The Record Store Clerk - Friend or Foe?

I think lately people have been posting things about record store clerks on some of the vinyl collector groups I read, so this subject has been rattling about in my head for a few days.  It's funny to read how so many people seem to actually like the fact that they can just sit in their house and order a record so easily these days.  Not really just a record, but any record.  I get that.  it's nothing new, really.  Goldmine and Record Collector have provided that service for as long as I've been collecting records, but I think a whole lot of it seems that people are intimidated by the store clerk.  Like this person behind the counter knows everything and thinks you buy shitty music and might sneer at you.  I mostly just don't get this.  Maybe I've always kind of bought records at stores that carried the kinds of things I liked anyways, but I've never had anyone in a record store be anything other than at the least courteous, if not downright friendly.

Yeah, I've seen High Fidelity and the people in that movie really only wished they actually worked in a record store.  I mean, if a guy comes in looking for any record that store stocks and is met with any shit whatsoever, what record store owner isn't going to can the guy and give the customer a discount on that record?  Yeah, I thought Jack Black's character was pretty funny mostly, too.  Where could he really exist except as a story?

Here in Cleveland we had one huge chain record store called Peaches.  I bought a crate for records there, but I could always get the records they had that I wanted cheaper at stores I liked more.  yeah, they had a ton of records in there, but when one section is Classical, one section is Country, one section is Jazz and Blues and one section is Rock, then you've just got a shitload of records I'll never even flip through.  I've always had better luck at a smaller, independent store that catered more specifically to a Rock crowd, and maybe carried a few of the "cool with the Rockers" artists like Johnny Cash or Miles Davis.  It's no big deal for me to skip and artists section and move on.  I mean, I'm going to ignore Led Zeppelin, too.  Skipping a handful of records is one thing, but I don't get all excited because a store has 20,000 records, because I'm probably only interested in a portion of them anyway.

So if I'm dealing with a person in a big chain store, I figure the odds they even know what I'm getting are slim.  There's a chain of smaller stores around here that are franchises and they're called The Exchange.  Each one is actually kind of different.  The Lakewood store is supposed to be the "cool" one, where the Rock Snobs like myself can find odd things.  I think it's a hit or miss kind of place, but I got Big Star's Nothing Can Hurt Me on orange vinyl there on Record Store Day.  It was late in the day, and when i took it up, the clerk was visibly annoyed that I got it and he didn't even know they got any copies.  I know this, because he said so.  He wasn't rude, though.  He was just kind of upset because he said he was a Real Big Fan, and the manager didn't mind if they found something they liked and bought it themselves.  He just thought they didn't get a copy.  In fact, he asked if there was another one, and my son told him that someone had moved this one out of the Record Store Day rack and mixed it in with something else, and he just happened to find it for me.  the guy was real cool about it, though.  I told him I hoped it would get a wider release so he could get one and he seemed pretty good about it.  He asked about a Dr. John album I bought and I told him it was my first Dr. John album, and that I hoped I'd like it.  I liked the kid a lot.

I've been to other cities to buy records, and I've never met this scary clerk in those, either.  I went to Goner in Memphis, and I had a hard time finding much that I was interested in.  I thought that was odd, because people I think I have a lot in common with said it would be a good store for me.  I found a Pagans album and a Dead Boys album.  The guy there said, "Hey, ya know both of those bands were from Cleveland?"  I said, "So am I.  I'm here on vacation and these are actually long gone up there."  We talked about stuff to do in Memphis and I told him I was a big Reigning Sound fan.  We talked about them and while I didn't find a lot there, I'll be back.

I've been to Jerry's in Pittsburgh.  Jerry is really nice, and we talked about how great Dr. Feelgood was.  We talked about David Werner and Norm Nardini.  He gave me a good chunk of money off the records I bought.  I've bought records from his employees and they were super nice, too.  I loved talking to the guy at Angry Mom in Ithaca.  My wife came down when I was checking out and I told her I needed more money because I got such great records there.  She said something like, "Are you really gonna play the ones you have here?"  Mr. Angry Mom said, "He'll play those.  He picked the really great kinds of records you never get tired of."

What a great guy!

