record shopping in Pittsburgh

Greetings from the Steel City. Today was spent record shopping, something I look forward to when I'm in town. Iowa City just doesn't have much to offer in the way of good record shopping, so it's always a treat to do some digging at Jerry's Fine Used Records when I'm home.



Over the years, I've found that my favorite way to experience Jerry's is to go alone and go early, giving myself ample time to dig through the seemingly endless collection vinyl Jerry's offers. Today was one of those days. I would venture to say that I spent between 90 minutes and two hours there. $60 later, I came out with a stack of roughly 15 LPs/12"s. Being that record shopping in Iowa is generally fruitless, I allow myself to splurge when I go to Jerry's. As always, I found I couple of things I was specifically looking for, but mostly I came back with dusty gems found by digging through the store. Mostly I came out with a lot of funk records. Excellent.

Don Lindich recently did a great piece on Jerry's (with lots of great photos) on his Sound Advice blog. Check it out. A warning to those of you that have never been to Jerry's: the photographs may give you a heart attack.

Jerry also does a great deal of online auctioning through his site - you can find a lot of great stuff there too if you aren't in the Pittsburgh area.

Jerry's Records website

I also stopped by Attic Records.

I literally hadn't been there since high school, so it was about time. I recalled them having a really good selection of 12 inches. They still do, although that area of the store is incredibly difficult to navigate.



To their credit, they were hit incredibly hard by a flood in 2005, so it's good to see them still there at any rate. I restrained myself there, picking up only Marvin Gaye's Super Hits LP, which I've been after for months. (It's the only collection that gathers all of those great early singles like "Hitch Hike," "Ain't That Peculiar," "Wonderful One," etc.) So I left pleased. I saw a lot of stuff I wanted, but figured I'd already spent enough money for the day.

When I'm in Pittsburgh, I also tend to make the rounds to various locations of The Exchange (a regional used cd chain), but that will have to wait until later.

I'll have some more odds and ends from the web in my next post, so stay tuned.