record shops
Lemme say the obvious, we have alot of reggae record shops in Tokyo and lots of other places to find reggae records.
A few weeks ago I found an old JA 7" on the Black Ark label of Mikey Dread's "Dread at the Control" . Beat to hell and the shop clerk had the balls to blow his cigarette smoke on it while it was spinning, but I wanted it anyways. Thats in Shibuya, cant remember the name of the store but its in the same building as Jammers. From that window you can see at least four other places to get the latest and oldest JA 7s, 10s and 12s.
Place in Koenji where the shop clerks think they are better than all who dare enter sell lots of JA repress and plenty of UK dancehall as well. Picked an odd LP of Roots Radics mixed by Scientist "Roy Cousins Presents Kings & Queens of Dub" but not credited as a Scientist record. Some boring tracks but some good Radics riddims too.
West Shinjuku has at least two good places.
Shimokitazawa has a few places as well, but no names leap from my mind right now.
Lotsa Earl Sixteen 10s around town right now since he was here a while back. Plenty Jammyland vinyl all over town.
See the thing is though, most of these places have a very elitist attitude. They will stock a shit JA 7 over the hardest plate from a local or often a UK and you pretty much never see any EU plates. "だめだよ！われはJAだけだろ！” Commerce rules supreme in most places and many clerks can rattle off the names of 50 sides of the same riddim but have no ears to hear a one.
Sound like bitching on my part? Just reporting the facts as I see em. I could care less how they look down their noses at me, I can still get some good chunes. Anyways, we got good record stores here.
A few weeks ago I found an old JA 7" on the Black Ark label of Mikey Dread's "Dread at the Control" . Beat to hell and the shop clerk had the balls to blow his cigarette smoke on it while it was spinning, but I wanted it anyways. Thats in Shibuya, cant remember the name of the store but its in the same building as Jammers. From that window you can see at least four other places to get the latest and oldest JA 7s, 10s and 12s.
Place in Koenji where the shop clerks think they are better than all who dare enter sell lots of JA repress and plenty of UK dancehall as well. Picked an odd LP of Roots Radics mixed by Scientist "Roy Cousins Presents Kings & Queens of Dub" but not credited as a Scientist record. Some boring tracks but some good Radics riddims too.
West Shinjuku has at least two good places.
Shimokitazawa has a few places as well, but no names leap from my mind right now.
Lotsa Earl Sixteen 10s around town right now since he was here a while back. Plenty Jammyland vinyl all over town.
See the thing is though, most of these places have a very elitist attitude. They will stock a shit JA 7 over the hardest plate from a local or often a UK and you pretty much never see any EU plates. "だめだよ！われはJAだけだろ！” Commerce rules supreme in most places and many clerks can rattle off the names of 50 sides of the same riddim but have no ears to hear a one.
Sound like bitching on my part? Just reporting the facts as I see em. I could care less how they look down their noses at me, I can still get some good chunes. Anyways, we got good record stores here.
posted by Israel B at 7/24/2006 10:50:00 PM
2 Comments:
The chap at Dub Store in Shinjuku isn't a sneerer/scenester. In fact, he's really friendly and helpful. Seemed to be enjoying the music last time I was there, too -- not trying to "look hard". Message: there are some genuinely good people working in Japan's record stores. But yeah, there are a lot of posers as well...
Dub Store has its good moments, its the one the other side of that little park where I got the tengu treatment. In West Shinjuku, Orange Street is my favorite.
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