Where do you buy?

By Dean Kuipers

Dec. 19, 2002 12 AM PT

Special to The Times

Henry Rollins flexes at the edge of the tiny stage as his Rollins Band attacks a 20-year-old Black Flag tune.

“We’re tired of your abuse!” “Try to stop us, it’s no use!”

Rollins is glaring, sweating, crouching leonine before the bombastic sound, and as a fan jumps on stage to share the mic, punk’s hardest softie flicks him back into the mosh pit like a gnat. Hundreds of heads bounce in unison, some sporting crimson mohawks; others, in contrast, are close-cropped and gray.

This isn’t a club: It’s Amoeba Records’ sprawling Hollywood store. Yet the scene seems totally natural, as does the anti-authoritarian spirit of the song, which the entire store -- including the staff -- takes up at the chorus, fists punching the air: “Rise above! We’re gonna rise above!”

In the war for your ever-shrinking music-buying dollar, Amoeba is a battlefield, along with Tower Records and the Virgin Megastore. Hollywood’s three iconic record shops are strung along Sunset Boulevard as the three faces of serious music retail. Each offers competing visions of rock ‘n’ roll salvation. More than perhaps any other stores in the nation, each believes it is the real plug-in to the heart of pop culture.

These three stores also set the tone for music retail here, and for retail’s relationship with the music and movie industries. And in many ways, they represent three distinct ways to give the people what they want. Of the major chain retailers, Tower Sunset is the original, opening in 1970 and still the home of Hollywood’s superstar rock and pop. Amoeba, on the other hand, functions like a giant independent, a do-it-yourself palace of punk independence operating like dozens of local, independently owned stores throughout the region -- but more massive in scale and with more clout. The Virgin Megastore at Sunset Plaza, meanwhile, proffers a shiny, international (but Brit-inflected) take on pop, looking at music less as an art form with history and more as pure entertainment.

But in a town where entertainment is king and music is one of its main currencies, choosing a place to buy music is not just a matter of who has the easiest parking (Virgin takes that one, hands down). Where you buy your music also to some extent reflects one’s beliefs about the nature of pop culture, who owns it, and how to live it. It’s more than a battle for identity. It’s a struggle for the control of L.A.’s entertainment culture.

By the time Rollins and former Black Flag bandmates Keith Morris and Chuck Dukowski careen through a dozen tunes in support of a re-release of their punk club anthems, titled “Rise Above,” they’ve galvanized the entire cavernous store. Wave after wave of punks and music freaks peer over the record racks toward the stage in the back of the main room.

Though Black Flag’s songs may have originally been about nothing deeper than high school lunchroom conflicts, standing there surrounded by the shrink-wrapped goods that drive a $34-billion annual industry, deeper connections become clear: Corporations want to control your music and your live entertainment experience. Black Flag says fight back. “They hate us, and we hate them,” Rollins shouts in “Six Pack.”

Fittingly, he ends with a towering version of “My War.” “There’s not that many social environments out there in the world that aren’t bars where you can go listen to music and actually hang out and talk,” says Mark Weinstein, co-founder of Amoeba. “There’s a social connection here that’s huge.”

We stand in a loading bay, trying to find a few minutes of quiet as throngs push in to see the Black Flag reunion. Weinstein is a quick-witted, heavyset 45-year-old man with frizzy brown hair long enough to make you think he might have been a Berkeley hippie. Which is exactly where the first of Amoeba’s three stores opened in 1990. The name is a satirical take on what Weinstein and his partners Dave Prinz and Mike Boyder viewed as the methods of the large chain stores, which, in amoeba fashion, swallow up mom-and-pop record stores and replace them with centralized inventories dominated by major labels. True to the spirit of Berkeley, the trio saw profit in social connectedness. In fact, Amoeba started out selling mostly used albums, and today the store still won’t promote individual products.

To encourage an atmosphere of discovery, Amoeba doesn’t sell its rack or wall space for ads. So radio hits by Shania Twain or Eminem, which still make up the bulk of their sales, have to compete equally on the walls with, say, Echo and the Bunnymen or the Germs or the Carter Family. No video monitors push the Nick Carter single or Kylie Minogue. It’s an egalitarian approach in which the whole history of recorded music is represented, not just the newest.

On this Wednesday afternoon, like most days even when there isn’t an in-store performance by alt-rock heroes like Paul Westerberg, the place is jammed with Hollywood free thinkers. College-age punks in full regalia mix it up with hipsters in low-slung jeans and band Ts and reggae fans in rasta hats. But there is also an equal amount of more educated, somewhat more disheveled-looking lifetime devotees in their 40s and 50s who, Weinstein argues, have been alienated from live music venues and chain stores by the consolidation of radio and music media.

The reasons they come here are obvious: Even in obscure genres like dub or Japanese noise rock or a section called “Unusually Experimental Music,” there are individual bin cards for scores of artists who may only have one release. At any one time, the store has tens of thousands of albums in stock, and they’re heavily into used music, which keeps the prices of even the new albums low.

