."
And I've been doing it ever since.
♪ Judy and the Dream of Horses ♪
♪ Dream of Horses ♪
♪ You dream of horses ♪
- Wasn't that beautiful?
That was Belle and Sebastian.
We have some guests with us today.
From Other Music, Chris Vanderloo and Mr. Josh Madell.
The reason we chose that particular album
is that is apparently the biggest selling record
they've ever had in the store.
Is that correct, gentlemen?
- It is, yeah.
That's from our biggest selling album.
We've sold a few thousand copies of that one over the years.
- And it still continues to flow.
Now for people that are not in New York City,
'cause we have to tell everybody,
Other Music is an institution that I buy records from
for the last 20 years and I'm really sad and pissed off
that you guys are leaving.
(droning music)
- Our plan is to close Other Music on June 25th.
I guess we have about six weeks left.
- No, that's the truth, closing on the 25th.
- When we first announced it,
a regular customer told me
"It was the Tweet heard around the world."
- It's sad.
It's like a home for a lot of people.
- So they're definitely gonna close?
Oh, that's really a drag.
Wow, what a drag, fuck.
- The way things are and the way people consume music
is on a certain trajectory
and it does not favor Other Music.
- When's your last day?
It sucks the store is closing.
- The 25th. - The 25th?
- Yeah.
- I've been coming here since I was 11.
- Wow.
- Just wanted you to know, I made a special trip from L.A.
to come by. - Oh really?
- Just 'cause I'm gonna miss you guys.
- Wow.
- You guys should have a therapist here.
- Yeah.
- Every person wants to talk to me for 10 minutes.
They wanna know what I'm gonna do now.
- To me this store is synonymous
with everything that's cool about New York.
Bands were probably formed because of the music
people got exposed to at this store.
I think you can't quantify it.
- Let's go back to the early years.
Where did you guys meet?
- We all met and we all actually worked
at Kim's Underground.
- And what was Kim's Underground?
- Kim's was a video chain.
Pretty much it was always video rentals and sales.
- Mr. Kim was a businessman.
He had a dry cleaners.
Somehow this really crazy New York film buff guy
convinced him, let's do a little video store here.
Everything from experimental film to, you know,
just the history of indie cinema
and they would even bootleg videotapes,
you know if they couldn't find real copies.
The store was very successful.
But I think Mr. Kim just saw it
as an opportunity more than anything
and Kim's had a video store and a record store.
We were in the back of a popular video store.
- At the height of Kim's success,
there were I think four locations?
And I'm pretty sure on the books,
he had about five employees.
And these were stores that were open
from like noon to midnight every day, seven days a week.
So, you can imagine that there were probably
a few more employees than that.
And when Chris moved here and got the job there,
and Mr. Kim was like, "We pay cash", or whatever,
he was like, "No."
He was like, "What if the IRS comes after me?
"I can't be working under-the-table."
- That really just speaks to the difference
between the two of them,
because I remember Josh was working at Kim's
and he was like, "Look at all this money I have."
He just had wads of cash everywhere.
- So then you met this other character, Josh.
- Josh was working there.
When I moved to New York Josh was already working there
and our other partner Jeff Gibson was working there as well.
Jeff and I had always talked about,
we could do this ourselves and do it even better
and with more freedom to buy
what we wanted to buy and carry more things.
I think I just told Kim that I was moving on, you know.
I didn't tell anybody about our plans.
I called him afterwards and told him we were opening.
- He really freaked out Jeff, our partner here.
Jeff was I think genuinely terrified
that Mr. Kim was gonna try to kill us
when we left and started this place.
I don't think Mr. Kim was considering killing us.
- By the time we came to Josh about joining us,
we had already kind of picked the space.
Obviously we wanted to be downtown
with all the other record stores around here.
- It is significant, the actual location.
Astor Place is kind of the village green of that hood.
Downtown New York, above SoHo,
the kind of commercial side of the East Village.
But also if you keep going west,
you're heading into kind of old school '60s bohemia land,
and to your east is Mercury Lounge, isn't very far away.
Brownies wasn't very far away.
It's also NYU, you feel this sense of the energy
of downtown New York City.
- Got a sublease on this place on East 4th Street,
and painted the floor,
put some racks up and just started buying records
and it took off very quickly for us.
- Here it is.
This is the very first sales we ever did, handwritten.
We did $362.98.
- So, what do these guys go and do?
They decide to open a record store across the street
from the biggest record store in New York City
at the time called Tower Records.
An institution!
What madness led you to that location?
- I had a guy come in, he was like,
"So what are you guys selling here?"
And we were like, "We're selling music."
And he's like, "Have you looked out your window?"
- There was a giant Tower Records
literally across the street,
so, you could buy anything that a major label
had to offer at Tower Records across the street.
(indie rock music)
- Hello Tower, hello Tower, hello Tower,
hello Tower, hello Tower, hello Tower,
hello Tower, hello Tower, hello Tower, hello Tower!
- We had a ton of people coming here all the time
saying, "How can you do it? "It seems so crazy."
And it always seemed like they didn't quite get it.
- I always thought of it as kind of like the curated,
cool place across from this massive mega-store.
- I was like, "This is genius."
That's so smart of them.
It was subversive in its geographical location.
And from that day forward,
I never went into Tower Records again.
- It made East 4th in between Broadway and Lafayette,
that little block was a very important music block.
- Music consumers and music lovers from all over the world,
Tower was a magnet for them.
And we just happened to be across the street,
so they came to us too.
- Jeff came up with the name
and he said that that was how he always would describe
what he was into to his parents' friends.
"I listen to other music, something else."
There's a sense that underground music
or something is for the snotty kids.
But we try to have a little more sophisticated look
at what that could mean.
There's such a broad spectrum of experimental music,
from jazz and classical to noise to electronic stuff
that may come out of dance clubs, but pushes boundaries.
We just always wanted to be on the edge
of what was happening in culture.
(krautrock music)
- Growing up going to Other Music,
I literally discovered genres
because of the way they would organize the music.
You know, you'd go to other record stores
and you might go to the world section.
