Holiday, everyday!

Ode to the lost art of record hunting

July 1, 2007 at 3:47 am (music, Toronto, vinyl)

Jun 30, 2007 04:30 AM

Ben Rayner - The Star
Pop Music Critic

It’s hard not to view the death of Sam the Record Man’s landmark Yonge St. location as the beginning of the very end of the music-retailing business.

Sure, Sam’s wasn’t what it used to be – for the last few years, it’s been notably overpriced and understocked – but those huge, blinking discs outside were a beacon to many a deprived, out-of-town record shopper looking to stock up on tunes while visiting the big city.

When I’d come here from New Brunswick as a kid, my knowledge of Toronto geography could get me to the CN Tower and to Sam’s – and that was about it. The shop exuded permanence and, like many of us, I took it for granted that it would be a fixture of the downtown’s most famous strip forever.

Now, though, since Sam’s is following beloved Spadina Ave. electronic-music outpost 2 the Beat (R.I.P.) into that good night, I’m beginning to wonder if I haven’t also taken for granted that record shopping will be around forever.

Until recently, there was no greater pleasure available to the music fan than perusing the stacks at his or her favourite record store, but there seems to be a generation coming up behind us for whom iTunes and Beatport and the like have supplanted the physical act of shopping for vinyl LPs or CDs.

Could the day really be coming when the record shop – much like old-fart cranks such as myself who refuse to listen to music through computers – will be completely obsolete?

Horror of horrors, I hope not. Think what we’ll be missing:

Just being around all those records. Albums, glorious albums, as far as the eye can see. The sucking sound of plastic LP sleeves being pulled apart or CDs clacking against each other as you work your way to the back of the “Miscellaneous S” titles. The dust on your hands. The dude patiently waiting next to you for his own chance to dig into the same pile. Thinking about it fills me with an unspeakable love.

The thrill of random discovery. Yeah, I know, you can find everything online somewhere, but patiently scrolling through thousands and thousands of titles in hopes that something unexpected will leap out at you can’t compare to suddenly yanking an out-of-print New Order 12-inch from the bin or happening across an album – something by the Residents, perhaps – whose cover immediately suggests it’s something you’ve always needed to have and didn’t even realize it.

The self-righteous clerk. Can anyone shame a music fan more than the impossibly hip record-store employee who can’t disguise his contempt for your purchases? This endangered character has touched all of our lives at one point or another and inspired comic gold for the likes of the Kids in the Hall (“Do you have the new Pixies album?” “Yeah, it’s over there. But it sucks.”) and Jack Black in High Fidelity.

I was so terrified of the guy who used to run Birdman Sound at the end of my street in Ottawa that I’d go to other, lesser record shops to purchase records I assumed he’d think I should already own. Is there a sweeter breed of masochism?

The walk home. Downloading provides instant gratification, yes, but a visit to the record shop provides extended relief from life’s drudgery by allowing you that excitable trip home with a paper bag of new records or CDs tucked beneath your arm. The only thing more satisfying than finding the entire Killing Joke catalogue on vinyl is rushing home to immerse yourself in it. The journey is never fast enough.

The promise of more record shopping. As with any addiction, the promise of the next fix can be all-consuming and the spectre of total withdrawal is terrifying. Which is why, the passing of Sam the Record Man notwithstanding, I feel confident that the record shop will never completely disappear, no matter how much the industry contracts. The streets would fill with losers like me who suddenly have nothing to do with their Saturday afternoons.

Your Sam the Record Man memories

May 31, 2007 11:12 AM

We asked you to tell us your Sam the Record Man memories. Here’s what you had to say.