Amoeba’s range is encyclopedic, and you can’t really get the feel for it unless you come to the store. Two friends, BJ and Charlie, both in their 20s, mull over the pickings. They come here every three to four weeks and are into the low-priced used CDs.

“This is one of the best parts of L.A.,” says BJ. “I totally thought the town was dead until I found this place.”

Amoeba’s mix seems to be working. The year-old Hollywood store has been thriving during one of the biggest slumps in music retail sales in at least a decade. According to Nielsen Soundscan Inc., which has tracked shipments of albums since 1991, album sales this year are down 68 million compared to the same date in 2001, amounting to a 13% drop worth almost $1 billion. This comes on the back of a 5% drop in 2001, the first decline after five straight years of growth.

Amoeba, which opened here in November 2001, doesn’t yet have such year-to-year comparisons available. But the store grew exponentially in stock and traffic, according to Weinstein, and the staff went from 135 in 2001 to 185 today. Meanwhile, he said, Amoeba’s two other stores in the Bay Area both saw declines of about 5% in total sales this year, less than the industry average.

If Amoeba is more about the music than the stars, Tower and Virgin still believe in the transporting, magical glamour of celebrity, and no record store has ever represented Hollywood’s celebrity culture like Tower Sunset.

Doing an in-store performance and album signing at the original Hollywood Tower store is the Sunset Strip equivalent of Oscar night. Limos pull up and stars walk the red carpet. Spotlights split the sky.

Thousands of well-heeled fans show up and form orderly lines that snake around the tiny parking lot for hours. That’s why KISS came here last year to kick off its farewell tour. And Ozzy Osbourne and, just a few weeks ago, his daughter, Kelly. And Elton John, Ricky Martin, James Brown, Keith Richards, and countless others beginning in the heyday of what is now ‘70s classic rock, punk and ‘80s hair metal. The biggest stars want this Hollywood connection: Janet Jackson has it written into her contract that when she releases an album, she gets the roof display at Tower Sunset.

This is the quality that no other store has, says Jay Smith, general manager of Tower Sunset: “History. There is something still very exciting about doing an event on the Sunset Strip.

“The traffic slows down. It’s a big deal. Virgin can’t do that. Amoeba can’t do that. Even though it’s changed over the past 10 years considerably, there’s still that shiny luster there.”

Smith is a believer in Tower’s glamour, a sharp guy whose shaved head gives him the air of a college swimmer or a fitness guru and who likes his regular interaction with stars like Elton John. Who wouldn’t?

But he’s been with the company since ’82 and acknowledges that the firm,which had taken a downturn even before the industry-wide slump, may be leaning a bit too hard on its legacy. Historically, they push the big hits and their prices are usually a touch higher than discount chains. Inside the store, ads and video screens for all the hottest right-now artists fill the room with reminders to buy. That, says Smith, is what his customers want.

“Tower Sunset has a fairly affluent clientele,” he says. From his small office, he motions up into the surrounding Hollywood Hills. “They are extremely into music; they know what they want. Just prior to you being here, Neile Adams was in here, the ex-wife of Steve McQueen, and we were talking about music. That’s the caliber of people who are in here shopping.”

Indeed, on this Thursday afternoon, there are more staff than customers, who are older and more focused and bent on their purchases. It’s not a family destination, as other stores try to be. It’s hard to get to, and there’s little product for kids. People who want the bargains can shop Tower’s excellent full-service Web site (www.tower.com).

But Tower Sunset is special because it’s now become Old Hollywood. After a run of corporate expansion from 1996 through 2002 that saw Tower stores achieve a kind of sameness all over the globe, and the chain’s much-publicized financial troubles, Smith hopes it’s going to go back to its local roots: “We’re going to do that, be more grass-roots, and it needs to be that way,” he says.

The Virgin Megastore stands in stark contrast to these other two, and in some ways its philosophy is the easiest to take -- but only because it’s the least idiosyncratic and most in step with the malling of America. The Sunset venture was Virgin’s first in North America, opening in 1992, and the company wants to make sure the store reflects its clean, noncontroversial version of pop life. Virgin believes in putting on a show. It’s the home of bells and whistles, of popping visuals, of nifty gadgets, of deafening distraction.

“If you want to buy something that’s on the radio right now, this is the place to come,” says Rick Browning, from Canterbury, England, trying out the brand-new Virgin Megaplay kiosk, which reads a barcode on any album and plays one of 2.4 million 30-second song clips. “They will have it, and they’ll have dozens of it.”

As if to drive home his point, great banks of video screens all over the store flashed a Kylie Minogue concert video, always on the periphery of vision no matter where you let your eyes rest. “We’re trying to have a bit of fun,” says Virgin’s Dave Alder, senior vice president of products and marketing for Southern California, in a gentle accent from the north of England. “The important thing to us is generally stimulating the excitement and passion that we’ve always believed is synonymous with music and entertainment.”

