With the recent announcement that Kmart would be closing a number of locations due to their parent company, Sears, filing for bankruptcy protection, I found myself lamenting the loss of yet another source of adolescent musical discovery.
Granted, Kmart is perhaps the last remaining holdout in a music retail landscape decimated by merger-mania and bankruptcy, outlasting Tower Records, Virgin Megastore, Musicland, Woolworth's and many once-thriving ma & pa record stores, but how they managed to hold on as long as they did after losing the plot in the mid-80's remains a corporate mystery for the ages.
Looking back, there was something magical about those chain record stores: the Musiclands, Kmarts and Woolworth's, that you just couldn't get anywhere else.
Hidden just beyond the flashy "New Releases" and Top 40 singles sections, tucked off to the side or buried deep in the rear of the store behind the "XYZ-Misc" section and black light posters sat bin after bin of records and tapes that time had seemingly forgotten.
While the cut-out bins (named for the process of "cutting out" a chunk of the cover to indicate a deleted title) were often loaded with albums and tapes carrying the remains of ten different price tags charting their sad descent from "hopeful new release" to "last stop before the dumpster", there was always the chance of the occasional import that was otherwise unavailable in the States that had somehow managed to fall between the cracks.
If not for such sightings, my collection would more than likely remain free of such unheralded innovators as Wayne County & The Electric Chairs, Can, and Sham 69, to name but a few.
As the music industry foolishly places less and less priority on physical product, not only are their fewer brick & mortar locations to buy albums, cassettes or CD's, the cut-out bin itself has almost disappeared from the landscape as well.
If not for the cut-out bins, I'd have never been able to afford to take as many chances as I did on acts as diverse as the Tubes, Graham Parker & The Rumour, Rick James, Talking Heads, Rod Stewart, Black Sabbath, and Sparks.
I'd have also never enjoyed a teenage chuckle at the sight of yet another Peter Frampton album that was doomed from the get-go for not being Frampton Comes Alive Pt. 2.
In that sense, a trip through the cut-out bins was as educational to the young music lover as any rock documentary or MTV binge.
By that, of course, I am referring to the perilous, shark-infested waters of music retail where, if your latest album does not perform well almost immediately, it is unceremoniously yanked out of the bins and sent back to the distributor where it is defaced and shipped back to the very same retailers as a non-refundable budget cut-out title.
Of course, not all major labels participated in the "cut-out" business. While Warner Brothers titles seemed to account for a majority of the albums in your average cut-out section, CBS (Sony) titles were noticeably absent, which annoyed this music fan to no end because most of the bands I was hoping to find back in the day were signed to that label. Hence, I wound up paying full price in order to take a chance on my first Clash and XTC albums.
What CBS would do, instead, was merely add said title to their "Nice Price" budget category and sell at a reduced rate that was still pricier than your average cut-out title.
What was most enjoyable about the cut-out bin experience was that, after a band managed to break big, like the Human League had done with "Don't You Want Me", you could retrace their earlier development by picking up deleted import copies of their first two albums Reproduction and Travelogue.
Sure, if you were looking for something exactly like the music found on their hit album Dare, you were bound to be disappointed, but if you listened with an open mind, you could truly make some friends for life, which is what listening to music is all about.
If only the major labels understood that.
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no refunds