Whereas Other Music had these more specific ways
of dividing up music.
- We needed a different way to organize it
that was the way record collectors thought.
That was the way people, you know,
passionate fans bought music.
It wasn't just a list.
- A lot of international music,
a lot of European pop.
- Electronica, krautrock, experimental,
and then whatever the hell called "In."
- "In" is where you would find what?
I don't know, Galaxie 500?
- The first section I walked into was "Out."
- What was "Out?"
- "Out" was where you'd find Stockhausen?
Okay, good, I got it, I got through that.
- "Then", which was bands that do not exist any longer.
- And I was like, "What, what the heck is this?"
And I just couldn't figure it out
and I got so freaked and I just left.
- In that "Then" section,
there would be classic punk along with folk reissues.
It's just trying to find a different way
to both cater to the passionate fans that came in
and also I think just kind of surprise people,
shake them up,
make them think about music in a different way.
I think our most famous section in that realm
would be "La Decadanse."
- The "Decadanse" section
was thoroughly confusing to me at first.
I really didn't know what that was.
- Jeff was particularly passionate about Serge Gainsbourg
and was married to a Belgian,
so he was much more familiar with a lot of European music
and he would bring in these imports
and they were very hard to come by
and he was just so excited about it
he basically made everyone at the store
love Serge Gainsbourg.
I didn't know about him and that's how I found out,
and then eventually the records got reissued.
- It was like a strange configuration of French pop,
and easy listening was kind of coming back then,
so stuff like Martin Denny or Esquivel,
things like that we sold so many of.
(French pop music)
(singing in foreign language)
- The early days,
they didn't have any paid employees for quite some time.
- We still were slow in terms of hiring people.
We still were working seven days a week.
We hired people when we had to,
but we it's not like we had deep pockets.
So it was just trying to make it work.
- We had just started dating, so he would be like,
"Well, come to the store.
"We'll have a store date."
Which was kind of like asking me to work for free.
- You had to have a store date
where you came and you had takeout
and you stood at the counter.
In between ringing up customers,
you might actually talk for a minute.
- Yeah, we just sat there
and taped a lot of records and hung out.
- Weekends, Lydia and Dawn would work the register
and we would be out with customers.
Josh and I would be out with customers.
Jeff would be pricing used things
and other stuff that had just come in.
- With the Monks, it is not in print in the United States.
It's available only from a German label called Repertoire.
So we have to get them when we can.
- Jeff was incredibly knowledgeable about music,
really passionate, constantly finding new things,
always finding some new obscure reissue or something.
Chris dealt with the business
and also was just very customer-oriented.
He's always been someone who can spend all day
just talking to the customers, helping people out.
He's very service-oriented.
- They incorporate a lot of brass instruments,
and their earlier stuff
used to be a little more eastern European sounding.
- That was a little harder for me.
I don't think I was instantly as personable and easy-going.
- Josh was always sitting at his back desk,
listening to people who came in and out.
He did all the training, he was very strict.
- I don't think he had any hair then.
I think I think you just shaved your head.
- Oh yeah, I had a super short crew cut.
- He kind of had that D.C. look about him.
- Josh was always looking for ways
to have the shop help the community.
In-stores, releases that the shop could put out
that maybe no other labels would.
- He's two steps ahead of you
when you're presenting something to him.
He's very linear, already has it worked out in his head.
He's just like, "Let's go."
- I'm thinking about going outside
and trying to get that flag down.
- I don't know if I would, I don't know.
- Today is the day to do it. - I mean it's, yeah, try, try.
- In some ways they're polar opposites,
but they've both been really great to work for.
I mean, I would not have been here for 15-plus years
if I didn't like working for them.
- Is there some ceremonial way
you're supposed to fold a flag?
You can't just throw it on top of a garbage bag, can you?
- It's one of those things where it transcends a job.
These people become your family.
(dance music)
- Duane worked at CMJ.
- He was my intern. - He was an intern at CMJ
and so he would review pretty much anything.
He could find an angle on everything.
For a young kid that was pretty surprising.
- I was just so excited and happy
that a store like this existed.
So immediately after Lydia told me to apply here, I did.
- All of them had encyclopedic music knowledge,
but Duane was definitely full-spectrum.
Like, "Just get Duane," because he's gonna know.
- Check this out.
The original version of "Bette Davis Eyes" is on here.
- What? - And it's a country song.
- Shut up. - Yeah, Jackie DeShannon.
She wrote "Put A Little Love in Your Heart"
and did that really cool Laurel Canyon album.
When I came in, I wanted to learn about the sections
that were there.
But then what was also great
was that there was a lot of room
for me to bring my aesthetic in.
It was really, really cool to be able
to build a hip hop section from scratch here.
(Beans rapping passionately)
- Beans worked here before Anti Pop Consortium
put out their first record.
The day Beans arrived,
everybody was like, "Who the fuck is that guy?"
- Beans would sit there in the corner
with his huge mirrored shades
and you could never see where his eyes were ever.
And he would just be like, "What's up?"
- Beans is a hero of mine
and the fact that I could just walk in
and be like, "Oh I can't.
"There's Beans, I can't talk to Beans."
- He was the only staff member I think we ever had
who would just relentlessly suggest his own music.
It just didn't matter what you said you were into.
He'd always be like, "Have you checked out
"the new Anti Pop Consortium?"
(Beans rapping)
- This is the type of business
where it encouraged artists to be on staff.
It encouraged artists to be artists.
- It was great at first 'cause the exact amount of time
I could take off from Other was the amount of time
we would go on tour.
Just in the beginning, three weeks or something like that.
- People who work here don't make a lot of money,
but working here enables them to do other things
that they might be connected with,
and this maybe helps them.
- Other Music was a tough place to get a job.
It was really stacked with people
who'd been there for a decade or more.
- What we did all day was talk about records on the floor.
You had to wanna do that and you had to have deep knowledge.
- I know dance music, I know soul music, I know reggae.
But I didn't know indie rock so much.
So I was a little nervous going into the interview.
But aside from that, I knew I knew my shit.
One of my all-time favorites, Keith Hudson.
