Camelot Music was the single retail music store that completely transformed my vision of…well…retail music. The key ingredient to my love affair with this mall spot was that they had bins and bins and bins full of deleted and cut-out CD titles, with most at a $1.00 pricetag.
I should also mention that in 1991, when I discovered this chain, I was a first year student at Carthage College. As a Detroit-area transplant in Kenosha, WI, it was heartbreaking to find that this marvelous retailer had not yet expanded into Michigan, and the area malls became a deeply abundant random library of forgotten and ignored talents – the likes of which I wouldn’t experience again until the rise of the Internet.
I later returned to that SE Wisconsin/NE Illinois region in 1995, and was astounded by how many smaller “Mom & Pop”-type music shops had a set up a delicious assortment of out-of-print “nobody wants ’em so we’re selling ’em for cheap” CDs. This was a point in time when many of the independent metal/thrash labels were folding, so discs on labels like Noise, Roadracer/Roadrunner, New Renaissance (and other tiny labels) were being peddled for next to nothing.
It’s not major surprise that the majority of those classic death/thrash metal titles are now treasured and sought-after rarities. And the memories are grand, yes.
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