Sing Along Pt. 1

I love music. 

I know everyone says that and when you ask them what kind of music they like, you will get many different answers.

• "Oh I love all kinds, well maybe not jazz."
• "I like alternative."
• "Hip-Hop.  Period!"
• "Madonna"
• "I like both kinds, country and western."

I have been surrounded by music since birth.  I'm a child of the 70's and my mom used to listen to the radio all the time.  I wasn't the least bit joking about being in the back window of a Plymouth Duster with my left ear on the speaker as a child.  My mom was one that would call and request tunes for the disc jockey to play. 

Yeah, go figure, back then a radio station would squeeze in a b-side or deeper album cut just because someone called up and requested it, and they didn't even get paid for it.

I am not sure if it was the first album I ever bought, but I can vividly recall going to the TG&Y and paying for REO Speedwagon's Hi Infidelity album with my own money.  It was awesome and I wore the groves out of that vinyl in no time.  "Heard it from a friend who, heard it from a friend who, heard it from another you been messing around."  My mom liked the hits, but I always remember listening to the rest of the record.  Even back then it was such a thrill to find new music.

I parlayed all those songs in my head so, on any given day, the phone will ring, it will be The Lady and the conversation will go something like the following.

• Me: good afternoon.
• The Lady: Hey, what are you doing?
• Me: Just working.
• The Lady:  Who sings These Eyes?
• Me: The Guess Who
• The Lady: says over to co-worker in office, The Guess Who.  Ok, talk to you later.
• Me: Ok, see you later.

That call usually happens at least once every two weeks or so, they haven't stumped me yet.

I also used all that song-stuck-in-my-head knowledge to land jobs in record stores and a radio station, which were a source of employment for the majority of my working life, before I grew up and got a real job. 

I look back on the years of working in record stores as some of the best years of my life. 

The first place I worked was G&S Record Exchange in Baton Rouge, LA, it was a used record store that bought, sold, and traded vinyl records and compact discs. 

There were two locations, the original location which was right at the gates of LSU on Highland Road and another location in mid-city, on Government Street.  I was the new young guy working with two old guys that had been there forever. 

One guy, Lester, was this kind of all loving, neo-hippie, drunk that loved 60's prog rock.  If you showing up to work after Lester was there, you could bet your bottom dollar there was going to be some King Crimson, Genesis, Jethro Tull, or Marillion coming from the speakers in the store when you walked in. 

Muscle car Mark, that's what everyone called him, was the other guy.  I don't recall the type of car he drove, perhaps because the only thing you noticed about the vehicle was the back tires were five times larger than that of the ones on the front, but it was a hot rod of some sort that was really loud, hence the name, muscle care Mark.  He was really into metal and turned me on to Saxon, UFO, Iron Maiden, and Motorhead.

Mark was quite the talker and I tended to work with him more, so we got into lots of conversations about cars, music, and cars.  Lester was a pretty quiet guy, unless you ran across him after hours at a local watering hole.  Then chances were he had a couple of beverages in him and he was going to tell you all of his problems, which could make for a long interesting evening.  Both guys were complete opposite of each other and I was somewhere in the middle just trying to play the new Bob Mould album.

I would say I really cultivated my musical tastes while I worked at G&S.  Seeing that it was a used record store, most of the stuff in stock was older, so I would always dig through the racks of albums and listen to different stuff.  Not only from doing that would I find stuff I would have never thought to listen to, but also by talking to the customers that shopped there.  All kinds of people would stop in and it was a known hip place to hang out, so conversations about all types of music would break out.  You would have Lester and a couple of professors talking prog, then in would walk Percy Miller (known to the rest of the world as Master P) to sell his rap cassettes on consignment and he and his boys would break into freestyle rhymes, later Hoaky from Dash Rip Rock would walk in to tell you about a big bass he caught recently.  Peter Buck, from R.E.M., stopped in a couple of different times and bought old vinyl records, he was nice to talk to.

Even though G&S was a used store we did get new stuff every so often, sometimes even before the street release date, because people that worked at local radio stations would bring in their extra promotional copies in to the store to sell and get cash.  We made good contacts that way.  We would pay more for new stuff and the word got out, which was good for all parties involved.  G&S would get good stock for the store and they would get some spending money for whatever. 

After working at G&S for a couple of years and getting to know what was in stock at both stores, I got to the point where I enjoyed seeing the new stuff come in more and more.  I was, and still am, a big fan of new music, so it was only a matter of time before I started planting the seed to the owner of Paradise Records, the independent record store across the street from the G&S location by LSU, that I wouldn't mind working there.  The only thing was, he had great loyal employees that had been with him a long time and they weren't going anywhere soon, not to mention he had every student on campus wanting to work there because of all the perks, such as promos and tickets to shows anywhere in the area.  Paradise Records was the place for all the new releases and good stuff that you couldn't find at G&S, it was cool the way both stores co-existed right across the street from one another.

Stay tuned, we'll flip the record over and see where the story goes from here.

Comments

[samantha Jo Campen]

I call Bryan like that about movies and actors. All the time.

It's nice to have the "phone a friend" option :-)