Much has been made in recent years of the abrupt decline of our friendly neighborhood record stores — the mom-and-pop shops (and, in the case of the dearly departed Tower Records, national chains) where we whiled away hours spent browsing the racks for new stuff to listen to.

The stores were sucker-punched in the mid-’90s by a below-board alliance between the major distributors and big-box retailers like Best Buy, then driven nearly to extinction by the industry-wide death spiral that started near the turn of the century. But even if there aren’t as many of them as there used to be, record stores are still out there, and given that the Popdose staff is spread all over the country (heck, one of us is in Norway!), we figure we’re in a unique position to tell you about our favorite music-purchasing destinations.

You might not think that rural New Hampshire would have any record stores worth a damn anywhere in a 100-mile radius — I certainly didn’t expect to find any when I moved here — but lo and behold, not half an hour from my house, there’s the Keene location of Turn It Up!

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