James Weber and Brian Bromberg opened Euclid Records with business partner Joe Schwab, owner of Euclid record shop in St. Louis. Located in the Bywater at 3401 Chartres Street, they offer vintage used vinyl and CDs, plus new music on consignment from local artists as well as something, they think, that you can't put a price tag on.

"Ultimately, a record store is the best thing for music," Weber said. "Thanks to the Internet, there's no such thing as the underground anymore... There are great blogs, but you're not standing in a room talking to people, or watching an in-store show." "A record store is supposed to be your cultural ground zero to find out about a city," Weber said. It was his.
Weber worked in record stores in his native St. Louis for a decade, and in recent years, he says, he saw signs of hope for the industry. "Young teenagers, 13 and 14 years old who have always had the iPod, were coming in with their parents asking for records," he said. "Vinyl records, not CDs."The partners are banking on the idea that those frequent reports of the demise of the independent record store are greatly exaggerated. Essentially, the Internet is a great place to visit -- but music fans don't want to live there, Weber says. They think that the neighborhood record store answers a need for a community cultural space, and that Bywater is the perfect spot for one. Paul Webb, who opened his Bywater Music instrument and repair shop last summer, agrees. "I'd say at least half of my customers live right in the neighborhood," said Webb, a former longtime employee of the New Orleans Music Exchange on Magazine Street. A year ago, when Webb was first driving around Bywater to check out his new neighborhood, he saw dozens of cars he recognized -- cars that belonged to his former customers Uptown. "Bohemian types live down here, and they like vinyl," Webb said. "Lately, there are enough things coming in down here to make it a regular shopping district."After moving to New Orleans last year and living in Mid-City, Weber realized he spent most of his time in Bywater.
"This is a neighborhood that fosters and supports music," he said. "Musicians are here, artists are here. And every time we hit a roadblock (in opening the store) it was someone from the neighborhood who helped. They brought us food when we had no money; they brought us beer when we had no money."
In turn, Weber and Bromberg invited their neighbors in. The wild murals on the store's walls -- a pair of monkeys playing with dollar bills, a gorilla with cassette tapes exploding through the top of its head -- were painted by graffiti artists whose tags can be seen on Chartres Street warehouses. The upright piano on the in-store stage came from Matt Russell, a promoter who found it in the bar he'll be opening nearby on St. Claude Avenue in October. Bywater resident Lefty Parker, longtime former talent buyer for the Circle Bar, will book in-stores. MC Trachiotomy cooked barbecue for the opening weekend."We didn't want to come in from out of town and say 'Hey, this is what we're going to do with your neighborhood,'" Weber said. "It's as much theirs as it is ours." The partners, who met in New Orleans, started out by selling used vinyl at a neighborhood shops, such as Beth's Books on Port Street and musician MC Trachiotomy's Desire Market down the block. When they decided to open a store, they called in Weber's former boss Schwab, the owner of the original Euclid in St. Louis. (The stores share a website euclidrecords.com).
"He said, if he was ever going to have a second store, New Orleans is the place to do it," Weber said. "Music just comes up out of the sidewalk down here."The hot-pink shop opened with a bang on September 4th with a festival-sized roster of local bands performing in the store. The Happy Talk Band, Guitar Lightnin'Lee, Tom McDermott, Meschiya Lake and her Little Big Horns, and Susan Cowsill played Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, the bill included Felix, R. Scully's Rough 7 and MC Trachiotomy.

It’s Fest season! Time to get my fix!