So this news is at least a couple of months old, but I would like to point out that Record Surplus, fine Westside purveyors of used CDs, vinyl and media miscellany, formerly over on Pico Blvd., is now over on Santa Monica Blvd., at Centinela Ave.

They’ve brought along with them one of the more curious assortments of dusty used vinyl stacks–particularly heavy on vocals and classical–and a wide range of hit and miss media detritus in formats spanning the decades: CDs, VHS tapes, laser discs, used books, old magazines, cassette tapes. You will be glad to know that “The Attic”–a subgroup of strictly $1 items; i.e., Loverboy LPs–survived the move, though it is now a little penned off area at the front, rather than the literal upstairs attic at the former Pico Blvd. spot. They maintain their innovative pricing strategy that results in sales totals of even dollars when tax is applied.

How this particular shop has stayed in business in the current climate with their yard sale hodgepodge while even managing to pull off a move to a large, clean, arguably higher profile new space, is baffling, though in many ways comforting and reassuring. Now, I’m not saying the shop is a front for some other, unsavory business going on in the back, but I’m not not saying it. Of course I could attempt to interview the proprietors, but it’s always more fun to speculate recklessly.

So be sure to visit Record Surplus while your car is being worked on at Santa Monica Volvo Saab right across Santa Monica Blvd.

Long Beach residents rejoice: Fingerprints has fully moved from the shore to their new digs in the ambiguously-centered-around-First-and-Linden “Downtown Arts District” … and is now open for business, with great live shows lined up per usual. From Rand, in the inbox today:

With a crackle and a pop we dropped the needle on Sparklehorse’s debut album, Vivedixiesubmarinetransmissionplot this morning, and with that, we are calling this soft-opening official.

For those who’ve missed the last couple of emailers, we moved off of 2nd St this past weekend. It was a tough decision, but we feel pretty confident that once you see the new space it will all make sense. Our new address is 420 E. 4th St, in the Art’s District of Downtown Long Beach. For the old-timers, it’s the old Lyon’s Art Supply space.

We’ve been moving stuff out of the old place since Friday and it’s feeling really good in the new space. We quietly opened on Tuesday, after getting our final inspection. Our first sale was the debut record from the Blasters, and I seriously cannot think of any album we could have sold that would have made me happier.

»continue reading Fingerprints Records Opens In New Long Beach Locale

HEADS UP
The Dodos @ The Getty Sat Aug 8 (Don’t forget: Free parking!)

If you haven’t been following the Dodos’ new Phil Ek-produced album saga, here are the highlights(?) as we know them:

• The new album was leaked earlier this month
• To combat the leak, Meric Long and Logan Kroeber created this website and offered the album as a free high-quality (320kbps) stream
• Individual tracks are priced at a standard $0.99 rate, but the entire album is now available at Amazon for $2.99, today only (updated: this week only)
• The album will cost more than $2.99 at all other retailers, beginning next Tuesday
• The physical album will drop September 15 on Frenchkiss.

While you’re throwing that one into your shopping cart, don’t forget: Your best Amazon mp3 bet to date remains those incomparable 47-minute Miles Davis live fusion mp3s priced at the bank-breaking rate of $0.99/per.

Beloved sub sandwich shack, Roll Inn Sandwich, frequently affectionately referred to by UCLA undergrads as “Buck Fiddy” for its one-time $1.50 (pre-tax) sandwiches was found dead today on Gayley Avenue in Westwood Village, a “For Lease” sign hanging it its window.

As a reliable late night purveyor of alcohol-sopping subs to stumbling drunkards emerging from nearby Maloney’s after last call, the Roll Inn maintained a foothold in the area even as their prices gradually crept upwards from the 12-bit offerings of their glory days. It upgraded its exterior facade to a White Stripesy candy cane theme, added catering service, and expanded its menu, adding even a bulgogi beef sub. They even installed some of those needles you put on the roof to deter pigeons from landing and shitting you. Even with these improvements, its ramshackle shack sprit was in its bones, kind of like a girl that loses a lot of weight but you can still sort of see the fat girl in them.

