Dusty Groove America Makes Best Record Store List

By Marcus Gilmer in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 19, 2008 7:20PM

This will come as no surprise to music-savvy Chicagoans, but despite the popularity of big chain stores like Best Buy and Target, independent record stores still actually exist. Earlier this year, we celebrated Record Store Day and now Paste Magazine has named their top 17 record stores in the U.S. of A. We're not surprised by the inclusion of some of the more well known stores (Amoeba Records in L.A., Criminal Records in the ATL, and Waterloo in Austin), but we did raise an eyebrow when we saw the lone Chicago entry on the list: Dusty Groove America (1120 N. Ashland Ave), tabbing it "the best place to buy funk records no one's ever heard of." Don't get us wrong. Dusty Groove is an excellent establishment, especially if you're looking for funk and soul records and national recognition is always good. But we couldn't help wondering: whither Reckless? Or Gramaphone? Or...well, countless other fantastic record stores in the Chicago metro area?

With iTunes, Amazon's new DRM-free mp3 store, and many independent record labels and artists offering music to consumers directly via the web, not to mention the more nefarious means of downloading music (not that we condone this), we're hard pressed to think of a recent occasion when we rushed to a record store to get our grubby hands on a new release, which is kind of sad. Some may ask, "Why leave the house when we can purchase the new Futureheads or Erykah Badu in our pajamas with a single click?" And we have a hard time disagreeing. But we still love wandering the shelves, flipping through racks of CDs and vinyls, looking for something specific or maybe just something new, and the camaraderie of fellow music nerds like us.

What say you, dear readers? What are your picks for Chicago's best record stores?