With collector paradises like Mystery Train (pictured above) and the Ecstatic Yod around, what better place than Western Massachusetts to make a movie about running an independent record store in the age of web piracy and internet mail-order? Visitation Rites was delighted to learn about guerrilla filmmaker Brendan Toller’s I Need That Record! documentary yesterday, which began as a 2008 DIV-III project at Hampshire College and has been globetrotting the festival circuit even since. The film is subtitled “The Death (or Possible Survival) of the Independent Record Store,” and takes a courageous stab at explaining why over 3,000 mom and pop music shops have been forced to close their doors over the past decade. Featuring interviews with Thurston Moore, Ian Mckaye, Noam Chomsky, Mike Watt, Lenny Kaye, Chris Frantz, Glen Branca, Patterson Hood, Pat Carney, Legs Mcneil, Bob Gruen, and BP Helium, along with some pretty fantastic and curmudgeonly-looking record store clerks, as we can see in the trailer below:
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