Hi, I’m Tom! Welcome to Music Box TW!
Have you also noticed: there’s more music available right now than at any point in history, and somehow that makes it harder to find something you’ll actually love, not easier. That’s the gap I built this place to fill. I’m not really in the business of selling vinyl for vinyl’s sake (though believe it or not, I do love that part too!)… I’m here to help you find your next favourite artist.
Since 2022 I’ve had a physical shop here in Chiayi City, and this is where the fun happens in person. You come in, I ask what you’re in the mood for, and we take it from there. Sometimes people know exactly what they want. Most of the time they don’t, and that’s honestly the best part… the conversation wanders, records get pulled and played, and more often than not you leave having discovered something you’d never even heard of an hour earlier.
In this modern world filled with a million distractions, I wanted to offer a space to relax and have a unique, mindful experience. That’s why we have a nice little collection of English and Chinese manga available to read: it’s a lovely way to disconnect for an hour! That’s also why, even though there’s plenty to choose from, I resisted the temptation to make the menu enormous. I had a lot of fun matching every drink with a band or artist that I felt matched its flavour and personality! I’m especially proud of some of the name pairings I came up with for our homemade sodas and teas. (Go on… ask me why it’s Lady Gaga’s Oolong tea, Savage Garden’s chick-a-cherry-cola, or Michael Jackson’s café latte! Which one is your favourite?)
Our Story
Who Am I?
Music Box TW is a record shop and café based in Chiayi City, Taiwan, but honestly, “record shop” undersells it a bit. Vinyl is the medium, not really the point. What I’m actually trying to do is help people rediscover music, one conversation at a time. One of the things that makes me sad about this modern world is the disposability of music. I’m hoping Music Box can, in some small way, help people reconnect to why recorded music mattered in the first place.
I’m Tom Cartman, an English teacher who’s called Taiwan home since 2000. My love of English is surpassed only by my love of music and my ever-growing (some might say out-of-control) vinyl collection.
Under the name Birdienumnums Music, I’d been buying and selling records online since 1995… but things can’t always stay the same! In August of 2022 I opened a physical shop here in my adopted home of beautiful Chiayi City. I realized pretty quickly that “Birdienumnums” didn’t really say much about what this place was about, so a name change was in order, and Music Box TW was born.
I love most pop music and especially love being able to introduce you to something new (careful though, I can happily talk your ear off). That’s kind of the whole point of this place. My own taste runs from ABBA to Zappa and everything in between. In fact, I’m open to just about any style of music as long as it resonates with me (still can’t quite get my head around hip hop or jazz though) and I’ll always try to point you somewhere good even outside my comfort zone.
I played in a few bands in high school and recorded a couple of independently released CDs in college, but I’ve since decided to leave that to the professionals. I’m a terrible keyboardist, a lousy bassist, and a sloppy guitar player. My vocal range is limited (but I mean well). In a pinch I can keep the beat on a set of drums, as long as there are no fills or cymbals involved.
Dad’s Weekly Shopping Habit
When I was young, my dad had an awesome habit: every single payday he would stop by the local record shop on his way home and buy every new 7″ release that he liked. He would spend about an hour or more at the counter and have the sales clerk play every new track for him. Anything that he liked, or thought that I would like, he would buy two copies of, and bring them home. One copy would be his and one copy he would put aside to give me later. My earliest memory of my dad giving me a stack of brand new 7″ singles is from when I was about 4 or 5 years old.
Of course, I didn’t know that he was doing this until much, much later. He only ever gave me a stack of singles now and then. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized there were pristine mint copies of my favourite singles hidden in the basement. Since I started listening to vinyl records at a young age, I was always pretty careful with my records, but those pristine replacement copies came in handy for a few well-worn favourites!
It was always ingrained in me to be careful not to scratch them and to treat them properly. Nevertheless, as anyone who has ever been around a child can attest, I managed to scratch, break, crack, warp, and otherwise mangle most of my favourite records when I was a pre-teen.
So when my dad presented me with a stack of my favourite out-of-print singles in mint condition a few years later, augmented by some of his and my mother’s favourite singles from when they were teenagers, I was over the moon! That said, they didn’t all survive into the 21st century.
When I went to college and moved out of the family home, most of my record collection remained behind or was sold off (regretfully) as the world switched formats to CD. Those that did survive are among my most cherished possessions and include such obscure titles as “I Want You to Love Me” by Susan Jacks, “Sugar Town” by Nancy Sinatra, “Chick-a-Boom” by Daddy Dewdrop, “Love is Like Oxygen” by Sweet, “Hurdy Gurdy Man” by Donovan, and “I Can’t Control Myself” by the Teenbeats.
There are also a few really sentimental ones, like my father’s original copy of “Runaway” by Del Shannon and my mom’s Ritchie Valens single, with “Donna” on side A and “La Bamba” on side B!
Those that were too badly scratched I have since replaced (not cheap, I might add), but quite a few of those original 45s are still in my possession and have made the intercontinental journey to reside here with me in Asia.
Needless to say, whenever I play any of them, I think fondly of my dad. And I’ll be honest with you, I think that’s probably where all this started. He didn’t just hand me records… he handed me the experience of hearing something for the first time and having it change how you see things.
That’s the same experience I try to offer every time someone walks into the shop and tells me they don’t know what to listen to next. I get it. I remember exactly what that feels like. “Have you ever heard of this….. ?” and a new music journey begins.
