By Louis Black
Some record stores lead, by stocking certain kinds of music, taking chances on groups without huge followings and by having intelligent, enthusiastic staffs with the ability to articulate and discuss their tastes. The vast majority, however, only seem to follow, either by having huge inventories that more or less touch most musical bases without really covering any, or else by mostly stocking those records which have one kind of obvious following or another.
In a town with a surprising number of fine record stores, these distinctions are not meant to be critical but affectionate, because one of our favorite "leading" record stores, Inner Sanctum, is currently celebrating its 11th anniversary. Constantly in the vanguard of musical tastes, and at the same time always extremely supportive of the Austin music scene, Inner Sanctum was just named one of the 20 best record stores in the country in the September 1981 issue of Oui magazine. Considering that over half the stores listed were situated on either the East or West Coast, this was an especially appropriate and well deserved honor. If you'd like to stop by and congratulate the Inner Sanctum folks or just help them celebrate in general, the best time might be during their record happy hours every Friday afternoon between 4 and 7 p.m. Not only is there plenty of Texas Tea to go around, but certain records are discounted a dollar for the occasion.
Although they're not from Austin, it does seem wonderfully appropriate that those crazy music makers from Denton, Texas-Brave Combo garnered a rave review in the same issue of Qui. The only nuclear polka band that we know of (who can still rock your socks off anytime they want before setting you up for a Cha-Cha) can add this clipping to their recent 4-star review in Rolling Stone.