I'm not sure I want to tell you about this remarkable place, because I love it.
There's a store that's a secret for most of us. on Pleasant Street, behind the Hot Springs Convention Center. Miracle Electronics. Calling it a "record store" seems so lame.
This place is for people who love music, I mean really love music and need to know and hear more. If you're a person who happily sings along with fun songs in your car but have zero interest in reading the liner notes on the back of a fifty year album cover, this might not be the store for you.
Miracle Electronics, owned by Pastor Witherspoon, has been open for 30 or 40 years. The Pastor still repairs stereo systems, amps, speaker; that's his jam. But the most important thing about Miracle Electronics, I think, is I can walk in on almost any day and ask for some obscure, left behind artist or album...and the Pastor will easily look through his thousands of albums and extract exactly what I'm looking for.
Yeah, it's easy to stash a few Beatles albums, a hand full of George Straight and Gladys
Knight albums. But Miracle Electronics is the place I go to find brilliant, archaic albums, weird and magnificent stuff nobody else has heard of like Gil Scott Heron, Earl Klugh and Rufus Thomas, "the world oldest teenager".
The selection. and range of music and genres at Miracle Electronics is monumental but it's the knowledge of Pastor Witherspoon I crave. No matter what album or artist I request, he happily searches through scores of albums, in a system only he understands, and typically finds exactly what I'm longing for.
Then, to make sure I'm a satisfied customer, he always puts the chosen disk on his stereo, turns it up loud and we listen to the marvel of music on vinyl.. All the pops and clicks, those are perfect. That's the sound I'm craving.
The cleaned up, edited and produced sound of music we stream today is imperfect. The music on an album, an old album, has time to breath, it expands and contracts, the silence tells a story just as well as the lyrics.
Honestly, I never know when or why the store is open, but if you happen to show up when it's open...you're a lucky fellow.
If you love music, your stereo or speakers, if you love celebrating artists who dedicated their lives to their craft, passion or instrument, I bet you can find an album you'll cherish at Miracle Electronics. A secret "record store" most of us don't deserve.
Please, just don't tell anyone else about Miracle Electronics.
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