Will you still need me when I'm 64? In the case of Colony Records, the answer, sadly, seems to be no.
When I wrote the mid-'70s-based Cusp of Everything, it was, as a young agent recently dubbed it, "historical fiction." (Ouch.) Many of the places I describe in the book - restaurants, clubs, stores, even houses - are long gone. Some, like Rye Playland, are still around but perennially threatened. One of the few that seemed permanent was Colony Records.
Colony Records has been on Broadway since 1948 and in the Brill Building since the early 1970s, around the time I started buying records. Since those days, it's been the go-to place to find out-of-print records, sheet music and memorabilia like Beatles lunchboxes and old Sinatra tickets. The prices are high, but not surprisingly so for a high-rent tourist-area shop with a "your wish is my command" approach to stock and staff.
Since I've been blogging about Cusp, I've had to write about the loss of Donna Summer, Robin Gibb and Scott McKenzie. Now we're losing Colony too. I learned about its imminent demise today in a Maira Kalman New Yorker cartoon and it hit me like those other losses.
If you get a chance, stop in and pick up a little bit of nostalgia. Tell them they'll be missed, because they will.
by Laura Huntt Foti
The Soundtrack of the '70s
