Rainbow Music—the last record shop in the East Village

By Jack Brummet, Indie Music Ed.

The last independent record store (and maybe record store of any kind) in the East Village is at 130 1st Avenue.  When I lived lived and worked in NYC, there were pocket music stores all around both the West and East Village.  Like the dozens of wonderful old bookstores along 3rd, 4th, and Broadway, they've disappeared.   And Rainbow Music is just barely hanging on. 

Rainbow Music is a typical, cluttered indie shop with stacks of CDs, tapes and videos on every square inch of floor and table space. But the owner know where to find everything. The shop doesn’t even have a cash register; the owner, known  as The Birdman (a former Wall Street analyst), does not actually know how to use one.  The former Wall Street analyst keeps Rainbow Music alive, for now. 

A Brooklyn filmmaker Jessie Aurritt put the Birdman’s story on film.  This is pretty cool.

    

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Music in NYC 1972-1977

I am reading a fascinating book about the NYC music scene from 1972-1977--Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever.  I arrived in NYC in '77.  The book details the emergence of hip hop and rap, the loft jazz scene, salsa, punk, the new serious music a/k/a/ classical of Steven Reich and Phillip Glass, and the new wave.  

It was pretty cool to be there and catch the tail end of it.  Anyhow, this reminded me of one night in 1977 when Kev Francis Aloysius Curran and I went to the opening of Hilly Crystal's new club in the East Village, CBGB 2nd Avenue, in an old Yiddish theater on 2nd Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets.  On the bill that night: The Talking Heads, The Ramones, Television, and Blondie.  The Hell's Angels, who lived across 3rd street from my future brother in law Colin, were out front of the theatre selling acid and nickel bags. The theater was almost 2,000 seats...way bigger than CBGBs proper.   Looking at who was playing, it's just stunning that it wasn't a sell out.  OK, rambling now. 

One of the most interesting facts in the book I'm reading is that the Talking Heads lived three doors up from our loft at 181 Chrystie Street in the East Village.  Keelin and I sublet a place there for three or four months.  I never saw any signs of the Heads, but we saw a lot of other weird stuff.   I still often listen to the Heads, Ramones, Blondie, and other bands from back then, but tonight I went back and listened to a couple of my Television CDs.  I'd forgotten just how good these guys were. . .

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