I’ve been going to Sam’s for nearly 45 years. My most memorable experience was lining up to buy the Beatles’ White Album on the first day it went on sale. A Sam’s employee was just taking the albums out of box and writing the price on the cover with a magic marker. Probably half my CD collection comes from Sam’s. I’ll be sorry to see it go.
Thomas Linderoos, Toronto

Sam’s will be missed. No other retailer besides the web had such a wide selection of artists and back catalog. I miss the Montreal store very much and would go to the Yonge St. store every time I came to visit Toronto. A knowledgeable staff and wide selection are now going to be even more difficult to find.
Kevin McCoy, Montreal

The legacy that Sam the Record Man has built should be honoured by the City of Toronto. It should be named a Historical Landmark and perhaps it could become the home of the Canadian Record and Music Hall of Fame.
Patrick Rutledge, Toronto

I remember going to Sam’s to find a record that I couldn’t find anywhere unless I ordered it from Europe. I was lucky enough that Sam himself was in the store that day. I asked a clerk and he then asked Sam, and low and behold, Sam came through with a copy. I even got it at regular price rather than import all because Sam and I had something in common: love of music. You will be missed.
Laurence Habel, Vancouver

Sam the Record Man on Yonge St. is as important to this city as the CN Tower. I will always remember taking the subway from Scarborough and spending hours in the store. I’d search every inch of the store buying music, compiling a wish list and talking to the staff about music. I will truly miss Sam the Record Man and will always look back at those excursions with a smile.
Troy St. Denis, Oshawa

I remember coming to visit my brother in hospital and going to Sam’s to buy him 45s from the CHUM Top 100. He developed quite a collection.
Elvina Barclay, Etobicoke

I remember visiting Toronto and buying records at Sam’s. It is a shame that this landmark could not survive. I would think a civic-minded individual or company would purchase the building and reopen it as a restaurant or music club, keeping the Sam’s name as part of Toronto landscape.
Mark Pardue, Fergus, Ont.

I still buy a lot of music from Sam’s, since they are more knowledgeable and carry more esoteric stock in music then the Big Box/Wal-Mart stores will ever sell. In the article it says that CD sales are down. Could it be that a lot of great artists get little or no radio play so people can’t hear them? So why would you buy a CD from an artist you haven’t heard before?
Alan Whitley, Toronto

When I immigrated to Canada in the early 80s from Vietnam, I knew nothing about English music. My sister’s boyfriend took me to Sam the Record Man. I was overwhelmed with the selections. I ended up making my first ever purchase of English music, a single LP of U2′s “With or Without You” at Sam the Record Man. I still have it at home.
Jett Chow, Toronto

Thanks to Sam’s and my father, my grounding in fine music started young and has continued undiminished for almost 70 years. I hope the thieving downloaders are happy with their handiwork.
Larry Solway, Toronto

Almost 30 years ago, I walked into the store looking for what I figured was an impossible find: a recording of the Christmas children’s opera Amahl and the Night Visitor for my Dad. Sam managed to floor me; I had looked by myself for half an hour before going to him and within 5 minutes he was back with a copy of the original recording from the CBS annual Christmas broadcast from 1951. So instead of sitting around a TV, we sat around the record player and had wonderful memories of Christmas’s long, long ago.
Judy Kennedy, Campbell River, B.C.

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SO LONG, SAM

July 1, 2007 at 3:39 am (music, Toronto, vinyl)

TheStar.com – entertainment – The final cut

`For Toronto music lovers for whom Sam the Record Man was the centre of the universe, the world will be an emptier place after today’

Jun 30, 2007 04:30 AM

GREG QUILL
ENTERTAINMENT COLUMNIST

Sam the Record Man’s flagship Yonge St. store, which closes its doors for the first time today, couldn’t withstand the dawning of the digital age as music downloads ate into its album sales.

It was like a trip to Mecca, or some other holy shrine, recalls Larry LeBlanc, music publisher, longtime Canadian editor of the American music industry magazine Billboard and the custodian of perhaps the largest private music library in Canada.

“If you loved music, and you were a serious record collector, Sam the Record Man was the only game in town from the time it opened in 1961 ’til … well, ’til now.”

‘Til today, that is.

 Photos: Items for auction

 CP Video: Hundreds throng store

Sam the Record Man’s Yonge St. flagship store, for decades the centre of an empire that spread across the nation from east to west and boasted as many as 150 regional stores in its retail empire, closes for good this afternoon.

It’s the end of the record retail business in Canada as we have known it, the end of an era. Toronto will never be the same.

