GETTING MORE TALE #825: Klassic Kwote – Carnival of Souls
We were encouraged to put stickers on CDs to draw attention to them at the Record Store. When Kiss’ Carnival of Souls was released in 1997, I put a sticker on there that read “FINAL ALBUM WITH BRUCE & ERIC”. Because why not. Other stores did things like that. Stickers are fun. Bosses didn’t like my stickers, but I was the store manager and I wanted to make stickers.
A dude picked up the CD and asked me, “What does this mean? Final album with Bruce and Eric?”
I didn’t know how to respond so I simply answered, “It’s the final album with Bruce & Eric.”
Unfortunate Canadians will recall boy band b4-4 (also known as Before Four). They were a trio, had two brothers in the group, made two albums and faded away quietly.
Courtesy of former store owner (now road manager for Steve Earle) Mike Lukacs, here’s a classic quote that shoulda been in Record Store Tales:
“Back in the record store days, some people came in the store looking for these guys’ CD. One of the dudes that worked for me asked them why they wanted such garbage. ‘They are our sons’ replied the people…”
The Foo Fighters took a break in 2001. Their new album, to come later as One By One, was not going well. The band were infighting, and the album was put on hold. Around that time, Josh Homme hooked up with his old buddy Dave Grohl and invited him to play on the new Queens of the Stone Age album. Dave was growing wearing of frontman duties in his own band and was happy to just be a drummer again for a little while.
The resultant QOTSA album, Songs for the Deaf, was a smash hit. Dave Grohl’s presence brought them a higher profile than before, but it was also just a flat-out kick ass record.
One of our store managers, Joe “Big Nose” was a Queens of the Stone Age fan going back to Kyuss. Though I was not there personally when this happened, Joe likely had an internal meltdown when a customer asked:
“Hey, do you have that new side project of Dave Grohl from Foo Fighters?”
RECORD STORE TALES Part 277.5: Klassik Kwote – The Dandy Douche Strikes Back
I’m a pretty big Led Zeppelin fan, having bought all their albums more than once (and at least once more) over the years. When this Robert Plant CD came out in November 2003, it was high on my radar. I didn’t own any Plant solo albums (beyond The Honeydrippers), but wanted something of his in my collection. This compilation of hits and rarities was perfect for my needs.
I was listening to it in the store one afternoon when Dandy sauntered in. Always eager to criticize my musical selections on any given day, he had this to say about Robert Plant’s Sixty Six to Timbuktu:
“I was talking to my dad about why Led Zeppelin sucked,”he said. “Now I know. It’s not Led Zeppelin that sucked, it was just Robert Plant all along.”
In summer 2003, we carried Electric Version by the New Pornographers on our front chart. One customer thought he was tremendously clever with this question, asked in loud bellow:
“The NEW Pornographers? What was wrong with the OLD pornographers? I didn’t know there were new ones! HA HA HA! Haaaaaah..ha ha! Didn’t get the memo! Hah…”
WTF SEARCH TERMS Part I: “Exersises for the Plumber Butt”
Crack = Bad
As a WordPress site, I have access to certain statistics. I can see how many hits I’m getting per day, for example, and how many are unique visitors. Some of my visitors are very, very unique.
Some of the more interesting particulars that I’m able to see are search terms. Search terms that people typed into Google (or Yahoo, or whatever) that led them to me. Search terms that boggle the mind as to a) what they were looking for, b) how it led them to me, or c) both. Here’s a selection of some of the most entertaining. This is just the tip of the iceberg. If feedback is positive I’ll post more in the future.
Keep in mind two things!
1. Each of these are real search terms, typed in by real people on a search engine like Google.
2. Somehow, each of these search terms led them to ME!
RECORD STORE TALES Part 183: Klassic Kwotes X – The Final Chapter
Finally the Klassic Kwotes well has run dry. Enjoy Part X, for now this feature will be put on ice. I have a new feature that I’ll be starting really soon. Until then, here’s the final 10 quotes from the Record Store days…
1. It boggled my mind that people would expect a cheap used CD of a good album to just sit there. So it always made me wonder what people were thinking when they’d say, “What do you mean that used copy of Dark Side of the Moon isn’t here anymore? It was here last week!”
2. “I really want a job. It doesn’t have to be at your store, I just want a job. Can you tell me how to get one?” Real phone call.
3. Dandy sometimes has his own stalker types. One day Dandy brought a tattoo magazine to work. His stalker kid saw it on the counter and proclaimed: “Nice! Who’s sick tatty book?”
4. Generic but frequent question: “Do you have any European trance techno jungle DJ mix discs?” Then, when you’d ask for a title or name to give you something to look up, they’d never know the name of a song or an artist.
5. “I just want one song on this CD. Can I just buy a blank CD, and you burn it for me?
