Chapter 519 519 Independent Records
The bright sun shines on the blue sea of San Francisco Bay, and watching the sparkling sea always creates an illusion, maybe the next second in the calm sea there will be a mirage, or a dolphin jumping, or a whale. Wonderful sight of water spray.
Located under the blue sea and blue sky, the University of California, Berkeley (University of California, Berkeley) is always filled with a peaceful joy, just like the beautiful scene of the wind and the wheat waves, quiet, beautiful but full of vitality.
Berkeley, a city with a population of less than 100,000, is well-known and prosperous because of this university. The most famous Telegraph Street (Telegraph. Avenue) in the whole city is named after the University of California, Berkeley. Starting at the South Gate of the campus, it extends south for several miles.
Almost every historic city has its own cultural landmark neighborhood, New York has Greenwich Village, London has Soho, San Francisco has Haight-Ashbury, and for Berkeley, that It's Telegraph Street.
Telegraph Street begins with the bronze-colored Suther Gate on the south side of the university, so the culture about this street is almost all associated with the legendary University of California, Berkeley, from the early 1960s when famous students demanded campus speech The freedom movement and later the anti-Vietnam War movement were carried forward here. Just like the hippie movement brewing in the hippie district of San Francisco, Telegraph Street also witnessed the history of American culture, history, and political changes.
Compared with its reputation, Berkeley's campus is very small and crowded. The high and low buildings leave behind the historical features embedded in the architectural era. The library is a copy of the European Renaissance classical building, and the Sather Tower is a copy of the Saint. The towers of Plaza Marco (Plazza. San. Marco) are built, and some buildings are modern in style, focusing on practical functions. The walls have no extra decoration except for rectangular windows, just like matchboxes. These buildings of different styles are very harmonious in this small campus.
In fact, a university is like a person, which gradually grows with the passage of time. The buildings on the campus that were built in different eras are like the rock layers of different colors of sedimentary rocks or the annual rings of trees with different thicknesses, marking the Sections of different histories, even centuries later, can still remind people of the vivid years of that period of history.
Leaving Sather Gate and walking south all the way, seeing this unremarkable and simple street in front of me, it is hard to believe that this is the famous Telegraph Street. Even if it is the small alley in front of my house, no one will object. The contrast is surprising.
In the middle of the narrow streets, cars are rushing forward in the morning light; on the sidewalk are groups of students, greeting each other and heading towards the campus, ready to start the day's courses; The sound of music wafting from the store is scattered in every corner of the street by the breeze from time to time, reflecting different colors in the sunlight; the homeless begging on the side of the road, the street performer who can perform with a guitar, the narrow The splendid facade and low-rise houses make people feel like returning to the streets of a small county in China in the 1970s.
People in a hurry on the streets wear T-shirts and jumpers with the word Berkeley or Berkeley's symbol, the white bear. young people, and students running all the way in jackets, toast in their mouths, and books in their hands...
You can't see the prosperity of New York and Los Angeles here, there are no high-rise buildings, the streets are not wide, and the buildings are all low-rise bungalows, but the lush lawns and large flowers are against the sun and blue sky, accompanied by the wind blowing over the bay. The light breeze dance here is peaceful, comfortable, simple, but also happy.
This is Telegraph Street, a simple and ordinary street. There are hundreds of such streets in any city all over the world, but it is so special only because of the young faces on this street, and their The spirit of pursuing ideals and fighting and struggling for ideals contained in the body has left a history on every brick of the street.
The spirit of a university is neither preserved in dusty archives and yellowed pages, nor is it engraved on magnificent nameplates and stone tablets, nor does it remain in the spirit of a great man. Speaking of Harry, sometimes it is It is reflected in such an unobtrusive street, and in the countless young people surging on this street. If a university has vast campuses and splendid buildings but no such street, what is the difference between this university and middle school and primary school?
A street with historical and cultural heritage makes a university so special. Perhaps, this is the charm of Telegraph Street.
