Music Overview
Music is what we do best. It’s what brought us to record stores when we were kids (I mean official kids, versus the large versions we are today), and it is our passion to this day.
If you see an album cover on this site - a hoodlum or honorary hoodlum has endorsed it.
The music pages are here to help you find the information that you need about new releases, concerts, things we recommend, exclusive CDs, used CD buying and selling, Arizona music, and the Music Biz itself. As you scroll down, the overview page also talks about some of the philosophies that help guide us musically.
Links to Music Section Pages
Used CD and Vinyl: Buying, Selling, and Trading
By the way, if you know of something excellent - something related to music, movies, or the rebellious side of pop culture - that we should be selling, sharing, listening to, or seeing… PLEASE let us know.
Weezer signs autographs for more than 600 excited kids at Hoodlums Music.
Hoodlums’ Philosophies on Music
Below you will find a recap of some of the key factors that influence the depth, type, and price of our music selection.
We try to concentrate on the music we like the best, which covers a lot of ground.
We love the Internet.
People always assume that record store owners hate the digital revolution. Not true. We’ve all got iPods (my kids too), not to mention digital cable, DVRs, and satellite radio. It can be tough to keep up with the constant tech change, but it is tough not to say the Internet is the best thing to happen to music since the Beatles. We ended up as record store owners because we thrive on music exploration - and the internet provides us, and the rest of the world’s music fans,more choice than we know what to do with.
Once the dust settles, and the labels have to relent and drop CD list prices, there could be perfect musical bliss for all of us.
We hate overpriced music. We love used music.
“Hate” is a strong word, but it is applicable here. Nothing makes us crazier than overpriced CDs, but unfortunately we can’t control the list prices. What we can do is search high and low to find great deals for you guys and ourselves.
Since used CDs are the best bargain on Earth, and we have control over the pricing of that product, we focus on used product above all other product lines. When it comes the new CDs, we try to take advantage of our love for more obscure classic (oxymoron?) album titles since they tend to have better list prices.
Stocking the classic artists is essential.
In order to focus on new releases, lots of record stores have stopped carrying a lot of the key artists and releases from music’s storied history. To us it is a crime to have eight copies of a major label baby band and no Willie Dixon albums. Hoodlums has always been a small store, so we’ve learn that since we can’t carry everything, it is crucial that we carry the right stuff.
The album may be out of style; but not at Hoodlums.
Yeah, I just said Willie Dixon “album”. To us, the album is a form of art. It’s where the artist was at that point in their life, in their mind, and in their career. Generally, it is how both Kristian and I prefer to buy and listen to music. We aren’t anti hits package entirely, and sometimes the greatest hits CD is the artist’s best “album”, but in general the album is part of our philosophy
We have to concentrate on the music we know best.
We carry a diverse selection of music, but you can’t be all things to all people. We can special order nearly anything for nearly anyone, but when it comes to deeper selection, we focus on what we do best.
So what do you do best? We are huge fans of jazz, blues, and world music. We both are good with classic and alternative rock from the past five decades. We love new and old soul and funk. Overall, we both tend to like the tempo upbeat (not necessarily full speed… but spunky). Of course, there are many deviations to these rules for both of us (and even more when you factor in the other hoodlums).
Customer feedback is a big part of our selection
We love it when you weigh in. Good input from customers has been one of the foundations of how most of these philosophies were formed. Come down to the store and engage in the music discussion. Even if you want to weigh in from where you are sitting, between this site, our page on Facebook, and our MySpace, there are plenty of ways for you to engage us online too.
We have fun peddling music.
There are a lot worse things to sell, eh?
We salute the artists that remember the indie stores.
We understand that artists need to work with the corporate joints, but some artists get big and forget the indies entirely (see: Eagles, U2). On the other hand, some bands (see: Pearl Jam, Ben Harper) go out of their way to take care of the little stores that were there for them when they were breaking artists.
The artists below were gracious enough to perform an in-store at a local indie record store… and then let select indie stores release the CD (or DVD). It doesn’t get much cooler than that in our book. Being a “select” indie store, we stock these CDs, and we do everything we can to promote them.
Click on the link to see details about each release. Look for more information on these titles and others on our exclusives page.
I can’t believe you made it this far down the page. You must be one of our Music Junkies. Come down to the store and we can talk music philosophy some more.
Have a beautiful day.