What was your favorite music store as a kid?

Dave Phillips Music & Sound in Phillipsburg NJ
It wasn't the biggest store around but they had a great selection, very friendly staff, and if it wasn't for this store I can confidently tell you my friends and I wouldn't have been able to restock on sticks, heads, strings, picks, etc when we were just starting out.


I assume you went to the old location as well, but I don't know-- maybe you're too young for that. But I bought my first "real" drum set there-- a five piece Tama Swingstar-- some time around 1981 or 82. Loved that place. My friends and I used to drive over there from Bethlehem and then go to Toby's Cup for hot dogs and shakes.

Back then we also had National Noise on 7th Street in Allentown and Kempfer music on Main in Bethlehem, plus a few smaller places.
 
Modern Music in Dudley, got my first guitar from there which I still own and a couple of others which are still going. My Dad went there all the time in his playing days and passed that on to me. I think he got his Framus 12 string from there in 1970.

It was a tiny shop that was used by Slade, Dexy's Midnight Runners, Bob Plant and John Bonham when he lived in Dudley. Alas the owner Bob retired in the early 00s and died about 10 years ago.

All the little places here have been lost to the big chain store and online.
 
DRUMS - Crafton Pennsylvania

It was a great shop owned by Thomas LaFlame, a great drummer, great teacher, and really nice guy.

Edit: They used to advertise in the back pages of Modern Drummer Magazine back in the day.

In 1975 I saw a blakrome Slingerland five-piece kit in the window. It had a virgin bass, and the 12" and 13" toms were mounted on a stand. (An unusual setup in 1975.) THAT was my dream kit. Seventeen years later I stumbled upon that kit used in another shop. I bought it and still own it today. I keep it set up where we rehearse. (I found an 18" floor tom on Ebay years later and added it.)

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Some of you may recognize the logo. I took a photo of the sticker inside the bass drum the other night at rehearsal.

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I took the photo through the batter head, so the image isn't great.
 
Mine in the days was a department store called La Bonanza on my native island of Curacao. We did not have any real music stores back then in the late 70's, beginning of the 80's.
 
Hey! I worked at Strawberries! Two of them, actually—one in Avon, Connecticut and the other in West Hartford. By far the best job I ever had, and I have had some fantastic jobs since.
My mom loves music too. She would take me to Strawberries all the time. It was one of my favorite places to go.

When I turned 16 I got a job at Wendy's. Strawberries was right across the street. I would walk from school and hang out there until I had to work.
 
I assume you went to the old location as well, but I don't know-- maybe you're too young for that. But I bought my first "real" drum set there-- a five piece Tama Swingstar-- some time around 1981 or 82. Loved that place. My friends and I used to drive over there from Bethlehem and then go to Toby's Cup for hot dogs and shakes.

Back then we also had National Noise on 7th Street in Allentown and Kempfer music on Main in Bethlehem, plus a few smaller places.
I always went to the one on memorial parkway not too far from the old Pburg Highschool, the building built on the hill with the shipping/receiving garage on the lower left hand side and the store + lesson rooms on the upper right hand side. My first kit also was a five piece Tama rockstar! It was an early 2000s in wine red. Toby's is still around but it's no longer owned by that same old angry dude, a younger bunch came in boosted the prices and are charging for nostalgia. I was always more into the Alpha Pool Room dogs. My wife went to pburg high and I went to Easton high, our senior year was the 100th anniversary of the big turkey day game.

What, no love for Jolly Joe Timmer's House Of Music? lol must not be a polka fan ;)
 
Billy Hyde's in Sydney near Central Station.
As a young teenager I was spellbound in that store.
The used drum section... Picked up a 13" Yellow Tempus Snare made from some fancy fibre material. I should never of let that drum go. I heard a recording I did of it recently from an early gig of mine and am kicking myself for selling it.
 
As a kid? There was ONE music store...a local Bible Bookstore (I dubbed it the Bible Crook store). They charged ABOVE list prices for their gear. They made their money by supplying all of the local churches with those horrible Peavey speakers and powered heads and cheap mics. They made an absolute killing back in the day. I heard about other music stores, but they were hours away from where I grew up. You think my parents were going to jump in the car and drive an hour or two just so I could go look at stuff? No way. No how. We did have local pawn shops and they would occasionally get a drum set in stock, but they didn't keep it long because they always took up too much floor space. There's a yellow set of Pearl Exports that circulated for about 15 years in all of the pawn shops around here.

I didn't go to my first real music store until I was in my 20s which was Mars Music in Charlotte. I'd never seen anything like it. I've been playing drums for almost 30 years now, and I only visited my first drum store maybe two years ago.
 
I didn't go to my first real music store until I was in my 20s which was Mars Music in Charlotte. I'd never seen anything like it. I've been playing drums for almost 30 years now, and I only visited my first drum store maybe two years ago.

that is crazy!!

I am on the opposite side of that in that Columbus Pro Percussion was 1000' away from my best friend's house, so we could walk there (much to the salespeople's/owners dismay...at first), and it is now just a 10th of a mile from where I live and work. I am mnow refered to as a "charter member" customer and the owner actually has fond memories of me being in there way back in the early 80's. He still refers to me as "the Iron Maiden jacket" kid.