For a local business that has hung on in the historically difficult retail climate of Westwood Village for upwards of a decade, the passing may come as a shock. Pending an autopsy, the precise date and cause of its demise was not known.

»continue reading UCLA Westwood Village’s Roll Inn Sandwich a.k.a. “Buck Fiddy” Found Dead

A brief look at the current prices of some of the longest DRM-free music mp3s on the marketplace at two major vendors, and why you should or should not buy them from either vendor based strictly on price.

Today we compare some of the longest DRM-free offerings of Amazon and ShockHound, in an attempt to completely fill an iPod nano with as few songs as possible. (You guys remember ShockHound, right? Hot Topic Inc’s scrappy DRM-free MP3 site that launched last fall, we hosted that party at the Troubadour with Titus Andronicus and No Age, yours truly was mumbling belligerently onstage briefly…ringing any bells? No?) Time will tell if I should have added a “paid content” clause and a few $s to that good ol’ ShockHound ad contract, for I’m giving them mad publicity today.

Background
I was shopping around for Miles Davis mp3s out of curiosity yesterday morning, and I discovered that one can in essence buy a $20 album for less than two bucks, once you figure out who’s got what tagged “Album Only”. (N/B: You are an absolute fool not to download both tracks off Pangaea below for a whopping $1.98, but I’ll save the speech as tastes differ in these waters.) Many commercial digital offerings on the market will throw one or two songs into the dreaded “Album Only” category, rendering your digi-album or playlist incomplete unless you kowtow to the ugly ploy which forces you to buy a full album at a higher price just for one song (how very 20th century). Well, fuck that. As you’ll soon see, the labels don’t even properly manage “Album Only” tracks on a vendor-by-vendor basis.

Why the long songs?
After I’d finished with Miles, I stuck with very lengthy selections for this exercise in order to see who was pricing on a weighted scale based on song length (Amazon, albeit sporadically), and who was foolishly giving away 45-minute 80mb files for 99cents (both, to my surprise). Unfortunately you still can’t buy something like the hour-long opus Sex by The Necks anywhere digitally (and jesus! I’m holding onto that CD, because the fucker is apparently selling for $36 retail, go figure); nonetheless, I feel I’ve managed to amass a somewhat well-rounded cross-section of ridiculously long mp3s below. Note that every so often I threw a curve ball just to gauge the libraries of both vendors. (To further complicate the price-by-length irregularities, a friend has pointed out that a 15-second track by Melt Banana is going for $0.99 on both sites, but that’s a separate chart for a separate day. Takers?)

Regarding MP3 Quality
Amazon claims to have 256kbps mp3s; Shockhound claims 192kbps minimum. So both of these options already beat the pants off of iTunes (128kb with DRM) and iTunes Plus (256kb DRM-free – but AAC, not mp3, not exactly universal out of the box and often pricier to boot).

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO…
»continue reading Amazon vs. ShockHound: Where to Buy Your Long-Playing DRM-Free MP3s And Why

(Developing) ANNOYING PARKING LOT LOUDSPEAKER OUTSIDE BOX-STREWN, CHAPTER-LADEN SUNSET JUNCTION BEHEMOTH REPEATEDLY LOOPING NONSENSE BLATHER ABOUT REFUSING TO PLAY BRIT, PUFFY

Yep, it’s true. We should have some interesting takes on the retailer’s death later today. For now, CNNMoney.com has the scoop:

The retailer’s Web site and call center will cease to operate after Jan. 18.
Circuit City said employees will receive 60 days notice of the termination.
Employees who are laid off earlier will get pay and benefits for the 60-day period beginning Friday. (source)

Such bullshit. Where the fuck do I go to pay $136 for a 6′ HDMI cable now (no interest, 3 mos). Where the fuck do I go to pay $69 for an RCA cable. (Did You Know? “Old-school” Ludicroid-Marketing-Deprived RCA cables may be purchased at your nearest 99 cent store for, you guessed it, 99 cents) Who in the holy living fuck am I supposed to harass for a replacement fuse for this 37-year-old Harman Kardon? Etc.