I mean, the first record store clerk I really dealt with was at the long defunct Daisy Music.  I was about 11 and I stopped there and just looked at records all the time, and when I would actually buy one, I'd just ask, "What's the best Yes album?"  I asked that because when you're that young, you think everything can be quantified like that.  He would tell me that the earliest albums were very different from the newer ones, and some people liked the new stuff and hated the old stuff and vice versa.  I told him I loved Roundabout, and he helped me get started on my first favorite band in the world.  I knew the girl that ran the record section at The Shoppe, and she was invaluable in helping me figure out some of the New Wave bands of the early and mid 80's.  I never saw her be anything more than helpful, even when handling a return.  Even from the guy that was returning a record that he claimed made constant noises that shouldn't be there, and when she played it, I confirmed that I couldn't hear it, either.  She told me he returned half of what he bought, and she always made him get the same record, and if it was out of stock she ordered it for him, no matter how much he complained that he wanted something else.  She just put his perfectly good records in the used bin and they'd sell real fast because he just bought new, popular stuff.

These days around Cleveland every owner I've seen is terrific.  Melanie at Music Saves is  my favorite, but she stocks the kind of music I like and makes my special orders easy.  She seems genuinely happy when I say, "Hey that last album I bought here is fantastic and I love it!"  The people there have turned me on to new bands, and I enjoy driving across town, past other record stores so that I can shop there.  I can stop in and say, "Hi."  I can talk about another store I went to.  I can ask about shows around town that people there went to see.  I always walk out with a smile on my face.

I've had to order some things from the internet, but let's face it, Amazon doesn't know me at all.  Their suggestions are often stupid as hell, and if I can order a record locally, I do.  Even if it costs more.  I'm sure the people that work for Amazon are nice enough, but I like talking to real people and I've found that if you go into a record store and say, "Hi!" almost every single person behind that counter is great.  If they're really actually a jerk, then leave.  Don't even poke around.

I think if I actually did run into this mythical Record Store Snob, I'd put my purchases on the counter, excited like I always am, and if they said something condescending or rude, I'd be twice as rude back to them.  I try to be polite, but I don't have any problem being a giant asshole.   What's wrong with just saying, "What the fuck do you know about what I like?"

Look, you're collecting records.  The big selling points are things like, "The tangible product makes me feel more connected to the artist.  Records make me feel more connected to the community."  So get connected to the community.  Meet the 99% of people in record stores that are really great.  Talk to people like you.  People that love records.  Your computer and your credit card may not judge you, but they also provide the same excitement as making your car payment.  You deserve better than that when it comes to your hobby.  Ask the people that live hours away from any record stores.  They don't miss driving to the store.  They miss flipping through the records, which were laid out by a person that made decisions about where to the bins, what order the display bins go, what's on sale and what records go on the walls.  The person that does that is there for the love of it, not because they're making tons of money.  Go meet a real person in a real record store! 

High Fidelity, or Just Rambling?

High Fidelity.  What an elusive concept, eh?  I think a lot of males my age (we grew up in the 70’s) tend to want a certain degree of great sound from their stereo that you cannot get from an ipod in a docking station with two 2 ½” speakers eight inches apart and a 3” subwoofer.  Sure, that thing can be surprisingly better sounding than you would have ever imagined in 1977, but an H.H. Scott receiver and a pair of some long lost to time bookshelf speakers an old girlfriend of mine had handed down from her brother would put that ipod dock to shame.  Not that I had anything that nice back then (I was positively green with envy the day we hooked it up!), but kids my age usually tried to get a decent stereo.

That picture above is the first real stereo I ever owned.  My dad had a little Webcor stereo with a small record changer built in to an AM/FM receiver.  The speakers were 4” cones and weren’t much to write home about.  I saved a lot of money (for me, anyway) and bought this GE stereo.  It was an AM/FM receiver with a phono input and an AUX jack, with a built in 8 track player.  It came with two speakers.  The phono input was just a line level, and my first “turntable” was a shitty BSR changer with a plastic woodgrain base and a ceramic cartridge.  The GE system had pretty decent speakers, though.  They had an 8” woofer and a 3 ½” tweeter.  So yeah, the tweeter wasn’t exactly accurate and good at imaging, but it was damned good with electric guitars!  That thing played surprisingly loud, had bass that didn’t offend me, and best of all, it was durable.  I would bet that had my BiL not wrangled it from me, it would still be working.  He put the speakers on the outside of his garage and left the receiver in the garage for his daughters to use by the pool.  Rain, snow, heat and cold killed the speakers and I don’t know what happened to the receiver part.  It’s a little sad now that I think about it.

