Okay, I went around to a few
record stores in hvd sq today, looking for
Stooges marginalia and whatever else might turn up. Here, as anywhere, there are two kinds of
record stores: Big
chain stores, and little cramped places.
The little cramped places have less selection, but they usually have
used records (
out of print stuff, mmm . . .), and best of all they have long-haired, ill-groomed,
geeky-looking people behind the counter who, like,
really care waaayy too much about records. I dig those people. I'm on their wavelength. In
CD Spins on
Church Street, they were playing
Sister Lovers by
Big Star when I went in there today (it was on "
Holocaust").
How cool is that! Yeah, I was basically
suicidal by the time I left the store, but never mind. It's a cool
record to be into. And that's cool. I few weeks ago, I bought a
Kingsmen compilation there, and the guy behind the counter said "Whoa! Cool! I didn't know we had that!" Another time I bought a recent
reissue of
The Snake by
Shane MacGowan, which has a couple more songs on it than the import I got when it was released; I discussed this issue with the guy who rang it up, and he
grokked, he
understood why I was buying a second copy of a
record I already had. These people don't
always have
the smoldering eyes of fanaticism, but they
like stuff and they're not ashamed of it. Far better the light of
fanaticism than no light at all.
In Your Ear on
Mount Auburn Street is even cooler, because they've been around much longer. It's basically a
midden in a basement, and they've still got a lot of
vinyl.
CD Spins has no
vinyl because they're only a couple of years old.
Not all
tiny little record stores are staffed by ill-groomed freaks who know who played bass on which
Stooges record (
my people), but
the odds are good.
Then you've got
Newbury Comics (which is a
record store chain here in
New England),
HMV,
Tower, etc. The only
Tower I ever go to is actually okay: It's in
Burlington, MA, half a mile from a vast
Sun Microsystems campus. It might be the vast geekiness of
Sun being so close, or it might be the
suburban thing, but they don't give me a hipper-than-thou vibe when I go in there. Even the
teenage hipsters in the
Newbury Comics across the parking lot from that
Tower are . . . tolerable. Usually.
But if you give
a flying fuck about music and/or you're not a goddamn
affectless teenage hipster yourself, don't expect the morons at
HMV or
Newbury Comics in
Harvard Square to treat you like a goddamn human being. I bought a
Modern Lovers thing in
Newbury Comics today (
Live at the Longbranch and More, very cool; I'll have to do a
writeup) and the benoseringed
bimbo behind the counter laughed at it and rolled her eyes. Um, what? Hello? Hey, I can deal with that. I've been treated worse by inferiors and lived.
It was The
HMV Incident that really set me off. (8/25/00: see
Update below) They were playing some kind of groovy
techno thing over the speakers,
except it didn't suck! It just didn't suck at all. In fact, I liked it: It was just percolating and bloopitting and blopitting along and it was very pretty. So when I went up to the counter with my chosen item (
Head On, late
Stooges: The usual
Detroit Rehearsal Tapes material, and one and a half more
CDs worth of stuff it turned out I've already got, dammit, but mislabeled), uh, as I was saying, I went up to the counter to buy this
record, and there was this, like,
trés world-weary young sophisticate back there, and darned if he hadn't just seen it all and done it all and retired to devote the remainder of his natural span to hair care and expensive eyeglasses (and to operating a
cash register in a
record store, of course: A common hobby among the
glitterati of
Europe and
Japan). One of these kids who's just so
bored by it all, eh? One of those dead-eyed,
affectless, fashionable ones. So I asked him the name of the
record that was playing. I said, in a clear and pleasant voice, "What is the name of this
record? It's like,
techno, but it doesn't suck."
He gazed at a point above my left shoulder, and very quietly replied "Unnnmdnfh ndhmf".
Heh. Okay, so I said, "It sounded like you said the word '
Underworld'. Is that correct?"
Silence.
"Is that correct? '
Underworld'?"
"Ysmns".
" '
Underworld'. Is that the name of the people who made the
record, or is that the name of the
record itself?"
"Umfnmd . . . rcfd".
"The people who made the record?"
"Ymnfnf". He was getting quieter and quieter, almost visibly receding.
"Was that a 'yes'? If so, what is the name of the
record?"
He clammed up. I couldn't get him to respond to any
stimuli at all after that. I think the polite thing for me to have done there would have been to climb over the counter and pound his delicately coiffed head against the floor half a dozen times. He was taller than me and probably weighed as much, but he didn't seem to have
the killer instinct. I betcha I coulda kicked his ass.
The depressing thing is that in a proper
record store, walking up the counter with
Stooges marginalia is as good as bringing them cookies. This is what
record stores are all about. This poor idiot, this dismal
hipster working in a
record store 'cause he's too cool to work at the
7-11, has about as much business being in a
record store as my grandparents have. He was totally. . . fucking . . . clueless. Probably never even heard of the
Stooges. And with a chip on his shoulder.
Jesus Christ.
Maybe I'll stomp him next time. Nah, the counter's too high. I'd get stuck climbing over it and look like an ass.
Update 8/25/00 regarding the HMV Incident: I was back there this evening and the same kid was behind the counter. He still
looked like an ass, but he behaved very normally and pleasantly. I suspect he just had a
hangover the first time, and that's perfectly understandable. I'm leaving the above
writeup intact because it seems to amuse people and all, but we should bear in mind that it does a grave injustice to the Young Man with Stupid Eyeglasses.