Working at Sam’s was more than just a retail job

Recently, a lot of column inches have been devoted to delivering eulogies for Sam the Record Man since the announcement of its closing in late May. We’ve seen missives from customers who work as local writers to high-profile patrons such as renowned crime author Ian Rankin lamenting “the end of an institution” and “the end of an era.”

Internet retailing, computer file sharing, a collapsing music industry infrastructure, the effects of the globalization of culture, mass acceptance of portable, disc-free music-listening technology, a radical shift in musical tastes have all made Sam the Record Man – even the signature hometown store that survived the chain-killing bankruptcy a couple of years ago – a relic of the past.

Sales of CDs and music DVDs in Canada in the first quarter of this year fell by an unprecedented 35 per cent – to $68.7 million from $105.6 million in the same period in 2006 – the most drastic decline in “physical” music sales of any country in the world, according to figures released in April by the Canadian Record Industry Association. Unit sales for the same period were down 30 per cent, to 7.1 million from 10.2 million in 2006.

Sales of CDs and music DVDs in the U.S. during the first quarter of 2007 have fallen by about 20 per cent. Music industry sources point out these declines have been largely responsible for the closure of thousands of music retail outlets in both countries and for trimming inventory to a relative handful of top-selling artists.

For Toronto musicians and music lovers for whom Sam the Record Man’s three-storey building was the centre of the universe – with its garish “revolving” neon LPs overlooking the action on Yonge St. and beckoning the faithful, its overloaded bins, creaking stairs, burrow-like aisles, its hidden nooks and crannies, walls covered with posters and autographed photos of music legends, the dumb waiter bearing ancient or lost treasures from the basement, the third-floor trove of discounted deletes known as the Room Of Broken Dreams, the racks of foreign-language recordings, opera and folk music that no one else carried, the overworked but reassuringly professorial staff – the world will be an emptier place after today.

The twin discs – quintessential Toronto iconography that appears in countless images of the downtown core – will stay on the building. It was designated a heritage property last week, and its preservation will pay tribute to the Toronto that used to be.

“If you were from outside Toronto, Sam’s was magic,” Leblanc continues. “Sam’s had Sam.”

That would be founder and lifelong Canadian music booster Sam Sniderman, who on any given day for more than 40 years could be found just inside the door checking the comings and goings of his customers and staff, making sure you got what you came for and who would take things into his own hands if you didn’t.

“I swear, he knew every item in the building, and where it was,” LeBlanc says. “And if he couldn’t find a particular record, he’d make sure to get it for you, usually in a matter of days.”

Sure, Eaton’s and Simpson’s carried the latest 45s back when LeBlanc ventured in from Peterborough in his teens with his paper route cash in hand – “39 cents for a 45-rpm single, $3.98 for an LP” – on a Saturday morning. And A&A’s, Sam’s archrival, was just a few doors north selling records and – yuck! – books.

But if you wanted real music, not just the hits, not the records your parents would buy, but the music that came over your radio late at night from Detroit and Chicago and New York, or poured through the doors of nearby rock ‘n’ roll, R&B and folk joints, Sam’s was the only destination.

“You’d go with your buddies,” LeBlanc explains. “There was always a queue at the counter. We’d never seen so many records in our lives, and Sam always met you at the door, like P. T. Barnum pitching a show. He was proud to be a retailer. He used to say, `Anyone can sell you a record, but it takes a salesman to sell you two.’ “

And a lot of what Sniderman sold was music made by local artists who had no major label deals. The first time Gordon Lightfoot’s music reached the record-buying public was when his Two-Tones singles on the independent Chateau label appeared at Sam the Record Man on consignment.

“The same with Raffi’s first album, before he became a children’s entertainer,” continues LeBlanc. “If you were a Canadian artist with records to sell, Sam’s was the first place to stop. He’d take your stuff, front-rack it, put up a sign, point it out to customers. He’d put band gig posters in the front window or on the wall near the cash registers. He knew all of Canada’s music stars before anyone else. He was a friend to musicians. They loved him.

“On a Saturday afternoon during matinee breaks, Sam’s was where the musicians playing in the local bars went to stack up on the latest records. It was a gathering place. It felt like home to them.”