There is a huge warehouse on Telegraph Street, not far from Suther Gate. The walls are simply painted in white paint, full of rough historical traces left over from the 1960s. It can function normally. The sycamore trees planted next to the street divide the sunlight falling from the sky into countless fragments, which are scattered in front of the warehouse door, against the stucco oil painting that covers the entire wall above the warehouse, and the colorful paint outlines A musical castle built with guitars, drums, bass, keyboards and staves, the mottled paint after being washed by wind and rain makes the paint no longer bright, but it is still full of hippie flavor.
This warehouse, which occupies nearly half a street, is not used to store goods, but a storefront facing the street. On the large transparent glass, there are flashing neon signs, annotating the name of the store, "Amoeba Music ( Amoeba. Music)". The blue and red cheap neon lights complement each other with the dilapidated storefront decoration, making people subconsciously feel that this is a big supermarket selling second-hand or cheap goods, which is obviously incompatible with the humanistic atmosphere of Telegraph Street.
But that's not the case. Amoeba Music is one of the most popular storefronts on Telegraph Street. What doesn't match its shabby appearance is the store's merchandise capacity. The store is in nearly 20,000 square miles of space. With a collection of over 100,000 records, from vinyl to CD, from out-of-print collections to the latest releases, from used records to brand new albums, this is a music lover's paradise.
If you put it in ten years, people will know that Amoeba Music is the largest independent record store in the United States. It has never joined the ranks of major record stores, and only has three branches in the United States, namely Berkeley. , San Francisco and Los Angeles three branches, but only these three branches, but also make the album collection of hundreds of thousands of amoeba into a music carnival feast.
Amoeba Records has always adhered to a style, that is, there is no decoration, the entire store is surrounded by records, posters, album covers, everything is music, this is like a music ocean, you can easily Surrounded by every consumer, even if they stay here for ten days and a half months, they are reluctant to leave. Imagine listening to all the 100,000 collections in one of the branches, what a huge, grand and exciting proposal.
In 1993, Amoeba only has a Berkeley branch, located on Telegraph Street, but this warehouse store, which has been established for less than three years, has become one of the most famous record stores on the West Coast. . Since this record store is not a major chain, many music lovers travel far and wide to Berkeley just to linger for days and nights amidst amoeba music.
As an independent record store, Amoeba Music hardly holds any commercial events, and certainly no record company would want its singers to do commercial events here, but Amoeba Music, like the Al Bar in Los Angeles, invites guests from time to time. Some underground bands perform here. In fact, it is not so much a performance as a music exchange, more like a grand gathering for music lovers. It's not a music festival, but it's just as fascinating.
However, just today, December 2nd, an ordinary Thursday, Amoeba Music invited another band to perform, and this performance attracted a lot of attention.
Death of Glory, which has been a topic of conversation because of the road tour, is about to release a new album today, but unlike most new singers who hold a press conference or go directly to the radio to promote it, Death of Glory chose to hold a small performance at Amoeba Music. A fan meeting to announce the release of their new album.
This is bad news for the news media because it means it's going to be a lot harder for them to issue a press release because they all know that Amoeba won't allow them to go into the infield for interviews to prevent the infield album from going awry. was damaged, and the band did not hold a special press conference, which also meant that it was more difficult for them to obtain material; but this is good news for many loyal fans, because it means that there is no official debut in an official form, and the band is still through music. To complete the exchange, they have another performance to watch.
But whether it was good news or bad news, reporters and fans still took steps towards Telegraph Street and arrived at the scene before ten o'clock in the morning, hoping to watch the band's performance as soon as possible.
At 9:30, there were about 300 fans gathered at the scene. This scale is not very large. Most of them were fans from Berkeley, San Francisco and Oakland. However, because Telegraph Street is not a spacious street, Therefore, the scene seems to be very crowded; as for the reporters, most of them are stationed in California. Compared with Los Angeles, there are actually a lot of media gathered in San Francisco, and it is only two times from San Francisco to Berkeley. It is ten minutes away, so there are more than 30 reporters here today, which is not to be underestimated for a rookie band, and for a fan meeting without a special interview session.
Just as he chose San Francisco as the first stop of the tour, this time, Death to Glory chose Berkeley, not far from San Francisco, to start his own musical journey.