A rant by: BigBadBeau

OMG!! THEY'RE TEARING DOWN BOTH MOTHER'S RECORDS AND MUSIC EXPLOSION TO PUT UP A MANITOBA HYDRO BUILDING!!!
By BigBadBeau

With the impending construction of the new Manitoba Hydro building and the resulting demolition of the buildings currently on the land in question (bounded by Portage Avenue, Edmonton Street, Graham Avenue, and Carlton Street), it seems like a good time to reflect on those late, great, Winnipeg 1970s downtown record stores.

You see, coming down among those buildings will be the former Mother's Records building (which became an arcade and was most recently known as Loonie Village), and the Music Explosion building (later home to Book Fair and most recently a Red Apple Clearance Centre).

Burton Cummings, Randy Bachman, and Bob Burns regularly reflect on the 1960s teen music scene. Well, I'm here to reflect on the '70s.

When these buildings are demolished, that will pretty much put to an end all of the buildings that housed the stores I grew up buying great rock albums at. The old Records On Wheels and original Musiplex buildings still remain on north Portage between Smith and Garry Streets, but those stores were from the 1980s.

When I was a teenager in the '70s, the ultimate of "cool" you could be was to be seen walking down the north side of Portage Avenue on Saturday afternoon, preferably wearing a jean jacket, preferably carrying a record bag from all the great record stores on the north side of Portage. It was acceptable to be carrying a bag from the south side Mother's Records, as well.

Among those stores were Autumn Stone and The Wherehouse, two stores with a great rec-room feel to them. These had the flavor of great stereotypical underground 1970s record stores. Thin bar room carpeting filled with singes from cigarette butts; huge rock posters soaring up to the ceiling; not much for windows that created a dark, counterculture atmosphere; album libraries that centered around rock (which was saying something back then); at The Wherehouse, rock magazines and posters; and at Autumn Stone, their infamous used record section in the back, complete with 46 used copies of Grand Funk's "Phoenix" album. (Not to mention Autumn Stone's, shall we say, mind-altering-friendly merchandise.) The Wherehouse was on north Portage between Carlton and Edmonton. Autumn Stone was on north Kennedy Street. (That store had/has nothing to do with a similarly named store that exists today on south Osborne Street.)

Kelly's Stereo Mart served as Portage Avenue's biggest record store; atmosphere was a question mark as they changed locations often, always with a resulting change in atmosphere. The old Winnipeg library location on Portage, Kelly's last, was bare-bones for decor but nobody cared as their selection was excellent. Music City had two north Portage locations at one time and was considered an acceptable alternative should the album you wanted to buy be sold out elsewhere. Opus 69, a shorter walk up Kennedy before you reached Autumn Stone, was more into audio (and had the closest atmosphere to today's big-box audio stores that sell CDs, only darker - on a summer afternoon, you had to get used to the darkness once you walked inside), but had a decent selection of albums and good, regular sales. Music Explosion was more the early '70s; didn't they close up early in the decade? Did the building become a jeans store? Someone needs to help me on that one. I just remember going in there once. They had a section for albums by rock bands called "Groups" and a very healthy soul and funk section, I recall.

My biggest Mother's Records memory is riding the bus there with several friends in 1978 from St. Vital to buy Kiss' "Alive II" on sale on a Saturday shortly after it was released. The promo for the album was near the cash register by the racks that contained the album. It was hanging from the so-high ceiling. It stayed there for years. Maybe the stores' management couldn't figure how to get it down. They must have just snipped it with scissors, as eras later, I'd go into that store years after it became an arcade and look up to the sky and still see that Kiss promo hanging from the ceiling. I also remembering special-ordering Angel's double-live album "Live Without A Net" from Mother's when it wasn't released in Canada.

And who could forget those full-page ads in the Free Press advertising record sales at sale prices like $4.99 or $3.99? The first new (not used) album I bought was April Wine's "Electric Jewels" at Kelly's in 1975 for an amazing $3.29. Much later in life, the most number of albums I bought at one time was as various Boxing Day sales in this area in either 1980 or 1981. Number of albums bought: nine.

I had mixed feelings when all the north Portage stores were torn down for Portage Place, long after the record stores migrated to suburban malls and arcades flourished in their place. I also have opinions toward Manitoba Hydro passing up several excellent sites for their new building in favor of leveling today's useful discount stores in the Mother's building, etc., that seemed to serve a purpose for today's downtown community. As well, there is now a mini-scene of people on Graham mainly created by two coffee shops, one of which is in the block in question and will be coming down.

Nevertheless, I suppose change and progress are inevitable. (Deep sigh.) These retail buildings and stores our generation thought were there and would be there forever when we shopped there became another tenuous memory of days gone by. At least there's still an A & W in Portage Place on roughly the same piece of land the former A & W stood on, near The Wherehouse, before Portage Place was built. Anyone wanna go there and reminisce?

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