One of the most popular stories of 2012 was the tale of  “Aerodouche Dandy”.  So, in light of that, how about a sequel?

RECORD STORE TALES Part 159:  Dandydouche 2 – Dandy Deuce!

We had several CD players in our store that allowed our customers to listen to anything they wanted, before buying.  It was a pretty cool innovation by the chain owner.  Other stores had “listening posts” where you could listen to one of a select few new releases, but at the time nobody else would let you listen to anything you wanted in the store.  As cool and helpeful as that sounds, it was also an invitation for abuse.

Many times, I’d put up to 50 discs on for somebody who purchased nothing, but we couldn’t cut them off.  We couldn’t say no.  You could spend over an hour serving a customer, retrieving discs and filing them when they were done, all for naught.

Record store guys have a sixth sense though.  We’d pick up the signals.  For example, when Kid Rock had a huge hit with “Picture” (a duet with Sheryl Crow), a lot of older people used to come in and listen to it, to see if they would like the rest of the Kid Rock CD.  Predictably they didn’t, and it wasn’t out on Sheryl’s album yet.  I knew they weren’t going to buy the Kid Rock CD, and most didn’t.  That’s one example.

One thing Douchebag Dandy would do is purposely put the wrong CD in the player.  I know of one instance where he substituted a lady’s chosen disc with Iron Bitchface.  Iron Bitchface was a local “outsider music” project that Dandy hung out with.  He had been known to jump onstage with them, and was always seen in public as a lookalike pairing with their singer, K-Rot.

Iron Bitchface was, by their own admission, people who could not play music.  They created a lot of noise and recorded it, and split it up into tracks.  I grabbed a T-shirt because I liked their logo, but it was completely unlistenable.  In fact our store-play copy had a massive skip in it that nobody even noticed.  That’s how bad it was.

Anyway, this time Dandy was working, a lady was in listening to every Harry Connick Jr. album we had, and not buying anything.  After a dozen or so listens, Dandy swapped out her last CD for Iron Bitchface.  She immediately took off her headphones.  “I think the CD player is broken,” I’m told she said.

Dandy sauntered over to check.  “Nope.  It’s working fine.”

“Really?  Whatever I’m hearing isn’t music!”

Dandy opened up the player.  “Nope.  This is the disc you picked out.”

“Well you can take it off, that’s nothing but garbage!  Who could listen to that?” she said.

Dandy found this tremendously funny, and laughed and boasted about it after.  Even though she wasn’t buying anything, that’s still just a douchebag move!  Apropos for a Douchebag Dandy!