Super spooky reggae,
but a no less spiritually-minded left-of-center vocalist.
- You sold me on that one right away.
- Absolutely, classic record.
The first couple years,
it was like nowhere I had ever worked before.
It was crazy.
Just from the amount of personalities
you had to interact with on the staff
and then the amount of people
that would come into the store,
and that amount of traffic coming to you all day long going,
"What do you like?" or "What does this sound like?"
It was just like, "Oh my God, I'm exhausted."
- Do you need anything?
Yeah. - Do you have Depeche Mode?
- On vinyl? - It's none of these.
- Yeah, it's not these unfortunately.
Depeche Mode, it's the one with the crazy beak person.
- I'm not seeing it.
- It looks like a bare-chested person
and the beak is crossing like this.
Can you tell me the title one more time?
Chris, "Walking In My Shoes."
Is it possible it's a single?
It is on this record.
- It's a specific thing I want.
- No, I get it, because you want that cover art
and there's remixes or something?
Oh no wonder, it's a collectible.
It's a $75 record.
- Okay. - Yeah.
- Over time they knew what was in your record collection.
They knew what excited you.
You knew what excited them.
So the conversations just went to deeper and deeper levels.
- People love stories.
People love a good story.
That's one thing I learned from Duane Harriott.
If people love the story, they would buy it.
- The vocalist from the Spinners,
it was one of his last 12-inches
that he made before he died, because he died on stage.
He had a heart attack on stage.
That's pretty gangster.
That's some gangster shit though, come on.
- It wasn't putting your taste on someone else.
It's really about talking to the customer
and getting what they're looking for
and understanding where they're coming from.
And being able to take what they tell you
and recommend something that they'll like.
- Holy shit, this one is amazing.
- Martin Newell is the gentleman
who is in Cleaners From Venus.
It's like a lo-fi, kind of indie pop thing.
- I'm looking for something that's like Lou Reed,
but I probably never heard of.
- Something by Loud Reed? - That's like Lou Reed?
- That's like Lou Reed. - Oh, like Lou Reed, okay.
- Oh do you have that?
It's kind of like Gina X Performance
but with more of a Grace Jones sort of feel to it.
- What else you have?
Give me something fresh.
You have something fresh?
- If you really wanna be good out there,
you've gotta be really up on so much stuff.
Even just being away for a month.
You can just be like, "I don't know, it looks good,
"it's on a good label or something."
- The rite of passage for the new clerk at OM
was to start at "In," grab a legal pad,
and write down every single band in every single section.
(upbeat music)
- I wrote every card in the entire store.
I think it took me like two days to do it
or something like that.
- Just that alone was just like, "Whoah."
I thought I knew a lot.
- I didn't know really a single artist
in the soul/funk section.
I was like, "I guess I'll learn."
You would start to become familiar
with all of the names of the artists in the shop.
So if someone came in and they were like,
"Hey do you have Chrissy Zebby Tembo?"
You'd be like, "Oh yeah."
- I just knew everything in the store right off the bat.
Just kidding.
- The music that we carry here
is often obscure and confusing,
from the sounds to the packaging to the distribution.
Although our buying philosophy
is not to simply unearth the unknown,
our passion for new music and new directions
often leads us into uncharted waters where,
frankly, we feel most comfortable.
One of our main purposes is to make new
or forgotten music available to a wider audience.
- Even in electronic music,
an area where I thought I was quite well-versed,
there would be stuff that I had never heard of.
And I often found myself buying stuff
that was completely different.
- One thing about our store,
we always hired people partially
because they were into stuff that was different
from what we were into
and they could add another side to the selection.
- It kind of reminds me almost of Bill Fox or something
where it's sort of Dylan-y but with tons of hooks.
I think you'll love it.
They always gave me a ton of freedom
to just figure out what I was interested in.
They were never like,
"Oh you gotta order this, you gotta order this."
They're like, "We trust you and we trust your taste."
(acoustic folk music)
- Jackson C. Frank was a tragic '60s folk singer.
He had a pretty miserable life
but he made one absolutely flawless beautiful record.
♪ Catch a boat to England baby, maybe to Spain. ♪
- I just remember seeing it in the bin one day.
I was like, "Let's check this out."
And just as soon as I put on, within the first note,
it's just like, "Oh my God."
♪ Send out for whiskey baby ♪
♪ Send out for gin, me and room service honey ♪
♪ Me and room service babe, me and room service ♪
♪ Well we're living a life of sin ♪
- Michael Klausman brought
a lot of cobweb reissue vibes to the store.
- Dan Hougland and Chris O'Rourke who was a manager there,
kinda went up to Michael and they were like,
"You know you can play some CDs,
"you don't have to play NPR all day."
- You could live in kind of a dream world of esoterica.
- Stuff like Le Orme, an Italian psych band I got into.
I think Duane recommended it to me once.
- Os Mutantes, at one point
we could not keep those things in the store.
- I found that solo Masaki Batoh record.
I was so excited and I grabbed that like,
"Oh my god, I can't believe this exists."
- We would also stock everybody from Pantha Du Prince,
Blossom Toes, Peanut Butter Wolf.
- A CD by Tristan Perich, but instead of a compact disc,
it had components that made a loop.
We sold hundreds of them.
♪ In Canada ♪
- B.J. Snowden.
- "Songs In The Key Of Z."
- This Morton Feldman recording.
- The Shintaro Sakamoto,
the Nude Beach record, the Ex Cops record.
- 75 Dollar Bill.
- Quasimoto. - Oneohtrix Point Never.
- Julianna Barwick.
- Karen Dalton, Vashti Bunyan.
- The Vashti Bunyan reissue.
- Vashti Bunyan, "Just Another Diamond Day."
- Dungen, we reviewed Dungen.
- That Aphrodite's Child record.
- Arthur Russell, minidiscs, cassettes, CDs, whatever.
- Digital experimental minimal music, you know?
But patterned, patterned minimal music.
- Harmonia, Cluster, even that Velvet Tinmine compilation.
- Other Music is the only retail store
where somebody would put on Diamanda Galas
to clear the floor at closing time to get everybody out.
