With the rise of online retailers and big box stores (Best Buy, etc.) and the general decline in hard copy sales of music, independent record stores have been shutting down at an alarming rate. Indie record stores, in addition to providing local and off-the-beaten-path music, are typically vibrant mini-communities within their larger, physical community.

So get out there and support your local indie record store today, Saturday, April 19, 2008! For more information, visit the Record Store Day site.

• Went down south to the Refresh ’06 conference with Cindy and Jeremy. We ran into a few friends and made a lot of new ones. The conference was educational and sparked a few ideas. The post-conference socializing (“networking” if you want to be a nerd about it) was excellent, I had the occasion to meet a lot of really cool people. SXSW is about four months away, but it seems like a long time to not see folks.
• AIM Pages launched. I started on this project way into its development cycle and was responsible for developing several of the interfaces (Quick Edit Mode, Buddy Invites, and Pictures). AIM Pages is a really cool use of a number of technologies and I have high hopes for the products future development.
• Got addicted to Twitter whilst in Orlando. Everyone admits the site is a useless time-wasting vortex. And yet, we can’t turn away.
• Jeremy Keith hits upon an interesting concept he’s dubbed portable social networks. Carbomb and I are working on an interface for this idea that we’re both pretty excited about.
• Several of us are putting together a recap of the Refresh ’06 conference for this month’s Refresh DC meeting. More info can be found on the site or on the event’s upcoming.org page.
• Mir (this band I’m in, you see) holed up in the studio this weekend to record. Twenty six hours later, we have drums/bass on seven songs and guitars on four of those. We’re looking to do vocals this coming weekend. It’s terribly exciting to hear.

So this is a little scatter-brained, but it is getting late.

Unfortunately, a buyout never came. What will happen instead is a sell-off of all inventory that will end the store’s brick-and-mortar presence. An ABC News affiliate story on the liquidation has more details.

Walking through the store tonight, if you ignored the plethora of neon-colored signs indicating otherwise, you’d never know the chain was going under. Of course, that is exactly why the store was so busy. Everything must go! All sales final! Discounts are currently at 10-30% but are likely to go deeper as time goes on.

The store’s misfit employees seemed to be in good spirits considering their predicament. I talked briefly with the guy who rang me up about the whole situation and we both agreed the situation was the worst possible outcome. He expressed his early hope that they’d at least become a Best Buy or similar.

I forget if it was Ben or Jon I was speaking to about this, but between the three of us, someone had the idea that an Amazon.com takeover of Tower would be just about perfect (in our minds, anyway). Amazon could easily use it as a brick-and-mortar interface for their CD/movie/book assets. Plus, they could likely pick up a good amount of material goods in the purchase.

Sadly, this scenario is not to be. My fear is that this event is heralding the end of music stores in general. Admittedly, the indie rock side of me always felt strange shopping at Tower. But despite their big-box status, they have/had a tremendously deep selection. Pricing on certain items aside, they also usually have/had pretty good sales.

Back to my point, Tower’s closing is a large nail in the coffin of brick-and-mortar music stores. Ask yourself, when was the last time you bought a CD? An actual, physical CD. For a good number of you, I imagine, it was a long time ago. The combined effects of rampant piracy and more legal avenues such as the iTunes Music Store have taken a very real toll on music retailers. The Kids demand the immediacy of Internet-delivered content. Me, I prefer the experience of milling about a record store (big or small) with friends and looking for music I didn’t know existed.

The times, as they say, are a-changin’…

When J-sin asked me if I’d like to interview the band, I jumped at the opportunity. With Nguyet’s help, I put together what I thought was a pretty good series of questions. I sent them off to J-sin and hoped that I wouldn’t come off as a rank amateur (which I was/am).

Good news is, the interview has just been published on J-sin’s site, Smother. J-sin gave me the thumbs up on it (thanks dude!) and it looks like the Nightingale enjoyed answering my questions.

Check out my interview with The Sound of Animals Fighting. Learn more about TSoAF at Wikipedia.

• Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands 10 – vote for them!
• Murphy’s Kids on MySpace
• Official Website