That stereo and I got through me growing up.  I also had an old pair of JVC closed back headphones with a volume knob on (I think) the left ear cup.  They were okay, but I got better ones.  I can remember lying in bed late at night and listening to WCSB or even WMMS and hearing all the underground music of the times.  I liked my headphones, and I could just blast them really loud and feel totally lost in whatever it was I was listening to.   I remember one day after my JVC phones crapped out but before I got a new pair I laid on the floor with the speakers on either side of my head at full blast so I could better appreciate Roxy Music Live at Hammersmith Odeon 1979.  I can still hear, and I still have that bootleg record.

I really liked the blue lighted tuner dial.  It was a great color of blue and I don’t know why stereo’s don’t always use blue lights.  They just look really cool if you ask me.  I used to have a bunch of beer lights and a really weird 7UP can that had a big light bulb in it that also had a huge filament that went around a magnet, and when I turned it on the filament it would flick back and forth.  I had some really weird lighting in there, and I thought it was cool.  I used to sit in there in my weird light and listen to Yes and The Doors lying on the floor for hours.  Eventually I got to move my stereo to a room in the back of the house, and that was beyond cool!  I had a couch and it was just a great place to hang out.  I wish my parents had been the kind that let me smoke back then, but they weren’t (if you wondered, I quit long, long ago).  So it wasn’t always cool to hang out at my house, but I still had my moments.

Eventually I got my first Dual turntable from some old stereo shop in my downtown.  I bought records from the guy, too.  I think I still have several of them, and by now some of them are actually pretty valuable.  I think my first Dual was a 1009, and it was pretty old and looked it.  But it was kinder to my records, that’s for sure.  After a while I ended up getting two more small speakers (my receiver had a Quadra Fi button,  and it was cool to have two more speakers.   But then I got a real turntable.  I got a used 1219 with some kind of Audio Technica cart on it, and it sounded great!  I used that until I bought my first big boy stereo.  I wonder what happened to it?  There are people online that would like that old thing.  I bet it’s in a landfill, though.

I can remember coming home from swimming practice and listening to Suzi Quatro or some other such thumpy noise.  I learned a lot from that stereo.  I learned what I wanted from ever stereo from then on.  I wanted some high notes and I wanted a richer bass.  But I also wanted to make sure it would play as loudly as I wanted it without distorting, which my GE did with apparent ease.  I also learned that I didn’t care what anyone else thought about my stereo, because I bought it because I like the way it sounds.  And that’s important!  I remember some girl’s older brother telling me he bought a new receiver at Radio Shack and I think I said, “Isn’t all their stuff shitty?”  He showed me his new receiver and it was one of those monster mega watt things with like fifty knobs and dials on it.  I was blown away!  He had the Realistic Mach One’s hooked up to it and that thing was amazing.  It took up his whole bedroom, but it was worth it, and I had no problems appreciating that thing and asking him about stereo equipment all the time back then.  I knew one day I wanted something like that, but I never did get one of those huge receivers.  They’re just too big.

My little GE and a bunch of older girls seem to me to be the main thing that helped shape my musical tastes.  It’s weird being the oldest.  My parents didn’t have records I wanted to listen to.  I wanted to listen to music kids listened to.  I think from guys I got my appreciation of stuff like Grand Funk, but I think the girls I knew tended to encourage me to listen to Yes and anything else that was something I could feel a personal connection to.  The girl that played Patti Smith for me told me to never buy records to keep in my collection for other people.  She said I’d never play them, and I learned that with a couple of Led Zeppelin albums that I gave away.  I sure do miss all those old days where all the music seemed so new and my very own stereo turned me onto those sounds.  Not that I don’t have my very own stereo (I have one that works really well for me), but it’s funny that so many of those people I used to talk to about music all the time seem to have put that part of their life in the same landfill as my old GE stereo.  I wonder if they ever miss it?

Did you ever read This is Not Pitchfork?

Well, that up above is not a Pitchfork. It's a strange Russian tractor. But This is Not Pitchfork is a pretty fun page where a woman with far better writing skills than me goes through her record collection. Unfortunately, she stopped and went to Tumblr in 2009 or so, so there isn't much new stuff. But she's exactly my age, from the US and from the north. Granted, she's from a big city and I'm here in Cleveland (or close enough), but I like the way she reviews her records. You may not get any idea what the record is all about, and I like that. I mean, if I decide to review Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, I may hardly mention the music at all. Why should I? They still play every song on it on oldies radio all the time. Everyone is familiar with it. But it's interesting to get a different take on it, like what was happening when it was popular. It's interesting to me, anyway.

So if you get time (and really, if you're reading my blog you've apparently got plenty of time), check it out. I'm mildly inspired by it. Hell, someone should take its place, and I'm someone.