To that end, Virgin does what it can to make sure its pop really pops. In true Brit fashion, whose music media famously crown a new “greatest band of all time” about once a fortnight, Virgin constantly highlights new releases by bands both known and unknown. It also supports new music programming by alternative stations like Santa Monica’s KCRW-FM. Video screens blast relentlessly.

On the other hand, Virgin’s staff and management also engage in some juvenile acting out. This Christmas, for example, the “Holiday Heroes” campaign features customers and employees -- including company founder Richard Branson -- dressed up in superhero outfits. It has nothing really to do with selling records. It’s just, well, about having a good time.

Virgin’s Sunset store has also made a crucial transition that neither Tower nor Amoeba has: It’s started doing in-store events such as signings and Q&As; that are more tied to booming DVD sales than flagging CDs. In the past year, the store has put on events with Ian McKellen for “Lord of the Rings,” Baz Luhrmann for “Moulin Rouge” and an unveiling for a “Scorpion King” billboard that featured a parade of live camels. The most well-attended event ever at the 10-year-old store was with Eddie Izzard. The U.K. comedian was kept in the store for more than five hours by a thousand fans during a recent signing of the DVD release of his Emmy-winning one-man show, “Dress to Kill.”

“We’re in a spiral, at the moment,” says Alder, referring to music retail. “There’s less money being spent on artists, on marketing and on creative approaches. That’s why we work hard to build an excitement and belief in music that really should be there.”

Picking up on the store’s new emphasis on DVDs, customer Christine Nelson, 23, says she prefers Virgin to Tower and Amoeba, but not for her music shopping.

“They have a really good DVD and music video selection,” she says. There is a note of reluctance to her answer and she feels compelled to add: “Well, I buy a lot of vinyl, and they don’t have a very good vinyl selection here.” She doesn’t do her real music buying here, just takes advantage of the good parking to go to the Laemmle Sunset Five theater and to check out Virgin’s high-powered visuals.

“I do most of my shopping at Amoeba,” she says.

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Five things you should know about:

Amoeba

1) Record geeks are mostly male, and most L.A. record-store owners and managers are men. But Amoeba is co-owned and managed by Jim Henderson and Karen Pearson, making Pearson one of the few female owner-managers in town.

2) The store loses money on its full selection of vinyl 45s, but considers it essential for real collectors.

3) Amoeba supports the programs of Internos Music, a charity providing music scholarships, instruments and instruction to underprivileged children, sometimes through the Silverlake Conservatory of Music, owned by Flea, the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

4) Employees hand out photocopied sheets describing other indie record stores, their specialties, and contact numbers.

5) Parking underneath the building is cramped and often full. Neighborhood meters are usually available, but involve a long walk.

Five things you should know about:

Tower Sunset

1) The original cool Sunset Strip record store. A favorite shopping spot for celebrities.

2) A leader in the Latin market. A Ricky Martin in-store performance for “La Vida Loca” in 1998 drew 8,000 fans, and since then Tower has continued to feature Latin artists.

3) Pioneered the use of original hand-painted versions of album covers and artists’ portraits displayed outside the store. The newest versions are silk-screened.

4) If you can’t find what you want in the small-ish store, the Web site has a selection that rivals any other (www.tower.com) and, best of all, you can order any item by phone at 1-800-ASK-TOWER, where a real live human will talk to you.

5) During in-store performances, traffic gets so snarled that all events are now coordinated with the city of West Hollywood. And parking? You’re on your own, Jack.

Five things you should know about:

Virgin Megastore Sunset

1) Cool holiday promotion: Now through Christmas, spend $50 in the store, get a coupon book worth $500 -- about $130 good for merchandise from Virgin, and the rest from partners like Virgin Mobile phones, Vespa, MTV and others.

2) You could be chosen to be a Virgin Holiday Hero, dressed in a superhero suit, with red shorts, cape and goggles. Why you would want to do this is another question.

3) The Virgin Megaplay kiosk is actually really cool. You can listen to just about any album in the store, though the machine will only play 30 seconds from each track.

4) Preview selected DVDs. If you’ve got two hours to burn while your girlfriend goes to work out at Crunch, just pop upstairs and watch “Austin Powers in Goldmember.” The whole thing.

5) Parking is genius, floor after floor of beautiful parking spaces under the building. Just going there relieves stress. Get validated and you walk away unscathed.

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Who, what, where and just how much

MAJOR LABEL: Shania Twain “Up!” (Mercury Nashville).

Amoeba: Many copies, $15.98 plus some used.

Tower Sunset: Many copies, $14.99.

Virgin Megastore Sunset: Many copies, $12.99

INDIE: Von Bondies, “Lack of Communication” (Sympathy for the Record Industry).

Amoeba: Carry it, but out of stock, $12.98.

Tower Sunset: 1 copy, $13.99.

Virgin Megastore Sunset: Do not carry.

U.K. IMPORT: The Libertines, “Up the Bracket” (Rough Trade).

Amoeba: 8 copies, $22.98.