I could ride my bike to the other 2 stores in town as well.....
 
that is crazy!!

I am on the opposite side of that in that Columbus Pro Percussion was 1000' away from my best friend's house, so we could walk there (much to the salespeople's/owners dismay...at first), and it is now just a 10th of a mile from where I live and work. I am mnow refered to as a "charter member" customer and the owner actually has fond memories of me being in there way back in the early 80's. He still refers to me as "the Iron Maiden jacket" kid.

I could ride my bike to the other 2 stores in town as well.....

The closest business to my house was a tractor dealer and repair shop. The closest sidewalk to my house was a good 15 miles away when I was a kid. When my friends were going on vacation, I was shucking and silking corn, digging potatoes, stringing and breaking beans, and avoiding Solomon (the big red rooster) and the electric fence that kept the cows in. We might have made it to the beach every few years, but it was nothing extravagant.

I don't know man, I'm probably better off for how I grew up. There's something that resonates deep within me when I play country music because I truly have lived it. I was literally "Raised on on rural route three, out past where the blacktop ends..." I have a good education and a great job. I've not had to throw hay in years.
 
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Cintioli's Music, Phila. Benny and Margaret and their 2 Great Danes. I got my first 2 Zildjian A cymbals there. A 20" ride for 42 dollars and an 18" crash for 36 dollars. Circa 1971

Before that it was a little one man shop called Mercury Music. The old guy hated the fact that I would roll the drumsticks and pick only non-warped sticks. I was about 12. Circa 1970.
 
The closest business to my house was a tractor dealer and repair shop. The closest sidewalk to my house was a good 15 miles away when I was a kid. When my friends were going on vacation, I was shucking and silking corn, digging potatoes, stringing and breaking beans, and avoiding Solomon (the big red rooster) and the electric fence that kept the cows in. We might have made it to the beach every few years, but it was nothing extravagant.

I don't know man, I'm probably better off for how I grew up. There's something that resonates deep within me when I play country music because I truly have lived it. I was literally "Raised on on rural route three, out past where the blacktop ends..." I have a good education and a great job. I've not had to throw hay in years.

I hear ya...in my tweens and early teens - late 70's/early 80's - my parents would take us out to Illinois for 2 weeks to hang with our 2nd cousins and help on the massive dairy and wheat farm they had.....talking thousands of acres. My great grandmothers family started Dekalb seed company, and my dads cousin owns the original big family farm. Up before dawn to get cows fed, milked etc. Fixing broken down machinery and other items at the grain elevator and on the farm. Throwing more bails of hay than I would ever want count into the tops of many a barn....midwestern plains summer heat etc....just awesome!! Some of the best times were being there to watch the adults do business at the grain elevator when the trains would roll in and take grain away....such a massive operation.

It was a foray into the history of the family,, and also just learning old school values that us "city kids" would not have had otherwise, ,and there are sooooo many good memories of the times out there. 4th of July in the middle of nowhere....being able to sit in the yard of the farm, and see 4 different communities fireworks all across the horizon; late night strolls down the train tracks to look at the moon and experience the "still"; breakfast in the town diner on Sunday mornings;

Did that for about 6 years.

i wear my Dekalb hat at all of our gigs to remember that touch that the music brings to my memory
 
Mine was The Music Nook in Milford Ma. It was run by a wonderful man named Ron Pagnini. When I was 12 (in 1966) and lusting for drums I would go in and just stare at all the shiney sparkley drums and guitars. Mr Pag never chased kids out of the store for lingering, he'd just let you wander around and look and always engaged you in a conversation about music and gear. The best part was that every year Mr Pag would give me the Ludwig, Rogers, Gretsch and Slingerland catalogs for my very own and I wore those books out. It would be many years before I actually owned a Big-4 kit (eventually all of them) but the memories of Mr Pag never left me. Decades later when Ron Jr. took over the store I made it a point to go in and buy a kit from him as a tribute to a very nice and nurturing man. Great memories!!
Downey Music. in downey , ca . I remember going in there and drooling over the Ludwig and Slingerland kits. they had the Bonhamm Orange Vista lites which of course i wanted but couldnt afford.
 
Probably not my favorite as a kid as it was too long a drive for me at that time but I did enjoy visiting a few times.

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The guy who owned that store was infamous, I have heard, for being a an eccentric grouch and throwing people out!

My favorite music store was where I took drum lessons, Broad Music in Bloomfield, NJ, and Muscara Music in Belleville. Sam Ash in Paramus would be third.
 
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Cintioli's Music, Phila. Benny and Margaret and their 2 Great Danes. I got my first 2 Zildjian A cymbals there. A 20" ride for 42 dollars and an 18" crash for 36 dollars. Circa 1971

Before that it was a little one man shop called Mercury Music. The old guy hated the fact that I would roll the drumsticks and pick only non-warped sticks. I was about 12. Circa 1970.
Cintioli's also did fantastic Amp repair work! Was sad when Benny left us in early 2020
 
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