Flashback Friday: Record Stores Through the WPDH Years

There was something about new album release day that was like Christmas every week.

Usually it was a Tuesday, sometimes a preview would happen on a Friday but when you knew your favorite band was coming out with a new album, yeah I said album, you had to be at the record store before it was all sold out.

There were no text alerts or emails, maybe a call if you were a regular at your favorite shop, but that call came from a note the clerk left at the register. It was an event to walk by the store windows and see the displays of stand ups, record flats and posters announcing the arrival of that new release.

Some of the stores you shopped at in the Hudson Valley during the early PDH years included Media Play, Sam Goody, Record Town/Record World, Musicland and a handful of others that weren't at the mall. I remember a chain called Strawberries Records and Tapes that had a wall the length of the store that had nothing but cassettes behind Plexiglas. You'd reach your hand through one of the dozens of holes in the glass, pull out your cassette and drop it on a conveyor belt that ended at the front register. The hole was just small enough so that you couldn't pull a five finger lift.

Got a favorite record store you went to? A memory of hitting that store on release day? Share it with us as part of our look back at what made the last 40 years of WPDH great!