- Hey guys,
we're gonna be closing up in a few minutes.
- That foghorn record.
- I loved that foghorn record.
- There was a record of foghorns and it was so beautiful.
- It's suddenly so quiet.
- Let me flip this record.
(techno music)
It's nice how it steps up, it just like, steps up.
- The art of learning what people
wanna listen to at a certain time of day
and putting records on the stereo,
it's such a difficult thing that I feel like no algorithm
will ever be able to recreate.
We would be constantly listening to records in the shop
and as soon as people heard it,
they were just, like, this is something I need.
(calypso music)
- Excuse me, do you know who sings this song?
- What's that?
- Do you know whose song this is?
- I don't, what did you just put on?
- Is it for sale? - It's for sale.
If you want it, I can take it off the turntable.
- Thanks!
- So good it sold right away.
- Yeah, aren't there no more rock stars?
- He didn't get the message, he's one of the last ones.
- Him and Dave Grohl are fighting
to be the very last one ever. - Exactly, those two are.
They're two sides of the same coin.
- I just come sometimes to look at the wall of vinyl.
It gives me this great warm feeling.
I grew up as a girl collecting records
from when I was very, very small,
and there was always a lot of way older men
than me being condescending about records.
But I didn't get that vibe here.
- There were girls there, you know.
There were girls there
and they hired women and it was great.
- That's a rarity at a record store,
as an employee and as a customer,
to have ladies behind the counter.
- You would definitely see way more men
walk in through the doors, but whenever a woman walked in,
it wasn't like, "She doesn't know anything about music."
- I would compare it to dark synth type stuff.
- I would go there and do research.
I didn't know any other people
really who were as nerdy as I was about music, as obsessive.
I had this rock encyclopedia
and I would get in bed at night and read it,
and going to Other Music was an extension of that.
It was like, "Okay, I've done some homework
"and some reading and now I can go to class."
- Hello.
Excellent choice. - Oh yeah.
- You can tell she's from New York.
- I could see that you're from New York.
- She can see that you're from New York?
- Visually, visual culture happening.
You, me, cats, I went to college in Queens.
- Managing Other Music, it was like herding a bunch of cats,
but super nerdy weird cats.
- Do you wanna do push-ups?
- Yeah, bro.
You wanna get swole bro?
I got this bro.
Alright, we're gonna clap our hands when we get up.
- I remember so often I would walk in
there and be like, "How did you guys get hired?
"I know you don't have a resume.
"How are you all here?"
- I think what we weren't as good at sometimes was,
we would always try to see,
do they have any retail experience?
Trying to figure out if they're gonna be responsible,
on time.
We famously have hired a lot of people
who could never show up to work on time.
- Everyone brings their peculiarities
and I think that the store has been a home for everybody
who likes any weird number of sub-genres of music,
in addition to struggling with other aspects of life
where they maybe wouldn't fit
into a nine-to-five corporate job.
- Excuse me, do you have any new concert tickets on sale?
- Yeah there's this new Devendra Banhart concert,
it's gonna be in a dumpster on 32nd Street.
We just got a couple of tickets in for that.
- A dumpster, that sounds gross.
- Sorry it's not gonna be in Wembley Stadium.
- Yeah, it's gonna be an intimate little gig in a dumpster.
- Dumpster.
- I understood that.
- The concert's gonna be in a dumpster.
- I heard you the second time.
- There shouldn't have been an intimidation factor,
but there was.
I'm not the first person to say that, right?
- Do you have the Garden State soundtrack?
That's supposed to be indie-tastic.
- I think we might have that in the back.
- In the back room here? - Yeah, come on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Wait, this is just a bathroom,
oh my God! (gun firing)
- I remember asking someone who worked there
about an album that was in the staff "We love" section.
He was like, "Yeah, I don't like it."
I was like, "Wow, this is badass.
"This guy doesn't even like the stuff that they like."
- Every clerk has his day where they're not in the best mood
and someone asks them for the third time the same question
and they're irritated and they come off
as not being as welcoming as they could.
- What are we looking for, first of all?
Are we looking for reggae records?
Are we looking for dub records?
What are we looking for? - Well...
- Let's just go over there.
- Even if you don't have one of these,
maybe what you do like. - Let's just go over there.
If you come at me being a hot mess
and not knowing what you are looking for,
I'm not always the most understanding.
- I was hungover, I wasn't meaning to be a snob sometimes.
I just couldn't speak.
- If I'm completely honest, I was never just chill in there.
I always got that first day of school feeling like,
"Okay, just don't fuck up."
- They are specialists in a lot of ways,
'cause they're dealing with music nonstop,
all the time throughout the day.
So they just hear so much
and that knowledge base can be intimidating.
So even what isn't snobby can be perceived as snobby-ness
just 'cause the knowledge is kind of elite.
- I never quite understood that,
I would read that sometimes
and I just never quite agreed with it
because that's totally the opposite
of how I wanted things to be,
and how I believe that I conduct myself.
- The only instance of snobbery I ever saw
was this guy came in who was very drunk
and asked Chris Vanderloo if they had Stevie Ray Vaughan.
And he said, "Sorry man, we don't have that here."
And the guy stumbled out and muttered something like,
"They were assholes."
But, yeah, he shouldn't have come.
(electronic music)
- We never had anyone here who was super into metal,
so if you were a metal-head and you came in here
then you hated us because there was no one here
who was super passionate about that.
- There was a lot of chips on people's shoulders,
I mean are you kidding me?
It's a store in New York
where everybody's supposed to know about everything.
Any place that has any hip aura, people come in like,
"Fuck this hip aura.
"I'm gonna challenge this hip aura.
"I'm gonna dethrone your ass."
- I'd rather have somebody with a really bad attitude
about what music sucks putting up the stuff on the shelves
than somebody who's just trying to like sell product.
Other Music symbolized something that I find important,
which is keeping the bar on everything high enough.
If your bar on art is high,
then your bar on kindness is high, you know,
or something like that.
And when art gets dumber,
when movies get dumber and TV gets dumber,
I think we all get dumber and meaner and shittier.
