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photo by Christman

Who: Eastunes Records.

What: Well, it’s a record store that sells tunes, in Eastown. Hence “Eastunes.” Crazy, huh?

When: Monday noon to 6 p.m.; Tuesday through Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Where: 1500 Wealthy SE, across from Yesterdog and upstairs from Flashback Clothing (another place we wish we had time to review ... maybe next year).

Our Take: The alert pedestrian can watch Eastown become downtown on Wealthy Street. The neon-and-brick facades of roomy, squatting buildings create a relaxed, fireplace glow to the southeast, getting plainer, flatter, starker the further north you go, as if fighting for their very survival. Eastunes Records, at 1500 Wealthy, is pretty close to the border: the place where the very name “Wealthy Street” shifts from a hopeful, inchoate spell to the dirty irony on that spell’s flip side.

So Eastunes is a store on the margin, and I get the feeling that’s who they cater to. Their selection is a stopping-point on a continuum similar to that between East-and-downtown: bands for people with serious, sustained music habits, people who’ve developed at least something of a jones for the offbeat, but not so much that they only go for self-conscious weirdness. In other words, Sterolab and Slowdive.

This unique niche -- the sophisticated listener vs. the knee-jerk pop fan or lover of obscurities -- means you can find stuff at Eastunes you’ll never find at Best Buy, and much of it’ll be good. There’s a Mekons poster on the wall (which pretty much secures my vote) and Over the Rhine in the racks. Even better, the owner-guy isn’t scared of special orders, and fills them quickly; my Voidoids album arrived quick and scratchless and I’ve been rocking out with “Blank Generation” ever since.

Moreover, they’re pretty nice. I traded in a bunch of old CDs the other day and came up with a trade-in value of twelve bucks. I told ‘em to put it toward Over the Rhine’s “Patience” (mind you, an extremely out-of-print disc; one more reason to like this place), and the guy says “Aw heck. You just wanna trade, straight up?” I wanted to shake his hand. Not only was it nice of him to give me the trade, but $13 and change is pretty cheap in the first place for a disc you have to order direct from the band themselves, and which hasn’t been in print for like three years. (Now please, whatever you do, don’t rush in there expecting some cheap deal. They’re local. They’re new. Exhibit Christian charity and pay full price.)

So it’s a great place unless you dig Spice Girls. But that’s perhaps the problem, sort of, with Eastunes. They’ve been around since August, and seven-odd months just isn’t enough to develop a wide and deep selection. This isn’t really sucha problem, since they are the quickest special-orderers I’ve ever met, but it doesn’t really do much for the American instant-gratification persona we all developed between childhood trips to McDonald’s. Maybe, though, we should take it as an opportunity to break that addiction, buy local, and support a good business that’s really tryin’. I aim to.