Pity the poor record store

Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.

RN: When is the last time you purchased a CD?

CP: I bought a Certificate of Deposit just last week. Why?

RN: I'm referring to the sliding-rapidly-toward-obsolescence form of storing music known as the Compact Disc.

CP: Gotcha. Hmmm. Can't recall buying one this calendar year. Or last year either, with the possible exception of the "Kaye Ballard Sings Fanny Brice" that I got you for Christmas.

RN: Hey Mister Smartypants, you wouldn't make fun if you heard Miss Ballard's "My Man." While I'm not really investing in CDs either -- my last purchase was at least 12 months ago, a boffo recording of "South Pacific" -- I did just receive two CDs as birthday presents, and I love them. I'm trying to imagine unwrapping the gift of an iTunes card. Hmm, not so appealing.

CP: When I read that recorded-music sales were down about 30 percent this decade, the big surprise is that the dropoff isn't much greater. I like music, and own a few hundred CDs, but I buy them rarely these days. And I visit an actual music retailer about as often as I admit that I am wrong about anything.

CP: I recently pondered stopping at the Electric Fetus to shop for a CD because it was the right thing to do.

RN: Pity shopping, eh? I do that at independently owned bookstores.

CP: But then I did the wrong thing and left without buying anything. Pity the poor record store.

RN: I know. One of my happiest childhood memories involves my sisters and me carefully spending our allowance in the 45s section at JC Penney's record department.

CP: I can remember when my first boyfriend and I would consider a perfect Saturday one in which we hit record stores from Northern Lights to Oarfolk. You never knew when you might find a bootleg "Patti Smith Live in Sweden," on lime-green vinyl.

CP: Ha ha. Last month there was a week with the lowest record sales since 1991. If not for "Glee" CDs, I think revenues would have totaled about $300. Thank you, high-school-musical-theater-on-TV-on-CD lovers!

RN: Once again, the great American art form known as the Broadway musical comes to the rescue. Perhaps now you'll stop making fun of me and my Sondheim obsession. Which is all captured on CD, of course.

CP: I pledge here and now: I will never stop making fun of you.

RN: Fine by me. Isn't that what friends are for?

E-mail: witheringglance@startribune.com.