Cactus Music — Attraction in Houston

Update: I happened to be surrounded by the Houston urban experience on Saturday, 7/13 day, our July day of 2024, scoping out the Warehouse Live Midtown location out on Travis and Dennis. And guess what store came to mind, next, while out and about. Yeah, it's the old classic Houston emporium as they like to classify theirselves as, the Cactus music store, although I Iove the name, Cactus Records more and better!... Like it was in the era of our great independent record stores, like the infamous Tower Records out west or Peaches Records out east, and our FM djs said it on popular radio stations U.S. wide of the 70s &80s and 90s!!!

Today's visit was interesting because it was during the weekend following Hurricane Beryl. And they were actually opened, well sort of. The lights and a/c were off. And plastic tarp was out over some vinyl section in the back where their roof was having issues. The front store glass was smashed in by an impact by flying storm debris. No, it wasn't the toppled port o' John across the storefront Portsmouth Street. How odd and funny to see what they all had to endure as my favorite record store standing, takes another setback, and keeps on ticking!! Somehow, they came up with a way to have a card machine running to be open in business. They really need more used vinyl, though, so sell your collections to them. It is thinning out fast H town!!!

It's my favorite record store for the last two decades in Houston. There is always something I find interesting here that I consider unique and unusual in vinyl or movie related. This latest score is by my favorite genre, hard rock, and it was traded in as used vinyl, from mostly Venezuela...

I was pleasantly surprised and pleased to see Cactus Music up and running as I was driving down Shepherd. This was one of the must go places for music paraphernalia and lp's back in the day, when it was located on Alabama and Shepherd. I returned the following week to "step back in time," and it did not disappoint. The store was pretty busy, and the parking was adequate. I was happy to see a good selection of records to peruse in many genres, as well as collectibles such as autographed albums and metal lunch boxes of various artist et. al. (There were quite a few signed Taylor Swift albums for those interested, but they weren't flying off the shelf!) However, many of the albums I was interested in, maybe vintage, that were a little too over-priced for me but if they're reprints, why are they priced at $65 and above?!! Yes, KISS Alive is a classic and noteworthy album, but I'm not paying $85 for a reprint....and even if it isn't, that's still a little too pricey in my book. Not paying over $30 either for Ded Leppard's Pyromania or High n Dry reprint albums (my girlfriend did, ugh). Blame my old fashion sense of value and cost if this rolls your eyes, lol. Luckily, they have a section of new and used albums that are mixed, and I was able to find some of my back in the day music to appease my demand for re-acquiring them in LP. And they were in pretty good shape too - the used ones. Maybe I'll run across another record store down the road, but I'll definitely be...

You could totally tell that Cactus Music was not well prepared for the Melanie Martinez event. I witnessed several times the line being jumbled up and people cutting others and the staff was aware but didn’t do anything about it. It was false advertisement to say “while supplies last” because their advertising in a way to get as many people in the door as possible for sales but yet they are well aware that they only received 100 posters and 50 stickers to give out. Might as well be upfront with people and state first 50 fans will receive a poster and sticker pack and first 100 to receive a poster. And I’m not sure why they were allowing families to get multiple stickers and posters and they were clearly all in the same group and about 5-10years old and literally crumpling them up in their hands. Not really appreciating the worth of this stuff like the adult fans that have been waiting in line for hours. A lot of people were piled on top of one another and their was no A/C in their back area. I witnessed a mom getting an anxiety attack with her daughter in the back area because of the heat back there. This was my 3rd time attending an event there thinking it would be better each time around and it turns out this same exact way! I will not be attending any other event there, this was...