My last blog was about Shelly Tirk, the record guy who died in mid-August. Shelly’s passing made me think of the passing of the record industry, as I and my contemporaries know it. Music used to mean record stores where people of a similar mindset might congregate to find out about what was hot, what was cool, what was worth listening to.

I don’t know of many record stores anymore. In greater Cleveland, My Generation is long gone. Wax Stacks is longer gone. I haven’t been to Time Traveler yet, but I’ll go. I do go to Record Den sometimes, because I’m sure to come across the latest versions of geezer rock there, along with cool imports. But Record Den is basically the only area store I personally know of still going strong.

At least that was all I knew of until the last week of August, when I stopped into Music Saves, just up the street from the Beachland Ballroom in North Collinwood. Music Saves is one fairly large room. It’s about 70 percent CDs, 30 percent vinyl; most of the stock is new, including the vinyl, though there’s some used and even some bargain (the vintage vinyl includes some highly collectible 45s; sorry, no eight tracks or cassettes).

I was meeting my wife for dinner at the Grovewood Tavern and had about 45 minutes to kill. I was alone in Music Saves except for this much younger woman at the cash register. Glasses, nose ring, hennaed hair, minding her own business. I’m going through the bins and coming across a lot of stuff I’d heard of but hadn’t heard. I asked the woman if she had a local section. She said yes, steering me to two bins plus part of a third.

So I’m going through these and I realize I knew one band out of what must have been a hundred locals. I was shocked; the only band I recognized was Gem, a project of former Cobra Verde/sometimes Guided by Voices guitarist Doug Gillard’s. Otherwise, I was clueless. I told the woman I was amazed that I was so unfamiliar with the local scene, particularly since I used to cover it. That conversation was how I met Melanie Hershberger, owner of Music Saves. That’s also how I learned a lot about new music and ended up buying four CDs: One by Feist (great), one by Broken Social Scene (cooler conceptually than musically), one by St. Vincent (brilliant pop here) and one by Machine Go Boom, a Cleveland band with lots of range and chutzpah.

What was even cooler than the music was that I’d discovered a real record store. My kids don’t know from vinyl, never saw an eight track or cassette and couldn’t care less about CDs. They’re downloaders all the way. Me, I’m still into the tangible, and I know that even if I sell my bloated CD collection, there’s a lot about it that I’ll miss.

The existence of Music Saves-Melanie tells me business is good, and judging by her tasteful, selective inventory, it is-is reassuring to me. It means that no matter my age, record stores will survive, keeping music-and, hopefully, me-current. It also means that even though the formats are changing more rapidly than ever, music can still mean community.

http://www.musicsaves.com/

http://www.beachlandballroom.com/

http://www.grovewoodtavern.com/

I met Shelley Tirk in 2005. I probably got his name from Daffy Dan or Brad Bell, proud alumni of Shelley’s Melody Lane school of record sales. Shelley lived in Lyndhurst. He invited me over to talk; he’d be glad to help me out with my project, he said. We spent about three hours together. I never forgot it. I really liked him.

Shelley died, awake, at home, on Aug. 16. He was in his 70s. The cause was cancer. Shelley told me he had cancer when we met; I saw him one more time after that, at the launch party of my book, “Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories,” where Shelley is quoted — at length. His stories were long but not boring; you didn’t want them to end.

I never saw him in anything but good spirits. He was a mensch, a sweetie – and, as Daffy Dan told me at the funeral Aug. 19, a salesman who “touched thousands.” He was one of a dying breed, a record guy. A hustler with a heart.

Shelley mangled clichés, the rabbi said at the service at the Cleveland Heights funeral home where all East Side Jews seem to be memorialized. “There were too many cooks and not enough Indians” was one of Shelley’s mangles.

Shelley bought Melody Lane in 1965; the Lakewood establishment remains the oldest continually operating record store in Ohio, according to the rabbi. It’s where Lakewood kids used to go for the latest sounds.

Wonder how long Melody Lane will last? Let’s hope it perseveres like Shelley did; he beat back cancer for a long, long time. The rabbi said Shelley first encountered it in 1993.

Shelley was a nice man; he was gracious to me and, apparently, wonderful to his kids. His son, Ryan, choked up when he told the hundreds gathered to honor Shelley that he never heard his father saying he hated anything and that no matter how much he traveled, Shelley never felt distant to his family.

The rabbi said Shelley was selling to the end. Only recently, Shelley told him about a great buy. “This month’s special is a two-CD Pavarotti album – at a fantastic price!”

Shelley was such a deal.

I was on vacation on the Jersey shore the first week of August, which was great. But I was mad I missed the first day of the Goldmine record show at the rock hall in Cleveland. I thought it would be a great occasion to sell my book, “Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories.” So when I got there on Aug. 5, the day after we got back from our week away, I brought along five copies of CRRM, just to see how I’d do.

I did okay, though I didn’t display my wares at the Goldmine table at the rear of the show (I’ve contributed to Goldmine since 1984 and should be considered a kind of regular). The way I did okay was by going around and talking to dealers about my book; call it cold-callling. Three bit. One was a guy from Cleveland who was familiar with my work. The others were dealers from Dallas and Baltimore who’ve been coming to the show to sell their vinyl for a few years now.

The show was something else. Not only did the rock hall not promote it at all—like there was no banner on the building saying it was going on—there also was a marathon that day. So there were lots of runners in downtown Cleveland but woefully few rock ‘n’ rollers. That added up to poor attendance, little business and fewer wares to check out.

The lower level of the hall seemed a little busy, but a lot of it was browsing rather than buying. There were some big-ticket items, like old soul albums of the ‘50s and ‘60s, but there were far more cheap albums – and cheap compact disks. Several dealers told me the show’s been shrinking steadily; fewer and fewer vendors are coming, not to mention buyers.

It occurred to me that within 10 years—make that five years —this show will be a thing of the past. The magazine’s been slimming down noticeably, and the editors are considering a major reformatting to reflect the shift to digital in music. My kids buy CDs primarily for travel, to pop into the car’s player. But generally, they download. I myself am considering selling my compact disks; I’ve amassed thousands in the 36 years I’ve been reviewing.

I won’t sell them before I download the music I want to keep. I’m going to put it all on a big hard drive on an iMac so I can play it throughout the house and transfer it to an iPod or burn a CD. But I no longer need the disks, I figure. Nostalgia is powerful, but it can be a burden, too.