You should celebrate the stuff that's better
than the average, you know?
They just made sure
that they weren't selling the average stuff.
(people applauding)
(electroclash music)
- The cool thing about Other Music was,
it wasn't just a record store.
It was definitely like a community center in a lot of ways.
- Other Music hosted in-store performances,
which was a huge way that the shop supported the community.
They were all-ages, they were free.
Often you would be able to get a band's record
for the first time, or before it was even released.
♪ Hey wait ♪
♪ Oh please wait ♪
♪ Don't rush off, you won't be late ♪
- We would move the racks to the side of the shop,
which is already very small.
And then a band, often quite a high profile band
or an exciting new band, would play.
♪ Put a penny in the pot ♪
♪ Put a nickel in your pocket ♪
♪ Every nickel that you've got ♪
♪ Is a nickel in the slot ♪
- You basically just have the store lighting on the band.
You would see everything super clearly,
you can watch the band playing their instruments.
You could see what was happening.
♪ I am sorry to report dear Paris ♪
- You could also see the faces
of all the other people in the crowd.
It wasn't like you were having this isolated experience.
- See, this is how we talk amongst each other
and then we kind of figure out what we're gonna do.
Any more fashion disasters that we need to kind of fix?
- It was intimate and it always sounded good,
and people were really reverent and respectful of it.
- One of my favorite memories is the Gary Wilson in-store.
Duane Harriott was talking up this record,
and I don't think anybody had ever heard of it.
- Someone made me a cassette of it
and I listened to it on my Walkman.
And then I had to take it off
because I was scaring people on the train
because I had these facial expressions.
Gary Wilson was still incognito,
nobody really knew who or where he was,
he just kind of disappeared.
- The store that started selling the record, Other Music,
they're the only people that really have this record yet
and they already sold out.
- Oh great. - We have to go over there
and bring them more records.
They ordered 120.
- It led up to this reissue
of the "You Think You Really Know Me" record.
And then he came out of nowhere, found a band,
and just destroyed everybody.
(upbeat music) - It was a big deal.
This record, I think, because of Duane's word-of-mouth,
was huge here.
It was constantly playing, and it was selling really well,
and so there was an in-store.
- First of all, he came into the store
with a blanket over his head so nobody could see him.
- In the corner of the record store was this little closet.
And it had a little blue curtain, and he hid back there.
- And he would wouldn't emerge
until the beginning of the show.
He had doused himself in an entire talcum powder bottle,
all over his face, then put sunglasses on.
It was just like, showtime.
(people cheering)
♪ Foolish heart ♪
♪ You're keepin' me away ♪
♪ So far away ♪
♪ From all the things that I want ♪
♪ From day to day, from day to day ♪
♪ You keep on lookin' ♪
- It was the most amazing, bizarre thing
I had ever seen in my life.
He immediately became like top five humans of all time,
for that year.
♪ From shore to shore ♪
♪ Out of repulse ♪
♪ That's what they try to say ♪
♪ I'll just keep on lovin' you, I'll keep lovin' you ♪
♪ From day to day, from day to day ♪
- Going to live shows is a real,
visceral experience that's hard to fit in
with the rest of your daily life sometimes.
It's hard to describe.
It's just a way of having a very sensory experience.
♪ Two headed boy ♪
♪ All floating in glass ♪
♪ The sun it has passed ♪
♪ Now it's blacker than black ♪
♪ I can hear as you tap on your jar ♪
♪ I am listening to hear where you are ♪
♪ Two headed boy ♪
- Music, it's a way to connect with other people.
It's a way to connect with yourself.
Maybe live more in the moment,
and live for a purer type of joy
than we get in our daily grind.
(Jeff Mangum vocalizing)
- Thanks.
(people cheering)
- I'm just trying to format something in Word
and I don't understand how to change the font.
- Sure.
- I think you might know better than me.
- That's adorable, "I don't know how to change the font."
How's he gonna get another job?
- Look at this.
- I know, it's like fine wine.
Fine wine in a box.
- I'm gonna just keep cleaning out back here.
What am I going to do with that thing, come on.
Mmm, indie!
There's gonna be some weird stuff in here.
Oh man, the flier from when we launched the website.
(electronic music)
- We launched the mail order website in 1998
and the store's newsletter has been going out since 2000.
- We had an email newsletter that reached a lot of people.
Tens of thousands of people read it every week,
where we reviewed music.
- I've been writing about music for 15 years
and I would obsessively, every week read the mailers
which are I think the best in the business.
- Those early days online,
you didn't have Pitchforks and Stereogums
and all these online sources like you do now.
The Other Music Update at the time
was one of the main sources
for hearing about this sort of music first.
- Are you writing down
the biggest sellers of all time?
- Top sellers ever.
That's what we're putting up.
- Is Jim Ford in there? - Jim Ford is not on there.
It's only 100 obviously, so it's pretty limited.
- I'm surprised at how low "Ambient Works 2" is.
The big Other Music artists
are Belle and Sebastian, Boards of Canada.
- Stereolab, Broadcast.
- Everything on that list is from like 2002 and south.
- Yeah, that was, I mean that was like, serious numbers.
The guy from Ninja Tune called here one time and said,
"You guys literally sold..."
- More than half of the U.S. sales
or something were just in this store.
- At this one store.
- In the late '90s, early 2000's,
I don't think that people really have an idea
of just how many records were sold out of this store.
- Fridays, Saturdays, two registers going,
two back-ups for each register and just hours of ringing.
Throwing CDs across the room at each other
because we couldn't even physically make it to each other.
- The whole time we were in business,
the year 2000 was our highest grossing year.
And 2001 was on course to be bigger than that.
So we were coming into September and it was a Tuesday.
I remember a sea of people walking up Lafayette Street.
The store wasn't open, we were just there,
and people wanted to use the phone.
There were some people who would splash water on their face.
I remember a dude coming in and going,
"Do you have the new Dylan?"
And I was like, "Do you see what's going on all around you?"
- We saw the top of the south tower crack off
and fall from my building and then we ran upstairs.
