Practically every week during my adolescence, with the regularity of a parishioner, I visited Yesterday and Today Records in Rockville, Maryland. It was there where I communed with the spirit of Punk, Ska, Mod, and Rock and Roll. It was there where I learned about politics, sex, existentialism, style, and fashion. Yesterday and Today was more like a social library, a meeting place for musicians and artists, than a retail space. Never Records is my love letter to the record store. In the ruins of the one of the great retail giants of the end of the last century, a casualty of modernity and the Great Recession, we will reclaim the spirit of music and commune amongst the wreckage.
Ted Riederer, January 14th, 2010
Welcome to Never Records the record store within an art exhibition within a retail space. It is our intention to confuse you and to be as inscrutable as possible. This brief introduction is an attempt to alleviate the symptoms associated with disorientation.
Never Records is a multi media multi-artist installation composed by artist/musician Ted Riederer. Constructed toresemble a functioning record store, including record bins, poster racks, large reproductions of fictitious album covers, and a stage for in store appearances, Never Records Includes over 40 artists, record labels, and musicians. Ted Riederer’s interactive installation is part Max Ernst part Hi Fidelity.
Everything in the store, including the stickers on the cash register is art. Many things are for sale and many things cannot be bought or sold.
Ted Riederer, 2010.
“In the Heart of Nowhere” is a transcendental poem composed like a ransom note with the blacked out
covers of over three hundred record albums. Blacking out all of the album covers except for the words and phrases he chooses, Riederer places the albums in sequence in two record bins(12ft. each). Re-appropriating album images, Riederer illustrates his poem with record covers where the title and band name have been painted out. The poem must be read by flipping through the racks. The records were donated by Yesterday and Today Records, Academy Records, Elevator Music, Asian Man Records, and Sacred Bones.
Located throughout the store are a series of album covers and posters made by over twenty different artists. Some of the artists include: Damon Locks, Dario Robleto, Olaf Breuning, Bob Gruen, Evan Gruzis, Steven Bindernagel, Tim Clifford, Exene Cervenka, Jason Losh, Arturo Vega/Dee Dee Ramone. Many of the covers are of fictional bands, some are simply images of the artists work presented as album covers, and some have a more creative twist. Artist Jeff Beebe takes records he abhors, in this case an Album by Mariah Carey, and re-labels them with records he adores in an attempt to exorcise pop demons. Marylin Minter’s posters, located on either side of the front counter, actually hung in Tower records in this location. They were advertisements for an album Minter designed in 2000 called “O:Operatica”.
The pyramid in the center of the store is a Sacred Bones Records kiosk. Sacred Bones is an actual record label from Brooklyn that hand prints their album artwork underneath Academy Records in Williamsburg. These records are for sale and vary in price from $7 for a 7” record to $15 for a 12” record. Saced Bones is hosting a showcase of their bands in February on our in store stage. Please see our concert listing for more info.
Look Book (UF 15-30). Ryan Sullivan, 2009.
Mounted on the East side of the pillar to the left of the front counter, Ryan Sullivan’s poster rack contains abstractions of the covers of the ten most influential albums of his life. These posters depict albums by R.E.M., Nirvana, Tom Waits, Radiohead, Frank Zappa, and more.
On the South wall of the store is a CD rack. San Francisco based artist Stephanie Syjuco has created over two hundred bootlegs of all the music she has ever downloaded illegally or copied from friends. The CDs are actually lo-res pictures of CD covers glued to cd sized pieces of wood that are wrapped in cellophane. These objects are numbered and signed in an edition of three and are available for purchase at the low price of $9.99. Please feel free to take CDs off of the rack or go to the merchandise counter and browse through the rest of her collection.