Veteran Toronto guitarist and songwriter Danny Marks remembers those days well. “Sam’s was my store,” he says. “I could walk there. I could find just about anything I wanted. They sold my records. They made me feel as if my music mattered. Like Sam Shopsy, Ed Mirvish and Bargain Benny, Sam Sniderman was one of those eccentric and inventive Jewish entrepreneurs who gave Toronto its character. He was a real hands-on guy. You don’t see that any more.”

Sam the Record Man was where Canadian blues legend Donnie “Mr. Downchild” Walsh remembers buying The Coasters’ Greatest Hits in his teenage years.

“You couldn’t get it anywhere else. Sam had all the music I listened to, stuff that was way off the beaten path, in every category. He put Downchild’s first album, Bootleg, in his window, and a pile right inside the front door. If you heard bands anywhere on the Yonge St. strip, you could walk down to Sam’s and buy their music.”

It was where Arkansas rocker Ronnie Hawkins and The Hawks – later The Band – bought the elemental R&B, blues and rockabilly records that inspired their raw and vital style.

“If it wasn’t in stock, Sam would order it for you,” says Hawkins, who first met Sniderman in 1958, when his store was a “hole-in-the-wall,” a radio shop.

“Robbie Robertson learned a lot of licks from the records we found at Sam’s. It’s a shame that it’s gone … it was a huge part of what made Toronto interesting.”
 

Working at Sam’s was more than just a retail job
Jun 30, 2007 04:30 AM

Ryan Watson
Special to the Star

Recently, a lot of column inches have been devoted to delivering eulogies for Sam the Record Man since the announcement of its closing in late May. We’ve seen missives from customers who work as local writers to high-profile patrons such as renowned crime author Ian Rankin lamenting “the end of an institution” and “the end of an era.”

Appropriate sentiments, of course, but for nearly 50 people, myself included, it’s also the end of our livelihoods. Sure, it’s just a retail job, not a “real job” (as many have put it over my five-year stay), but as the staff will testify, working at Sam’s meant more than just schlepping CDs.

Over the years, Sam’s developed a community feeling among its workers that had a way of inspiring loyalty unlike any other place. Several Sam’s staff members can count more than 30 years of service, including everyone’s favourite, Ken Slater, whose first month on the job was back when The White Album was a new release.

Outside observers who dismiss the value of working at Sam’s simply underestimate the unyielding grip music has on us and the intangibles that became invaluable to our daily experience – the thrill of randomly discovering new favourites like Spiral Beach, the Ex, New Young Pony Club and countless others, the buzz in the store when Johnny Marr dropped in to buy a Buffy St. Marie disc, trading arcane knowledge with the regular customers … The list of unofficial perks goes on and on, varying with each one of us.

Losing Sam’s also means losing an outlet for the largest selection of independent music titles in the country.

As the manager of consignment sales, I was responsible for only a fraction of the store’s revenue. Consignment sales were divided 80-20 in favour of the artist, but an incalculable amount of goodwill was also fostered through Sam’s legacy of supporting Canadian musicians.

Few other shops in the city now bother with accepting CDs on consignment, a sound decision logistically and perhaps economically as well, but a policy that emphasizes the importance of our role in the local indie community.

During the past four weeks, I’ve been swamped with paperwork in the basement tying up the accounts of hundreds of consignment titles, generally unaware of the degeneration the shop is undergoing upstairs.

But each time I’m paged to the main floor and see the bare walls, the chaos produced by the dozens of bargain hunters and the weary faces of remaining staff members, I get mixed feelings.

On the one hand, it’s a new world order in the music business, one that we all have to adapt to and change with and I should look forward to new opportunities.

But in the meantime, I know I’m going to miss this environment and the people who made it what it was – part business, part salon, part clubhouse.

Tomorrow, long after the doors of Sam’s have shut for the final time, 50 people, myself included, will wake up not only hung over from the piss-up the night before, but beginning the unenviable process of finding new work after having wrapped up an irreplaceable chapter of their lives.

It’s the end of an era indeed.

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