{"id":35960,"date":"2016-10-06T11:59:42","date_gmt":"2016-10-06T16:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=35960"},"modified":"2016-10-03T16:04:14","modified_gmt":"2016-10-03T21:04:14","slug":"rockstar-records-offers-an-alternative-to-mega-shopping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/rockstar-records-offers-an-alternative-to-mega-shopping\/","title":{"rendered":"Rockstar Records Offers an Alternative to Mega-Shopping"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you haven\u2019t heard, vinyl is making a comeback, but although Leslie Jones<\/strong> does a robust business in the grooved, pizza-sized medium of yesteryear, he\u2019d just as soon leave trafficking in the chic and trendy to the retail giants. Jones just carries good music, as he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a fan, a believer, man,\u201d said Jones, owner of Rock Star Records<\/strong> in east Tupelo<\/strong>. \u201cI believe that good art, including a good medium to deliver that art, like vinyl, and the artwork that envelops it, is a beautiful thing,\u201d said Jones. A small, eclectic shop, Rock Star Records is about a mile from the Genesis point for many rock \u2018n\u2019 roll enthusiasts: Elvis Presley\u2019s birthplace. Jones was busy online running down a special order for a punk rock enthusiast. \u201cEurope,\u201d Jones mumbled, discouraged, under his breath. \u201cIt\u2019s all in Europe.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On the wall behind Jones sat a vintage copy of Velvet Underground\u2019s 1966 debut album, the cover, designed by Andy Warhol, featuring the iconic, alarmingly yellow, and brashly phallic banana, in keeping with the album\u2019s theme of social deviancy. Beside it was the lately lauded yet timeless Revolver<\/em> by The Beatles, as well as their Rubber Soul<\/em>. Jones clutched a strikingly beautiful copy of Death Before Dishonor<\/em>, a 1987 release by the Scottish punk band, The Exploited. The mesmerizing cover depicted an androgynous, somewhat Byronesque figure in the breathy embrace of the Grim Reaper.<\/span><\/p>\n

The tidal wave of the digital delivery of music has sparked what Jones affectionately called a \u201cRenaissance of the appreciation of sound,\u201d meaning that many connoisseurs have gravitated back toward the sometimes scratchy, always imperfect, yet undeniably deep and resonate quality of vinyl. The numbers flesh it out, Jones said. Vinyl isn\u2019t just for music geeks anymore. The majority of Jones\u2019s sales are in vintage vinyl. Still, he wants to deliver quality music to his customers, in whatever medium he can. Jones is anything but a highbrow purist. He brooks no quarter for elitists with their attenuated views of what is art and what is not. In Rock Star Records, a music lover can pick up everything from a vintage vinyl copy of Linda Ronstadt\u2019s Living in the USA<\/em>, or Jimi Hendrix\u2019s Free Spirit<\/em>, to a compact disc of Nirvana\u2019s Nevermind<\/em>, or Beck\u2019s Odelay<\/em>. \u201cGood music transcends mediums,\u201d Jones said. \u201cWe have the largest selection of CDs in northeast Mississippi,\u201d he said. Jones also carries a full complement of new vinyl.<\/span><\/p>\n

The posters on the walls of Rock Star Records show Jones\u2019 variegated tastes. The 1,700-square-foot store is an egalitarian, artistic society. Ozzy Osbourne flashes a lupine snarl from the cover of Bark at the Moon<\/em>. A stupidly smiling Donkey Kong takes equal billing with the perhaps theatrically morose visages of Bono and The Edge on the cover of The Joshua Tree<\/em>. Jones is an unapologetic fan of 80s bands and he does a crisp trade in hair metal records. Somehow, at Rock Star Records, Winger\u2019s In the Heart of the Young<\/em>, doesn\u2019t look out of place beside At Folsom Prison<\/em>, by Johnny Cash.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jones is an old hand at retail sales and has owned music and videos shops. His reasoning for opening the Rock Star Records was simple. \u201cMusic lovers needed a place to go,\u201d he said, allowing himself a nostalgic, backward glance at the steadily shrinking landscape of true music stores\u2014music stores in the truest sense of the term, not simply stores that happen to carry music, almost as a begrudging exception, in addition to a galaxy of other items.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rock Star Records is open 12:30 to 9:30 pm, Monday through Thursday, 12:30 to 10 pm on Friday, noon to 10 pm on Saturday and 1 to 6 pm on Sunday. Why should a customer drive from Oxford or Columbus or someplace miles away to peruse Jones\u2019s multifarious mosaic of music? \u201cSelection and customer service,\u201d Jones said, smiling mischievously. \u201cIt sounds simple but those are values that are disappearing from retail.\u201d\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you haven\u2019t heard, vinyl is making a comeback, but although Leslie Jones does a robust business in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":35962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[9337,1862,9332,9336,5,1380,9334,1709,9335,2978,9327,187,9333,2502,1615],"class_list":["post-35960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-business","tag-galen-holley","tag-good","tag-leslie-jones","tag-locally-owned","tag-mississippi","tag-music","tag-needle-drop","tag-new","tag-north-east","tag-records-2","tag-rockstar-records","tag-tupelo","tag-used","tag-velvet-underground","tag-vinyl"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/2016-09-29-Rockstar-Records.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}