Not done, bitches. Guess where I just blogged this post. CIRCUIT CITY, MOTHERFUCKERS. WHERE THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO BLOG NOW. Shit’s dyin’ all ’round me this week. Such bullshit.
»continue reading CIRCUIT CITY TO CLOSE MOTHERFUCKIN’ DOORS

The sign itself is modest, muted behind tinted glass, belying the certain impact the contents of its message are soon to reak upon a neighborhood and retail district. It is a simple banner, somewhere between the sort you might make at Kinko’s for a birthday party and one you might hang over an aircraft carrier deck to celebrate the victorious end of the Iraq war, bearing four words in happy fonts that simultaneously elicit giddy anticipation from prospective shoppers while striking the fear of God into the very hearts of Westwood Village food and drug retailers: Trader. Joe’s. Coming. Soon.

»continue reading New Trader Joe’s Taking Shape in UCLA Westwood Village Area

HEADS UP
Record Store Day @ Amoeba Sat 4/19

Give Thy iPod A Breather:

On Saturday, April 19th hundreds of independently owned music stores across the country will celebrate “Record Store Day.” On this day, all of these stores will simultaneously link and act as one with the purpose of celebrating the culture and the unique place that they occupy both in their local communities and nationally.

Amoeba Records Hollywood, arguably the best record store in the nation, will have giveaways, sales, DJ sets by Peanut Butter Wolf & The Donnas and general mayhem from 12-6pm. Also: Ron takes off his shirt in the jazz vocal stacks @ 4pm. You have been warned.

» Amoeba Hollywood Record Store Day Video feat. rare Weird “Al” Yankovic cameo
» List of participating record stores nationwide

While it is not without some regret we mark the closing of yet another shuttered record shop–albeit in this case, just one outlet of a behemoth chain–this thread is not for maudlin memories, but for Losanjealenos to post updates on the current percent of markdowns and the state of the remaining product as the Sunset Megastore approaches it’s February closure.

We may or may not admit it, but the %-off n influences what we may or may not take home on a sliding scale: i.e., The higher the markdown = the lower our standards = increased willingness to take home some dubious product to plug some gaps in our collections. Of course complicating this is the variable that the longer you hold out on pulling the trigger on a buy, waiting for a higher markdown, the more likely your product is going to be snapped up by others.

The below handy table can help guide your purchases, with an aim to help you snap up what you’re after before the shelves are bare.

Construction notices are up in the vacant storefront at the NE corner of Pico/WW Blvds, telegraphing an impending retail launch. The space—if I recall correctly, originally a Good Guys A/V joint and then, briefly, just before its current dusty state, a hasty incarnation of Comp USA— is being primed for the opening of a new Guitar Center location. It will be interesting to watch how this store takes root in the area and what, if any, effect it will have on nearby music shops.
»continue reading Guitar Center Coming to the Westside

Los Angeles is a melting pot, so it’s no surprise that there are foreign-owned small businesses whose storefront signs are sometimes lost in translation.

There’re also the businesses that disregard conventional rules of advertising and make up their own.

Then there are businesses with storefronts that are so out there, you can’t even speculate on what the fuck they were thinking.

My best guess? It’s an all-age dance club where the bouncer won’t let you in unless you’re dressed as a deranged serial killer. That’s a real shitty guess. So I have no clue.
»continue reading Signs You’re In Los Angeles

Verily brethren, Rev. Losanjealous was well pleased to learn this company walked in the way of the Lord. As they shew on their shopping bags.

In today’s sermon we will consider the following passages from LJV (Losanjealous Version)

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting Plastic Headbands and Ruched Knit Tops.” (John 3:16)

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they buy retail.”(Matthew 6:28)

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Diners Club.”(John 14.6-7)

Forever and ever 21, Amen.