1000 episodes of Amoeba’s What’s In My Bag?, 2007 to present, every picker and every record, indexed.
Since 2007, Amoeba has handed guests a bag, let them loose in the store, and filmed them talking through whatever they carried out. Musicians, mostly; also filmmakers, comedians, athletes and writers. The format hasn’t changed.
The complete catalogue of every record anyone has ever pulled out of the bag. Each sleeve links back to the picker who reached for it — and to everyone else who reached for the same record.
Browse 5200+ records →Musicians, filmmakers, athletes, comedians, novelists and DJs — 964 of them, each given one bag and forty minutes to talk about the records they pulled off the shelves.
Browse 964 pickers →
No editorial, no algorithm. Just a ranked count of which sleeves show up most often when the cameras roll. The shape of the canon is steep — one record well clear of the field, then a long tail the room agrees on but doesn't fight for.
See the full canon →
Electropop band Ladytron goes record shopping at Amoeba Hollywood in this "What's In My Bag?" episode. Helen Marnie, Daniel Hunt, and Mia Arroyo dig through the bins and share some of their favorite music, from Brazilian composer Rogério Duprat and Lana Del Rey to Bulgarian throat singers and Bobbie…
“When I was a kid in Bulgaria, there was a whole lot of folk music, you know, communist country sort of celebrating sort of national stuff and I was really averse to it. Apart from the Bulgarian throat singers who recorded with Kate Bush, this was a record that put out. So this is kind of how they became famous and then Kate Bush kind of, you know, approached them and started recording with them.”Watch this moment
Amoeba Music opened in 1990 in a converted bowling alley on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. Three former Rasputin Music employees wanted a store that took every format seriously: new, used, vinyl, CD, cassette, the bargain bin and the rare-records glass case, all in one room.
The What's In My Bag? series began at the Hollywood store in 2007 and has run ever since. 1000 episodes. This is the archive.
The largest of the three. Where most What's In My Bag? episodes were filmed.
The original. A converted bowling alley two blocks from campus.
Built inside an old bowling alley on Haight Street, west of Ashbury.
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