It should be obvious that I’m a music and movie fan, and a fan of physical media specifically. I could rant for an hour on the virtue of owning a physical copy of the music or film you enjoy vs. having to rent it in perpetuity from some greedy pinhead who can make your beloved favorites vanish in an instant or pepper them with ads for products you’ll swear not to buy out of sheer annoyance.

Well, there’s a new shop for people like you – people like us – Music & More, located on Lockheed Drive in south Bismarck.

There’s lots of vinyl – all professionally cleaned and prepared as well as a wall of CDs, lots of tape (yes, tape), and plenty of other hard-to-find items in this little shop, too.

I’m a digital kind of guy, so naturally I’m into the CDs. When I stopped in, there was plenty to peruse. There’s a lot more coming, too – they’ve got a lot of items still waiting to be brought out for display.

I mentioned tape. There are two displays of audio cassettes and shelves of 8-tracks, too! I geeked out with nostalgia at this point. I found some real gems, too!

There are other collectibles, too, including Little Golden Books! This one was my favorite as a kid, and while I still have mine I wanted to pick up this copy as well. So you bet I did.

Check this out – need any blank tape? NEW blank tape? There’s plenty here, too. I haven’t seen stock like this in a while. I used to have a friend in Seattle back in the 80s who would make mix tapes for me from his ever-growing collection of rare 12″ vinyl, which was easy to get on the left coast. I’d send him a pack of blank Denon D90 cassettes, and they’d come back loaded with gold.

What if you’re a little more nerdy? Yeah, I am…there are blank CDs and DVDs, and even ZIP disks! Yes, one of my animation workstations at home still has a Sony internal ZIP disk drive that works. I still have plenty of blanks, too. Of course, 100MB doesn’t get you far these days, but some of us still think they’re pretty cool.

How’s this for cool? I was a MiniDisc fan. In fact, I still have two portables, a Sony in-dash MiniDisc car stereo (although I pulled it from my last truck), and a Sony CD-MiniDisc deck with high-speed dubbing for making one’s own mixdiscs (my play on the term ‘mixtape’). These are hard to find, too.

Naturally, there’s artwork of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Once you meet the proprietor, you’ll understand. If not, ask him.

They offer services such as cleaning your old viniyl to refresh it and polishing scratched CDs. They can’t take scratches out of vinyl, but they can recondition them with the ultrasonic cleaning.

I’m simply delighted to find a shop like this. It’s the kind of place where you can hang out and talk all kinds of music and movie trivia, geek out on my kind of collectibles, and reminisce as I did for way too long last week. I’d heard about the shop but hadn’t found it myself, so I stopped in while on my way to run an errand for my wife. That prevented me from really hunting through every stack and shelf, but I’ll get around to it. Even so, in the short time I was there I found a rare cassette, an even more rare CD, and lots of other cool items!

The shop is a little hard to find, but not too bad. You can get there one of two ways:

If you go down Airport Road, head east on Airway Avenue (just north of the S-turn) until you reach Lockheed Avenue. Head north and you’ll see the shop right where the road comes to a T.

If you head south on 26th Street, past the south Walmart, you’ll see Lockheed Avenue on your right. Same deal, head west until you see the shop on your right at the T in the road.

Lockheed is one of those concrete “private” roads connecting shops in the industrial park. Music & More is the first shop on the south end of the building at the intersection, and there’s a sign with the logo on the end of the building to make it easier to find.

My fellow music, movie, and collectible enthusiasts, there’s a place for us! Maybe I’ll see you there.