If You Ever Get Lonely Just Go To The Record Store And Visit Your Friends

I doubt very much I had sobered up enough to drive myself but I blinked and somehow ended up in a record store. For the life of me I couldn’t tell you how I had gotten there but I wasn’t complaining. I was still nursing a healthy buzz (at least) and an Evan Dando record was beckoning me to touch it; to slip the vinyl out of the sleeve and caress its grooves. I submitted. Dando has always had that effect on me regardless of my level of inebriation.

The store was just off campus of the state school I attended in the late 90s and early 2000s. I must specify this for the simple fact that the store was ridiculously out of place and time. The decor was a mix of early-to-mid-grunge and alternative (with some rock thrown in to appease that small contingent), leaning heavily into the jam bands and eschewing anything with so much as a whiff of ska. The requisite threadbare carpet secured at odd angles and sporadic spots by silver duct tape and black gaffer tape so uniformly dirty one wondered if it was manufactured that way. The categorization of the shelves could best be described as “Oh shit, the K-M soul rack is full! Screw it, let’s just shove N-Z over here by the Japanese Black Flag imports!” To the owner’s credit the LPs, CDs, and cassettes were at least in different locations. This made for easy retrieval of bootleg New York Dolls shows on tape and Merle Haggard records without tripping over Bel Biv DeVoe CDs in the dollar bin.

The man behind the counter looked exactly the way you want a record store owner to look. Tall, lanky, a little on the unkempt side (I’m being generous). He smelled of rubbing alcohol and Right Guard spray. The disaffected snarl was an obvious hold over from youth, which was already at least twenty years in the rear view before I walked in. I found this odd then, and maybe a little sad. But now twenty years later...I get it. Good God do I ever get it!

I didn’t stay long that first visit. I sobered up enough to make some mental notes and introduce myself to the failed Jethro Tull roadie behind the counter and buy my small haul before going home to study. An hour later I was passed out on my bed, more than a few empty Miller bottles next to me and It’s a Shame About Ray by The Lemonheads on the turntable. (Dammit, Dando!)

I went back a few days later - sober this time. At least that’s how I recall it...but given my proclivity to alcohol consumption at the time I would very much doubt this recollection. So back I went, soberish, with a student aid check burning a hole in my pocket. Music, I reasoned, is the only real teacher anyone ever has. It’s the first one and the last one and is there for all the moments in between, ready to lift you up and knock you down. If I was supposed to get an education with that money what better place to start than a record store? 

The storefront was in the center of a three unit building. There had been pristine metal and brickwork once upon a time. But by the dawn of Y2K it was a jumble of hastily pasted handbills of local shows, all underground, most likely forgotten and poorly attended. Vans stickers vied for space and attention next to indie record label decals. Scotch taped ticket stubs hung facing out of the windows. But the windows were no longer really windows. Rather they were caked with layer upon layer of album release posters. Most chain stores would have destroyed or returned the displays to keep with the major label’s rules. But not here. Fuck that, EMI! Screw you, Sony! These posters stopped being decoration years ago. Now they were part of the store. They were structural, god dammit! Take them down and the whole fucking building is going too! The strangely inviting scent of sandalwood, rubbing alcohol, vinegar, and weed (and B.O. obviously) was just as important and beckoned me inside.

I reached for the handle and my fingertips encountered something sticky. For some reason this made me smile. It comforted me. It made me know before entering that I was far from the corporate world of shiny racks and name tagged employees. There wasn’t a mall for miles.

I entered to what has to be the most perfect song for a moment like this: Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side. I’m not one to look for signs but sometimes they smack you in the damn face.

Now that I was seeing more clearly with less double vision (thanks, Lou!) I got my first real sense of the layout. It was actually quite unassuming. A big square with a smaller square at the center, where a worn down, hand-made counter (barely) stood. Each square was dedicated to different ways one could assail their ears with noise. Behind the register stood the olfactory obliterator himself, king of his personal musical Savannah. I instantly adored him.

Each corner was an oasis of a different format. LPs to the back and right. Cassettes to the back and left. CDs - front left. The last corner, front right, with the only sliver of glass to peek through from the street was chock full of rarities. 45s, 78s, imports, CD singles - even Cassingles, for chrissake! There were some concert VHS tapes thrown in for good measure, but they were in a bin on the floor with a handmade sign that read JUST FUCKING TAKE THESE in big, bold, black letters. I can only assume the proprietor took a few hearty sniffs of the Sharpie before capping it after the sign was done. 

Behind Blue Eyes.

Just like that we switched from Lou to The Who. I didn’t mind. I’ve always preferred them to most bands of their era. Besides I’ve never been able to connect with Lou Reed. Maybe he’s too hard to dance to. That said I had a feeling I would be giving the semi-comatose man behind the counter a dance show before I was through flipping the records labeled “ALT, A-Am”. Deciding to test that theory I made a beeline for the vinyl.

