I have a couple of friends who absolutely despise going into record stores, but John Maus, the experimental pop composer from Minnesota, blew me away with his comments in an August 3 feature on Pitchfork.

“You don’t know how happy it makes me that the days of the record store are coming to an end,” he said, after being asked what his favorite one was. “$20 for an LP? Do you remember going to the record store and not getting what you want because there was no other place to get it? Now we can get it all for free, and I think that’s wonderful. There was always something really depressing to me about record stores…There’s something oppressive about them, like the guy who looks you up and down and looks at what you’re buying. You’re bound up in exchange with the snobby clerk. So I’m glad they all have little ‘closed’ signs on their doors now.”

My only recollection of a record store clerk who looked me up and down and all around at what I was buying happened in Ann Arbor.

The guy, who reeked of a jaded thirty-something music aficionado vibe, was sporting a Joy Division shirt. His store (which, by the way, is my favorite record store in Metro Detroit; he just works there one day a week) happened to be selling a copy of Joy Division’s ‘Peel Sessions,’ something I had been looking to purchase for some time.

When I walked up to the counter, he gave me a solid “up and down” and in the most undeniably smug voice I’ve ever heard, muttered “Ughhhhhhhhh. Every time I wear a Joy Division shirt someone seems to buy a Joy Division record.”

Considering I just ruined his day, I opted to – unlike Maus – decide, ‘you know what, that really wasn’t a big deal whatsoever’ and buy the record as I intended. I think afterward I drove home, ate dinner and then probably had a pleasant night’s rest.

Maus back pedaled the following day, saying he was surprised people didn’t understand he was referring to “large mega-stores.”

It’s 2011; I’m fairly certain Tower Records, Sam Goody, F.Y.E., Virgin Megastores, etc. are all irrelevant or just defunct.

The fact that Maus sees it fitting for record stores to close because the price of an LP went up a few bucks is just as pathetic as it is scary. It’s only 2011, and already there are musicians, championed as artists of our generation, who would rather see everyone walk around using deafening ear-bud headphones than enjoy a physical copy of an album – the way it’s intended to be heard.