So we turned on the Disintegration Loops really loud,
just went up on the roof
and sat there looking at this new landscape.
- William came in with Disintegration Loops,
a CD made as a response to 9/11 and it utterly blew my mind.
Basically it's a tape loop that,
as it winds its way through the tape player it,
the magnetic tape would flake off.
So as it goes along it's always subtly changing
with every turn of the reel.
- Each melody just fell away in its own time in its own way,
and somehow managed to retain the very core
of what made it special.
And then the fact that I had managed to record the life
and death of these melodies, to me,
was an incredibly profound thing.
- I wrote a pretty heartfelt review of it,
and I pushed it on tons of people.
- Nobody knew who I was,
so when it first came out it was just a little slim sleeve.
- People had to talk about it once they heard it.
That just connected with a broad cross-section of the staff
and then the customers.
We sold hundreds of them.
We could just keep selling those CD-Rs all day.
- Everyone was thinking about "What do I do?"
I was like, "You're an artist, make your work.
"This is important."
- You just felt it kick into high gear
because everyone was kind of like,
"Fuck it, what else am I doing?"
♪ You know they're gonna want some, want some ♪
♪ I'm high in the back room gonna have a pack soon ♪
♪ With this song you will regret ♪
♪ Just let it be a yeah, yeah, yeah ♪
- It was definitely the case that post-9/11,
especially immediately post-9/11, it was really debauched.
- No one was thinking about their future,
and that makes for a very interesting scene.
- If you were young and your city had just been attacked,
you're not an adult.
It was sort of just like, "You know what,
"I think I need to get drunk, and high,
"and whatever else I can do."
♪ Fucking for fear of not wanting to fear again ♪
♪ Lonely is all we are lovely ♪
- The Lower East Side scene was weirdly fetishized
because of the 9/11 events,
and a very hot spotlight happened on a lot of bands.
- The '90s were really dead for rock and roll
at least in New York City.
There was no industry attention
basically in terms of rock and roll.
But Other Music championed a lot of these bands
really early on.
- Local bands would come in all the time
and drop off their record
with the hopes of us carrying it in the shop.
- We had this guy Gian Carlo
who ran our consignment program.
He just loved music so much and was wanting to help them.
And giving them a spot on the shelf, you know,
a spot on the shelf, that was prime real estate.
- People kinda made up the early wave of that scene,
like Strokes, and Liars, and Black Dice,
they all came in here and they sold their CDs.
They'd burn the CD-Rs themselves.
- Interpol would make demos
and I remember going down to Other Music
and speaking to those guys about whether they'd be open
about selling it on consignment.
And they were cool about it.
♪ I wish I could eat the salt off of your lost ♪
- We'd spent so many years
of no one really caring about us at all.
It was one of those early things within the band's life
that really meant a lot to me personally.
♪ I saw my love with pretty boy ♪
- The first show at Mercury Lounge
and the first time we got a card in Other Music
we were like, "My band is real, my band's a real thing now."
- Aw!
My card.
- Okay, ready? - Ready.
- Two of the members of Animal Collective, Dave and Noah,
both worked at Other Music in mail order and shipping.
- I started working at Other in 1998.
I actually worked on the floor there for a short while
but because my social skills were terrible
I was quickly taken back up to the mail order department.
When I started working there,
we weren't really doing Animal Collective stuff.
- I had moved to New York in the summer of 2000
and Dave said, "Well my friend is here
"and he's looking for work."
- We've been playing together since high school
in various combinations.
And when Noah moved to New York,
that was when we decided, let's actually try and do this.
- A lot of times after work
they'd be playing a show and we'd all go to watch them.
- It definitely started really small,
playing it in the shop, and they started slowly selling
mostly just on recommendations.
- They were definitely more underground and avant,
for lack of better words.
It felt like a sinister Fraggle Rock on acid or something.
- "Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished,"
they were the only outlet for us
to sell the record at the time.
I think we sent it around to a bunch
of labels and nobody wanted it.
- One of them, I don't remember who said,
"This really hurts our dog's ears."
Or, "Our cat freaks out when we put it on."
- I remember Other being the first place
that gave it a review and put it up
and gave us our first name card.
Just being like, "Yes, we made it, finally."
That's all I ever wanted at the time, you know?
- I mean, Dave got fired.
Maybe that made things a little awkward.
- His head wasn't in the game, at some point.
- He was not a great mail order supervisor.
♪ Sweet summer night and I'm stripped to my sheets ♪
♪ Forehead is leaking, my AC squeaks ♪
♪ And a voice from the clock ♪
♪ Says you're not gonna get tired ♪
♪ My bed is a pool and the walls are on fire ♪
♪ Soak my head in the sink for a while ♪
♪ Chills on my neck and it makes me smile ♪
- This is where we shopped since we were teenagers.
- I think also in a way it's like,
knowing that all these folks who worked at the shop,
if we could excite these people,
that felt like kind of an accomplishment.
I think I can safely say I'm not sure we'd be doing this
still today if it wasn't for the shop.
- Yeah, definitely not.
(audience cheering)
- Thanks so much for being here,
thanks for having us.
- You know what's funny, I wrote a poem a few years ago
about how I used to love going into record stores
and hiding whatever I wanted to buy later on.
So if I found something I loved,
you would put it in the back where nobody would find it
until you had enough money to buy it yourself.
- Right. - Yeah.
- I can relate.
- I was just thinking of that recently.
Take it easy. - Thanks.
- Daddy. - Yeah?
- I wanna get the "Hamilton" soundtrack.
- The "Hamilton" soundtrack?
The vinyl is really pricey,
we have to take a look at it.
$90, holy smokes, that's a lot of money, iPod?
- We can always listen to it.
- Yeah it'll be on Spotify too anyway, we can stream it.
Are we part of the problem or part of the solution?
That's what I wanna know. - Solution!
- Are we?
Yeah, we wanna buy it on vinyl,
so I guess we're part of the solution.
- There's a whole generation of people now
who didn't grow up with the concept of paying for music.
- I don't wanna say post-9/11,
but, you know, the early 2000s, 2002, 2003,
things were starting to turn a little bit.
