Amoeba music

I just got back from almost two weeks in LA…while there, my friend took me to the amoeba store in hollywood

my god…I could live in that place. We only had about an hour, and it felt like I barely got started looking at stuff. it basically just took that long to go through the used rock cd's. I was tempted just to find a sleeping bag, a corner, and just live there for awhile….just an amazing record store

if youre ever in LA (I think there's one or two in the bay area as well) check it out…..

oh, and we saw Grant Lee Phillips in this incredibly small club (maybe 50 seats)…great set, and evidently, he plays there almost every week now (or has been for awhile)

The original is on Telegraph ave. in Berkeley, and the San Francisco store is in the Haight-Ashbury, right next to Golden Gate Park. All are great.

Was the club called "Largo"?

Originally posted by stu47:
I just got back from almost two weeks in LA…while there, my friend took me to the amoeba store in hollywood

my god…I could live in that place. We only had about an hour, and it felt like I barely got started looking at stuff. it basically just took that long to go through the used rock cd's. I was tempted just to find a sleeping bag, a corner, and just live there for awhile….just an amazing record store

if youre ever in LA (I think there's one or two in the bay area as well) check it out…..

oh, and we saw Grant Lee Phillips in this incredibly small club (maybe 50 seats)…great set, and evidently, he plays there almost every week now (or has been for awhile)

Been to the SF store a few times. Great store, great town.

I was assuming the same thing…Largo is an excellent place to see a show. Small, intimate, no chatter, dim lighting, great sound, etc.
Yeah, he's been playing there regularly for a bit.

Originally posted by Rhett Miller:
Was the club called "Largo"?

Originally posted by stu47:
oh, and we saw Grant Lee Phillips in this incredibly small club (maybe 50 seats)…great set, and evidently, he plays there almost every week now (or has been for awhile)

yeah, it was the largo

great club….my friend saw hayden there in early august, and raved

Originally posted by MiloGTC:
the San Francisco store is in the Haight-Ashbury, right next to Golden Gate Park.

I make a bi-weekly trip there. Heaven on earth.

Originally posted by chaz:
Been to the SF store a few times. Great store, great town.

when i visited sf this summer, i went to the haight street amoeba. i too could have lived there for a week and i STILL wouldn't have been done. sf was so awesome.

I was a bit disappointed the first time I went to San Francisco. For some reason, I thought it was going to be this mecca of alternative-ness and it turned out to be more of a dot-com yuppie mecca than anything else.

Originally posted by chaz:
Been to the SF store a few times. Great store, great town.

Originally posted by Rhett Miller:
I was a bit disappointed the first time I went to San Francisco. For some reason, I thought it was going to be this mecca of alternative-ness and it turned out to be more of a dot-com yuppie mecca than anything else.

Originally posted by chaz:
Been to the SF store a few times. Great store, great town.

you should have been there the day jerry died. . .harsh bud, man.

Hey, Vansmack. What's the name of the record store down the street from Amoeba in Berkeley? I like that one as well. I can't remember the name but have the feeling it is something communist-sounding?

You're thinking of Rasputin.
They have stores all over SF. Another good place.

It's probably just too expensive a town to be the mecca you expected anymore. Still I love that town. Great food, neigborhoods,walkable,plenty of transit options and it probably doesnt hurt that all 3 times I've been there I left behind shitty winter weather for great sunny warm weather. Not the norm I know, I just got lucky with the weather, that's all.

A friend of mine blames the .com boom and crash for the decline of the local music scene there…bands couldn't survive cuz practice spaces were so damned expensive as real estate prices sky-rocketed during that short live economic boom. That and the popularity of techno-type music. At least that's his theory.

Originally posted by Rhett Miller:
I was a bit disappointed the first time I went to San Francisco. For some reason, I thought it was going to be this mecca of alternative-ness and it turned out to be more of a dot-com yuppie mecca than anything else.

Originally posted by chaz:
Been to the SF store a few times. Great store, great town.

Chaz: speaking as a native San Franciscan, it seems to me that your friend is more or less right … the fact that the dot-com implosion has leveled things out just a bit, pricewise (SF was never cheap) hasn't brought many of the departed back, nor have recent efforts by some of the dot-com nouveau riche to restore things by, e.g., opening huge "affordable" new practice spaces and recording studios.

I think the Bay Area scene also suffers, to a lesser extent, from the same problems I see in the DC/Baltimore area (and, I guess, most other large metro areas): creeping cover-band-itis and the Clear-Channelization of many of the larger venues. There's still a lot going on any given week, though … we *are* still in the top five cities that enjoy live music per capita … just a bit less on the more underground levels.

ps: "vansmack," are you the same person who used to post punk bootlegs on sharingthegroove.org under that name? if so, thank you for that.

Originally posted by bellenseb:
You're thinking of Rasputin.
They have stores all over SF. Another good place.

That's it! Thanks!

Originally posted by Rhett Miller:
I was a bit disappointed the first time I went to San Francisco. For some reason, I thought it was going to be this mecca of alternative-ness and it turned out to be more of a dot-com yuppie mecca than anything else.

You're right. It's hardly the Mecca that is Springfield, VA. Moveover neighbor, I'm coming home….

Originally posted by bellenseb:
You're thinking of Rasputin.
They have stores all over SF. Another good place.

The Rasputin in Berkeley is far superior to the one in Downtown SF. It is also better than the Amoeba in Berkeley. But the Amoeba in The Haight I find to be the best in terms of both price and selection.

All of which are better then anything I've seen in the greater DC/Baltimore area.

Originally posted by vansmack:

Originally posted by bellenseb:
You're thinking of Rasputin.
They have stores all over SF. Another good place.

The Rasputin in Berkeley is far superior to the one in Downtown SF. It is also better than the Amoeba in Berkeley. But the Amoeba in The Haight I find to be the best in terms of both price and selection.

All of which are better then anything I've seen in the greater DC/Baltimore area.

which goes without speaking

It's the Louvre of record stores; there's no way you could do the whole thing in day.

Originally posted by vansmack:

Originally posted by bellenseb:
You're thinking of Rasputin.
They have stores all over SF. Another good place.

The Rasputin in Berkeley is far superior to the one in Downtown SF. It is also better than the Amoeba in Berkeley. But the Amoeba in The Haight I find to be the best in terms of both price and selection.

All of which are better then anything I've seen in the greater DC/Baltimore area.

and the rasputin in san jose is basically just a chain store. however, i'll still take my san jose streetlight records, if only because there are less hippies there - and i have such fond memories of just going there in high school because i had nothing else to do but go through the $3 and under bins.