6. “Do you have any of those complication albums?” Compilation albums.
9. “I have a CD to sell here. One slight problem, not a big deal. The front cover is for one CD, and the back cover is from a different CD. Oh, and the disc inside isn’t either of those. Can you take it?”
10. “Do you guys buy used CD cases? Like the plastic shells?” No! Nobody does! They just throw them out!
1.“I just have this image of Josh shaking his ‘thing'”. Not actually spoken in-store, this was found on the ground on a piece of pink notepaper, after a gaggle of school girls had left the store. Odd.
2.“I’ll tell you something, somebody’s getting fat off that Gumbo thing!” said the surly old man when I showed him the price of the Forrest Gump soundtrack. Too rich for him!
3.“So how is the new N’Sync CD, is it decent?” Why would you even ask this question of a guy wearing a Kiss shirt?
4.“I hear good things about it.” My response. This was a standardized response for if you hadn’t heard the album in question, or had heard it but hated it. For example, “How’s the new Nickelback?” The correct answer would have been, “I hear good things about it.”
5. Another standardized answer for questions like that: “If you liked their last album, you’ll like this one.”
6.“Can I try these out?” said the guy holding about dozen discs, 10 minutes before closing time. (Luckily, we had a policy of shutting down the CD players 15 minutes before close to avoid these situations.)
7.“Sorry man. These things are on timers. I can’t even turn it on.” This is what you said if a simple, “No, sorry man, we’re closing,” wasn’t good enough. And people believed it! There was a neat trick. The headphones were hooked up to these little amps. But if I shut down the amp, there was a good 20-30 second delay before the music died. So I covertly could flip a switch to kill the amp, walk across the store, and be doing something else before the customer’s music stops. Then when they’d say, “Hey, the music stopped, I don’t know what happened,” I would respond: “Sorry man. Those things are on timers. We’re closing and they automatically shut down at this time.” This was reserved for the jerks who abused the players.
8.“Sorry man, this CD is too scratched for me to take,” said I, to the customer selling the disc. His classic response? “Fuck! That’s what you said when I brought it in last time! But this time I fuckin’ buffed it in Turtle Wax!”
9. When we first opened, we had a big huge sign that said “WE PAY CSAH FOR USED CDS“.
10. The man from the sign company came in to fix the sign. He said to me, and I swear to God I’m not making this up — he said to me, “That’s Bill. He spells ‘cash’ wrong on every sign.”
BONUS 11! “Hey man. You spelled ‘cash’ wrong on your sign you know.” No kidding? And Bill fuckin’ spelled it wrong, not me!
1. “Can I return this CD?” said the man who handed me an empty CD case.
2. One Boxing Day, I helped a lovely family of four (dad, mom, two boys) pick out roughly $100 worth of music. They got gift certificates for Christmas. It took about an hour to help them, as (of course) they wanted to listen to everything first. I collected all the discs from the players, rang in the order, and they handed me a gift certificate for a different fucking CD chain. When I explained to them, “Sorry, no, we’re not that store. We’re [insert name].” A perfectly reasonable response would have been, “Oh man, sorry…sorry to have taken your time.” But no. No, the response this time was, “Well how the hell was I supposed to know that?” Well, maybe by looking at the fucking sign out front before you walk in!
3. Once, we caught a little thief trying to sell us discs that he had just stolen from HMV an hour before. Tom was on the phone with a cop at the HMV when Tom asked, “Hey, uhh, while I’m talking to you, do you have any Willie Nelson over there?”
4.It was always kind of funny when people pronounced names wrong, in certain cases. So when a guy asked me if I had any Bruce Cockburn, I can tell you that it rhymed with clock-burn. Figuring that I should probably tell him how to pronounce it so he doesn’t go around all over asking for the CD that way, I politely corrected him. His response was, “Yeah, great, thanks that’ll come in handy next time I talk to him.”
5. “How do I get in there??” This desperate question was asked by a woman, banging on our windows, not 10 feet away from our actual entrance.
6. “Can I get each of these in a separate bag?” A guy bought 10 empty CD cases. He wanted each one bagged on its own so it didn’t get scratched.
7. “Can I ask you a question? Are you a believer?” We were also frequently handed pamphlets from Jehova’s Witnesses.
8. “Got bad news for you buddy. Somebody ripped you off.” The customer then opened a CD case and showed me there was no disc inside. Apparently he didn’t notice the signs that said, “All cases are empty”, nor all the discs in storage behind me.
9. That “All cases are empty” sign was more trouble than it was worth. Multiple times, people would say to me, “So, I have to pay $12 and I just get the case? Where am I supposed to get the CD?”
10. “Can I use your phone for a sec?” A common question, in the pre-cell-phone days. But this guy used the phone for 10 minutes! And then when the call waiting went off, instead of handing it to me, he answered it!
