Montreal's finest and friendliest, CD Esoterik – great purveyor of all things experimental, local, used, new, rare, and divine – is closing shop. Sadness is widespread, but the sale is extensive.

Picked up the following LPs today, the day after the news, before everything's picked over:

Sun Ra & His Solar-Myth Arkestra "The Solar-Myth Approach Vol. 1"
Sun Ra & His Astro Infinity Arkestra "Atlantis"
Matt Valentine & Erika Elder "Fantastic String Music"
Low "Secret Name"
John Fahey "Hitomi"
Iron & Wine "The Creek Drank the Cradle"

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Hopefully, these will decide.

I love you for picking up Sun Ra. Want to pick up some cheap Sun Ra for me for Christmas? I'll return the favor somehow!

music store closings are always such a weird mixed-emotion experience. one that closed in Norman about 3 years ago had obscene sales and I think I bought about 15 CDs for something weird like $90--most of them new.

If Plan 9 closed while I lived in Richmond i'd die. Seriously. I wouldn't have a life anymore. It's gotten so bad that when i'm in the area I know I don't want to buy anything but I just want to go in and say hi to the employees and see how they're doing, and see if my favorite homeless man is sitting outside like usual. Richmond without Plan 9 would be a worthless city.

The manager of the Plan 9 on Cary used to manage the Plan 9 in williamsburg. He's nice and pretty funny.

I love me for it, too. I decided very recently that I would be diving headlong into a long-term committed relationship with Sun Ra, and so it was nice to see that they had a bunch of new and used vinyl left over. I did leave a bunch behind, Live At Montreaux, among others.

I feel bad because I talk to him all the time, and I never formally introduced myself to him, so i'm not really sure if we know eachothers names yet. Oh well, he's incredibly cool. He met Sun Ra, Bob Mould, and he got one of the guys from the Drive By Truckers into the Rolling Stones when the kid was like 11 years old. This man always has a story to tell. It's incredible. I love talking to him.


I hope we're talking about the same person. The older guy, he's not old but he's older than the other people that work at the store, right? I never asked anyone what their position at Plan 9 was so I just consider everyone to be an equal.

Straight to ebay i'd imagine.

What others, if you remember?

No way. There's no chance these are original pressings. They're going straight to my needle, that's what. I'm not at the point of selling my (Ninja Tune) records (that I'm not really interested in keeping) yet.

cemetrypolka: I remember that they had that Live At Montreaux (new and used), Strange Strings, and a couple others that escape me by name.

Ish,

ROTATE THIS!
620 Queen Street West
Toronto, ON M6J 1E4.

Favorite store in all of On-terry-erry-O.

Yeah, I like Rotate. I'm headed to Toronto later today, so I may pop in there over the weekend.

We're losing both of the non-chain stores that are left in my neighborhood as well.

My Generation in Cleveland was the best music store in the area, but it closed about a year or two ago. They had some amazing imports, like 15 albums by Coil at all times.

Now I'm stuck going to Borders, Best Buy, and Circuit City.

At least with Borders you can special order CDs on their website to pick up at your local store and they do stock some pretty neat stuff occasionally. They're a lot more friendly to the indie music scene than one might realize, at least in my area.

I didn't know they did that, are you still able to use coupons for those? My only complaint about Borders is that they don't usually stock the stuff I want.

It always sucks when good record stores close, and I feel for all of you who have suffered through those experiences...

However, I am living high and fine since I still have the Princeton Record Exchange open and thriving just down the road from me. Plus, both Tunes locations in south Jersey are great to shop at.

Technically you aren't allowed to use coupons on special orders, but whenever I flashed them a coupon, they let me use it. Maybe they do it for me because they see me in the store multiple times a week, but it's worth a shot.

For those of you who don't know the site, you can check inventory and special order CDs at the url below. It usually takes 1-2 weeks for a CD to come in, but it's a nice service if you pass a Borders on your way home.

http://www.bordersstores.com

Their cd's are never on the cheap though.

(They do the special order thing for books too.)

Well, I special-ordered something from in-store once, and they let me use the coupon, even though the special-order came in after the coupon expired. Plus, she was cute.

But I am in there several times a week, too, so perhaps it's the same reasoning going on. We'll see. I mean, worst case, I can wait until the special order gets put on the shelf, and then use the next coupon that comes up.