Record stores were growing mindful of the fact
that their customer base was changing.
- The internet was definitely happening.
But it was more of like,
the nerds that would come into the store
would start their conversation in these chatrooms online
about obscure crazy weird music.
And then they would come into the store
and they would buy the records and talk to us about it.
Then I guess that kind of symbiotic relationship
started to go the other way,
and the conversation online kept going
and stopped happening in real life.
- On Thursday, Tower Records will sell off its assets
in a court supervised auction.
The money will go to pay creditors
of the twice-bankrupt company.
As NPR's Laura Sydell reports, Tower's troubles are signs
of larger changes in the music industry.
- The big stores, the big music stores,
like Virgin and Tower and Sam Goody and those stores,
were having a hell of a time competing with,
at the time, Circuit City and Best Buy.
They were fighting it all out for the hits,
low-balling stuff.
We would go to Best Buy and buy stuff cheaper
than we could buy it from our distributor.
That just destroyed the bigger part of the industry,
that low-ball stuff.
- When they closed, I think it was a loss for us.
Both a loss of foot traffic,
but also just kind of a change in that downtown corridor.
The East Village going from the hub
of the New York underground music scene
to really being completely disconnected from it.
It's not a neighborhood built on arts culture anymore.
- I'm just waiting for someone
to go on that rant about like,
"New York is killing everything," you know?
- Blink Fitness is now across the street.
Yeah the whole second floor of Tower Records
is now Blink Fitness.
What is going to be in this neighborhood
without Other Music to anchor it?
So Broadway is shoe stores?
That's it?
Is New York going to be only a place
where you go to buy clothing? - It used to be you come here
and you find something out of the ordinary,
something you don't find when you live in Brooklyn
or in Queens or whatever.
Now there's nothing but Starbucks
and tofu yogurt places, and all of that.
It's ridiculous.
- Best of 2000, Other Music, best record store.
We're number one,
above the Virgin Megastore-Times Square, closed.
The Virgin Megastore-Union Square, closed.
HMV, closed.
J&R Music World, closed.
Bleecker Street Records is actually open.
(indie rock music)
We opened up our download store a few years
after iTunes opened their store.
People were buying fewer CDs
and we were trying to stay current,
to see where music was going.
- The first time that Vampire Weekend's music
was ever officially available to buy digitally
was in the Other Music online store,
and that was before we'd signed a deal.
♪ Johanna drove slowly into the city ♪
♪ The Hudson river all filled with snow ♪
♪ She spied the ring on his honor's finger ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪
We had all sorts of people coming to us saying like,
"Hey kids people are gonna try
"to get you to sign a record deal, don't be a moron."
But Other Music, that actually was the one deal
that made sense to us 'cause they were forward-thinking
in launching an independent digital distribution platform.
- This is something that we had all the time,
customers coming in and if you didn't have
what they wanted you'd say,
"I think Tower should have that across the street."
People would go, "I don't wanna shop
"at a big mass market retailer like that.
"The reason I'm here
"is 'cause I love shopping at independent stores."
But iTunes, you know,
Apple still maintains this kind of cool factor.
So we never found that most people
cared about shopping online at a cool, curated indie store.
- So we announced that we were gonna be shutting down
the download store 'cause LP sales were picking up.
We wanted to get back into focus
on the more physical formats.
And I got an email from Lou Reed's manager,
"Lou Reed is despondent.
"He is so depressed
"and he wants to know where he's going
"to be able to download music from now."
- One of the reasons that the Other Music digital store
didn't flourish was because people who shop at that store
are so dedicated to the idea of physical media,
whether it's a cassette or a CD or a record.
I mean, I never used it.
- This is back, cool!
For me, music has always been very physical.
I'm really into cassettes and going out to shows.
And I'm very involved in that DIY scene of exchanging,
and sharing and being present.
- What's been really cool actually,
since the birth of streaming and MP3s and all that,
is the rise of vinyl.
And watching younger people now build their collections
and come in and be like, "I just got a vinyl player."
As they say, vinyl player.
"I want some records."
- The quality stuff, you want it archived.
The quality stuff, you want to make a special spot for it.
- I'm such an analog human being.
I can't read a book on a Kindle.
I like touching records and flipping them over
and looking at every little thing.
- It is a fundamentally different experience
than lying back with your laptop on your bed
and just clicking around.
I think there's something important
about the physical nature of it.
- Almost done.
- Yeah.
Your total is $964.26.
- Vinyl has been growing,
and it's been growing dramatically in the industry
and it was growing for us.
But it never came close to replacing the loss of CD sales.
- CDs were great because they don't cost very much to make,
they don't cost very much to ship,
they can be made very quickly.
And all those things are not true about vinyl.
- The record business
is always a really tough business.
It's a volume business.
You have to sell a lot of records.
You're making just a couple bucks
most things you're selling,
so you need to sell a lot every day.
Even if you're not paying $15,000 a month rent.
- It's been pretty rough.
You have years where you do better or worse.
So, you pay your employees and you take what's left over.
In 2003, they didn't make any money.
And since then, they have not made a wage
that they could live on without spouses
who kept them afloat for a long time I think.
- We live week to week.
The deposits that we make every day help us buy more records
to keep going and it's just been tough.
(acoustic folk music)
♪ Just another diamond day ♪
♪ Just a blade of grass ♪
♪ Just another bale of hay ♪
♪ And the horses pass ♪
♪ La la la la la la la la la la la la la la ♪
♪ La la la la la la la la la la ♪
♪ Just another ♪
- I think he sees the store as like
he feels like he has responsibility to the customers.
And then I think his other main hold back was the employees.
I think he just felt like, "What are they gonna do?"
And I'm like, "Chris, it's great to think about that,
"but what are you gonna do?"
'Cause he's always at the back of the list.
♪ Just a word to say ♪
♪ Just another love to give ♪
♪ And a diamond day ♪
♪ La la la la la la la la la la la la la la ♪
♪ La la la la la la la la la la ♪
- XL, XL, papa.
- XL it is.
Kind of our number one customer
broke down in tears yesterday.
