In Store: 1-2-3-4-Go! Records Punks All Ages
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In Store spotlights the Bay Area's quirkiest, most beloved, weirdest, and/or otherwise-most-interesting record stores. Our region's unmistakable friskiness and cultural capital emanate from those dusty, creaky, hard-to-find, money-losing, insanely huge, hilariously small, and often-crowded (at least with stuff) outposts of recorded music. We're always hunting for choice music outlets, but if you're curious about a specific one, please send useful information to iportmusic@gmail.com.
Title: 1234-Go! Records
Location: 423 40th St., Oakland.
Owner: Steve Stevenson
Also houses: Label of same name that Stevenson established in 2001.
About the name: Chosen just before Stevenson released his first record. "I filled out all the paperwork for it, got my money order, and then you're supposed to put the name of the label, and I'd been going over in my head what I wanted to put in there, and... I didn't have anything. I was listening to a Zero Boys record, and one of the choruses [to the song "New Generation"] is '1-2-3-4-Go!' I was like, 'Fuck it, there it is.' I wrote it down and mailed it off and that's what I've been stuck with ever since. And I will never, never stop hearing, 'Shouldn't it be 1-2-3-Go?'"
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Specialties: "Just about all the varieties that you could fit under punk and indie," "some metal, some crust," plus select country, jazz, and blues.
Volume: About 6,000 titles on LP and 7-inch vinyl; 300 on CD.
Opened: March 15, 2008.
Hot seller: Nobunny's Love Visions LP: "People of all ages love that thing. Eight-year-old kids go crazy for it, and then I had a 60-year-old woman come in [to the store, where it was playing] before it came out. She's like, 'What's this... Can I buy it?' And I said, 'Oh, it'll be here in a couple weeks.' She came back two weeks later and bought it."


































