This past weekend my favorite record store closed, Easy Street Records in Queen Ann. Fortunately, they still have their flagship store in West Seattle but who wants to go all the way out there??
Anyway, Ryan posted about this earlier but I just wanted to do a follow up post.
I went there twice last week. Once on Wednesday for one last purchase. While I was there, I actually got a little emotional. Well, I almost did. There were people around. I'm really happy about my last purchase there, though. I bought the Black Belles record. They're one of those cool, hot chick rock bands that I love so much. Not to mention, they record with Third Man Records (AKA Jack White's record label). Here's a cool video of them.



Moving on. My second and last visit to the Queen Anne Easy Street Records was Friday night. Their last show. Yo La Tengo played, which I missed because I have this really dumb thing called a job. I had a few friends go for the show portion of the evening and they said it was PACKED. One of my friends had to wait in line for 45 minutes just to get in. I also missed this really epic moment brought to you by KEXP DJ and The Young Evils band member, Troy Nelson: The rest of the evening was consumed with great music and dancing. They also had Empire Records playing in the back ground. Which was incredibly appropriate.
The night was the perfect send off for the greatest record store in Seattle. I remember the first time I went there. I was in high school and my brother and I had some time to kill during Bumbershoot weekend so we went to check out this record store we'd heard about. We both immediately fell in love. All through high school and whenever I was home from college, I would drive all the way to this store from North Bend (about a 45 minute drive) just to go there. I went there for all my music needs. Anytime someone would come visit me, I would always take them there and they would also fall in love. I even applied for a job there once. It would have been a dream to work there. It was such a great store and will be severely missed. So, goodbye Easy Street Records (in Queen Anne). You will always have a special place in my heart.

Posted by Tori

Another one bites the dust. One of my favorite record stores is closing this month because of steeply increasing rent in a near downtown Seattle neighborhood. So this is my call to the world wide interweb... buy some damn records, CD's and tapes at your local record store because it may not be there tomorrow.

The Easy Street records in Queen Anne Seattle is closing January 18th. There will, however, be one final in-store performance by none other than Yo La Tengo. So if you are in Seattle go check that out and send Easy Street off with a bang! I myself purchased a fare share of CD's and records there and even caught one in store (shout out to Joe, Zeb and Leah!) Luckily there is a second location in West Seattle that has a great selection of new and used vinyl and CD's plus a cool cafe.

Hopefully record store closures do not become a trend though this is not the first and probably not the last.

-Earl