Rockstar Rob. - Really?
- Rob came in yesterday and he was fully crying.
- Aw.
- I like that you guys have nicknames for everyone,
like Thursday Michael.
- Rollerblading Mike.
- Rollerblading Mike?
♪ Everything must go ♪
♪ You wanna get on some fly shit ♪
♪ Get on some butterfly to the fire shit ♪
♪ Everything must go ♪
- It's crazy, it's hectic, it's nonstop.
- People are buying stuff so fast
that we can't keep it on the shelves.
- Look at the line.
Hey do you have any more Radiohead upstairs on CD?
- We close at eight, but we'll probably be here later.
- Yeah, the store's open tomorrow.
♪ Like it or not ♪
- Thank you.
(dog barks)
- Oh Jesus, I'm so, so sorry.
- See, now you better pace yourself, pace yourself.
- We don't have any large left.
- I would recommend ordering from the website.
- Last night we were here until 2:30 in the morning.
- Should I be saying to people
have a nice night or have a nice life?
"Thanks so much, have a nice life."
Today's our last day.
We have a huge celebration happening on Tuesday.
- Are you sad because it's the last day?
- I am very sad.
- I have a job, you could clean up our house.
- We could use some help.
- I could clean your room.
- I've been on the verge of tears all day
since I've been here, but they're kind of tears of joy.
- I looked it up. - Awesome.
- It looks like we got three copies.
- She's almost like a classically trained singer and pianist
who went into more of a dark rock kind of thing.
It's really beautiful.
If that sounds interesting, to you, I think you'll like it.
- You have, like, two live copies of Professor Longhair
in the Blues section.
- No one's picked those up yet.
Someone's gotta get those.
- But when did you get them in? Yesterday, today?
- We got them in yesterday.
Alright, it means a lot.
- I will come back to the empty space.
- The world is changing quickly in a lot of ways,
and so much of it happens in the virtual world now.
And for sure there are a lot of positives to that.
But the magic of human interaction
and the way it forces you to be in the moment
and have a real give-and-take dialogue
is something that can only be experienced face-to-face.
- It's easier than ever to reach people,
but at the same time you're constantly trying
to cut through a wave of noise
that's coming at people all the time.
- Hey man, how are you doing?
- Good.
- I really feel for musicians
trying to get started nowadays.
It's so much easier to get lost in the crowd.
Whereas something about knowing that there are people
at a record store there to stand behind certain groups
and talk to people about them that they really like
and get people to get things, it's different.
And now it's also strange
because robots are telling you what you like.
- What makes it good? - Yeah it's good.
It's good but the Leo Zero mix, he edited it a little bit.
But it's cool.
I was supposed to be a lawyer, you know?
And if it wasn't for Other Music,
I would definitely be a lawyer.
A very bored, unsatisfied, angst-ridden lawyer.
- Who's the last person to buy a record in this place?
Is it gonna be you?
(soft music)
(phone ringing)
Other Music, this is Josh.
We're closed and we're just cleaning out the store now.
Hey man, is your truck here?
We'll start here, and anything this way too.
All this stuff.
That's just a little bitty truck.
We've got a lot of shit to fit in there.
Oh yeah, big guns.
It's a lot harder to put it together
than it is to take it apart.
I think that one's loose,
you can do the same on all of them.
- Is the store moving?
- No, it closed Saturday.
This past Saturday.
- Is this how you inherited the floor?
- No, we painted it on a couple of occasions.
And then over the years, you could see where people walked.
We used to use the floor as a way
to see what sections were most popular.
The way the floor was worn out more
was where most people stood.
You can see the ghosts of the records up there.
The seven-inches. - Yeah.
- Oh my God.
Wow.
Thanks so much, Daniel.
- It's been great, it's been great.
I'm gonna miss it for sure.
- You're a huge part of this place
and made it what it was, you know?
- Say it again?
- You're a huge part of what this place became, what it was.
- Yeah, I felt that as well, yeah.
You know, you did a really wonderful thing for 20 years.
And I am honored to be a part of New York history.
(people cheering)
♪ There were your eyes in the dark of the room ♪
♪ The only ones shining ♪
♪ The only set I had met in years ♪
- More than ever people being together
is very, very important.
(people cheering)
For me, theaters, bookstores, and music stores,
record stores, were a type of temple.
And they would have a community.
♪ Rising ♪
♪ Rising together ♪
- We're swinging away from tangible places where we meet,
and we have things together.
♪ What are you doing ♪
- Maybe we'll swing not all the way back,
but maybe there's a way for the digital
and the streaming and the loving of music
to swing back to a place
where we could still have these temples.
♪ They just said don't go, don't go ♪
♪ Don't go, don't go, don't go ♪
- I would like to introduce,
all the way from the tristate area, and the boroughs,
Yo La Tengo!
(audience cheering)
- Hey Josh, you around here?
(rhythmic rock music)
♪ Sometimes the bad days may take their grip ♪
♪ Sometimes the good days fade ♪
♪ But the rain today hurts the head to drink ♪
- Other Music was that place that knew what you wanted
before you knew what you wanted.
- Other Music was a champion of the underdog.
A lot of the artists who maybe didn't want to be rock stars,
but they wanted to say something.
It was a place where the underdogs won.
When they opened, I don't think that they even knew
how much people needed it or wanted it, but they did.
- You carry the spirit of it, I think, by being curious.
No matter how much music they knew,
there was still more music to discover.
So I think it's everyone's job to,
if you find something you love, to tell people about it.
- Hey everybody, we just want to say thank you.
Thank you for an amazing 20 years.
Look at Chris back there,
he's not even thinking about coming out here.
A place like Other Music is only about the community
and about the people who shopped there and about the family.
It's not about buying and selling,
it's about being a part of something and, oh Chris came out!
(audience cheering)
That is an incredibly special moment,
when somebody finds a record,
a song that means something to them.
It's very emotional.
It's beyond just like, "That's a cool record."
We were really trying to connect great art with great fans.
Helping people find great art, it's a tough living,
but it is a pretty satisfying life.
♪ Resisting the flow ♪
(audience cheering)