now that's a great story.

i'll share an in-store story. Depeche Mode, fucking Depeche Mode were doing a in-store at my favorite record store at that time called Camel Records in Huntington Beach. there was this huge line so i went to the car we came in and pulled out a boom box. so yes i was a major geek but also very young. i for some reason had Tears For Fears in the cassette deck, so i played it. well others in line kept asking me to turn it up, pretty soon you had all these outfitted Depeche Mode fans singing TFF while waiting in line to have something signed by Depeche Mode. a real surreal moment in my youth. so we eventually make it in and all four member are there because they said "it's Los Angeles" (no it's not (you idiot) it's Huntington Beach which is located in Orange Country) but was KROQ country. they were all really cool except Dave. all the others were willing to answer a fast question but here was Dave singing, at the top of his lungs, his own Depeche Mode song, unreal (come to think about it now, he was probably out of this mind-high).

it's funny because, when i figured out that i had no talent i decided i would never work in the record industry. i was such a fan of music that i never wanted the passion for music to get jaded. though i'm not directly involved with the music industry but because it's Los Angeles, i seem to be dealing with them on a daily bases. the last people happened to be Justin Timberlake. it does have its rewards, however, as my favorite, so far, has been Damien Rice.

thanx for listening.

The day their first album came out, a friend and I took the train and bus into the city to see The Most Serene Republic do an in-store.

After $20 on transit and trusting on our notoriously bad directional skills, we finally got to the record store as they were finishing their last song.

I wound up befriending the girl guitarist though, so it wasn't all terrible.

Last week I was at the only indie record store in my town, and I asked the owner if he was hiring and he started laughing at me.

I worked part-time for a record chain in suburban Chicago during the early 90's.


Some of the more amusing moments that I remember were:



- someone made Lenny Kravitz dreadlocked spider heads that hung from the ceiling to promote his new album Mama Says

- one Halloween we somehow completely fog machined the entire ceiling of the store. The reactions on customer's faces were priceless.

- Ace, the pathetic sticker and patches seller guy

- The $2.99 classical cassette tape man

- the drunk Barbara Streisand cassette tape lady

- I got to ring up all those famous Chicago Bulls players at time: Jordan, Pippen, etc.

What store?
Obviously on the North Shore.

I used to hang out at RxAxTx records and tapes by Rice University. Although mostly me and my friends did BMX tricks and drew on the soles of our Vans outside the place until allowance day then agonized for an hour over the JFA or the DKs tape: eventually going with the DKs and a 12" Madness remix of "One Step Beyond" Damn we was cool....

Holy shit - that exact same thing happened to me.

Bump, in honor of Record Store Day.

there was a place around here called Stevie Ray's House of Wax, which was a cluttered mess owned by a chain-smoking, Mountain Dew-guzzling loner-type guy named Steve.

he never had much in his inventory, but he would order anything you wanted. he sat behind the counter all day playing slabs of vinyl while a cloud of Marlboro Light smoke hung in the air like a stale fart. your clothes always smelled like Otto's jacket every time you left.

its strength wasn't so much its music sales, but in the travelling bands he brought to play the back room. it was a good place for a band to pick up a tuesday night show on an otherwise day off to sell a bit of merch and make some gas money. he brought in bands like The Gotohells, The Parasites, Lawrence Arms, Chaos UK, US Bombs, At the Drive In, Alkaline Trio. most played for a dozen people or less. it was like our little secret.

it was a little too early for the brazil days, but literally all of my older bands had our first shows there. all you had to do was ask, and most of the time he'd put you on a bill with one of the aforementioned bands.

unfortunately, stevie died of brain cancer a year or two ago.

Pearl Jam in store acoustic right around the time 'Ten' came out. boner.

Back in my college days, there used to be a great CD shop called The Discory in Lethbridge, Alberta. This was back around 1989 when CDs were still pretty new and they still had kind of a "high end" feel to them. The store had a small selection, but would have some of the best stuff on CD coming out from small labels. Because I was poor, I could only afford a disk or two every couple of months, but the store seriously fed my industrial addiction. They seemed to have every obscure release on Wax Trax just as it came out, so I have lots of vintage (and now quite valuable) disks from My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, KMFDM, 1000 Homo DJs, Meat Beat Manifesto and more. I also still have my copies of Sub Pop 200 and Death of Vinyl comps I bought from there, still with the price sticker on them.