The floor creaked under the stained with god-doesn’t-even-know-what carpet under my worn out red Chucks. My personal turntable was on its last revolutions but that hadn’t stopped me from searching out my favorites on the fragile medium. I was surprised at the craftsmanship of the record bins as I approached. Maybe in another universe the guy behind the counter wasn’t a mute, wasn’t as rigid. He was a soft spoken artisan. I looked back to comment on the work but he was crouching down. I craned my neck to see what he was doing down there. He was changing the record. I was the only customer in the store so he was playing the music just for himself. And good for him.

I flipped though all the A’s, B’s, and most of the C’s before the first few notes of the title track from Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska album hit my ears. That harmonica could make me stop everything every damn time and just listen. It still does. It’s an under appreciated record and truly deserves a place in every music collection. This guy knew The Truth. I was pretty sure it was his personal copy. Suddenly embarrassed I flipped my way to the “Rock, Sa-Sp” section. Bruce was about to get a new home a good distance from Nebraska.

The owner let the record be and The Boss sang about Atlantic City. I made my way to the tapes. I had been in the market for a copy of Lick by The Lemonheads with liner notes intact. Sure enough this musical messiah had two copies, both pristine. So the trio from Boston joined Jersey’s own son in my arms. (I also grabbed a copy of Come On Feel since I was there and, you know, Dando!) For a reason still lost to me I also chose a copy of The Cars Greatest Hits. I had the vinyl so I didn’t really need it. Maybe it just looked so lonely by itself there sort of out of place on the bottom between a Clarence Carter Columbia House CD (still kicking myself for not snatching that one!) and a Carter Family compilation. Regardless of why, I took it and introduced the band to Evan and the boys and The Boss. They seemed glad to meet but I still needed more friends. I spied a few 8 tracks in a milk crate over by the imports but they appeared to be mostly disco compilations so I veered to the CDs. It was glossy and bright compared to the rest of the store but with all the squares of plastic reflecting the fluorescent lights the trick your eyes played was nothing short of amazing. You suddenly wanted everything. Every. Thing. Even the Yanni.

Okay. Maybe not the Yanni.

Strangely there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the CDs. They stood vertically in shoebox after shoebox. It’s entirely possible he bought a lot of discs at an estate sale or liquidation and just didn’t think it was necessary to order them. But then I started flipping through them and realized a much more probable answer: he didn’t bother because they all sucked. There was nothing remotely contemporary. Nothing originally released in the 90s even. It was something like ten shoeboxes full - hundreds of discs, thousands of hours - of digitized “remasters” of Frankie Yankovic and Lawerence Welk. Don’t get me wrong, I know there’s room for all music in the world but a college town in northern Illinois isn’t exactly a hotbed of polka fanatics.

I was about to give up but my attention was distracted by a curly cord, the ends of which were just out of my sight. I put my sonic booty on the floor and walked to the wall where I finally recognized the cord for what I was hoping it was: headphones! And Koss PortaPros, no less! The input was sticking out of a Sony single tray component CD player. I looked to the record store version of a wooden Indian.

“Hey man. Can I, like...listen to a CD before I, like, buy it?”

I never talked like that. I wasn’t from the Valley. I didn’t hang out at malls and use copious amounts of AquaNet in the 80s. But there I was saying like so many times in a five second span I felt like the world’s shittiest Tourette’s sufferer. The man either didn’t notice or didn’t care enough to point it out. He just nodded and I nodded back. Can’t go wrong with a nod.

I had to move a few copies of Rolling Stone (this was back when the publication was relevant) and a sizable pile of classical CDs teetering on top of the machine. I glanced at the titles and claimed a mint copy of La Boheme and a  Mahler symphony. I hit the eject button on the front. The tray slipped out like a black tongue promising all sorts of elicit pleasure. Someone had been here before and had left the soundtrack to their aural experience.

Dashboard Confessional - The Swiss Army Romance. (PROMO ONLY - NOT FOR SALE!)

I pressed play and adjusted the PortaPros to my melon. I wasn’t expecting much but I could have expected the world and still been impressed.That album quickly became a staple for me that year and provided the soundtrack to more than a few failed relationships and even more drunken fights between friends...mostly because of the girls from said failed relationships. 

I let three tracks wash over me before I reluctantly removed the CD and placed it in its case. I took the headphones off and placed them gently on the player, as though they were the sole means of hearing the Ultimate Truth. In many ways they were. Maybe that’s why I went out soon after and got my own pair of PortaPros.

I looked to my left, toward the front of the store, and saw the rest of the CDs. There were even more magazines scattered on top of the proper CD racks, along with promo posters for bands I would soon come to love: OAR, Dispatch, The Posies, and more that were partially obscured. But those, as well as the import section, would have to wait. I had places to be (a bar) and people to meet (another failed romance). I brought my treasures to the silent store owner and he silently rang me up and I silently gave him cash and as the register dinged and the drawer clanged open he silently gave me my change.

I felt a little bad walking out. I had just robbed the poor guy and he seemed not to notice. I paid a little bit of money to take home a priceless collection of joy and sonic friendships that only exist between PLAY and STOP. 

But then again maybe it was me who got ripped off. I only had a few new friends in my bag. That mute maestro in there was surrounded by thousands of friends he knew intimately. I had never met most of them.

Yet.

I would be back again. And next time I’d be ready to make every friend I possibly could.