luther vandross

#1162: Luta

Expanding upon Record Store Tales #11:  Klassic Kwotes

 

RECORD STORE TALES #1162: Luta

It was 2003, and I was managing the Beat Goes On location on Fairway Road.  A newer employee named Lori was on the shift.  She was great with customer service, but even she could not help the large man with the heavy Caribbean accent that walked into our store that evening.  He was friendly, upbeat…and infinitely frustrating.

“You got any Luta?” he asked Lori.  I always listened to the employee interactions with customers so I could step in when necessary.  This one perked my ears up because I had never heard of any artist named “Luta”.  I had been in the store about eight years at that point and had heard just about every name you can think of, from “DJ Rectangle” to “Who” (not THE Who, not THE GUESS Who, not DOCTOR Who, just Who).  So, when an unfamiliar name came up, I was always willing to help a less experienced employee.

Lori searched “Luta” to no avail, so I stepped over to her terminal to help.

“How do you spell it?” I asked the man.  He didn’t know.  “Loo-tah” is how he pronounced it, with emphasis on the “Loo”.

I said, “Is it L-u-t-a?” to which he responded, “Yeah, man.”  Not that I doubted Lori’s search, but I typed it in, as well as “Lootah” and anything else I could think of.  Our database was alphabetical, so as long as you had the first few letters right, you could scroll up and down and see what was similar.  I found nothing.

“Are you sure it’s Luta?” I asked.  “One name, just Luta?”

“Yeah man,” he responded.  “You don’t know Luta?” he laughed in his accent.

“No I’m sorry, I have never heard of him before,” I responded in the negative.

“‘Dance With My Father’,” said the guy.

Suddenly, it clicked.  “Dance With My Father” was a new hit by Luther Vandross.

Luther.  Luta.  Luther Vandross.

Mystery solved!  The lesson here is, at least know the first and last names of the artist you’re searching for when you walk into a music store!

Part 11: Klassic Kwotes I!

1. Once, we opened a CD case to find a small piece of paper inside.  The customer said, “Ahh, can’t forget my spliff paper!”

2. We were once approached by a man in a cheap suit at the counter, who asked, “Do you like the drugs?  Do you like the crack?”

3. “You got any Luta?” I was once asked by a large man with a heavy Carribean accent.  Luta, that’s what we all heard, like “loo-tah” with emphasis on the “loo”.  We asked him to spell it?  He couldn’t.  I said, “Is it L-u-t-a?” to which he responded, “Yeah, man.”  Well a search for Luta revealed nothing.  We went back and forth for 10 minutes before he finally mentioned “Dance With My Father”.  Luta.  Luther.  Luther Vandross.

4. “Don’t worry, I ain’t got AIDS or nothin’!”  This was once said to us by a man who handed us a Beach Boys box set, covered in his own blood.

5. “Do you have any of that lesbian music?” This was asked of me by a middle-aged lady.  All I could respond with was, “Uhhh…I don’t think that’s an actual genre of music?”

6. We once saw a guy looking at the booklet for the new Fleetwood Mac album, The Dance.  We asked if he would like to listen to it, and he said, “Nah.  Just checking out the babes.”

7. “Dave Matthews Band, and Matthew Good Band.  What’s the difference?”   Uhhh…they both spell, and pronounce, their names differently.

8. We had a big sign, and all our ads said “WE BUY USED CD’S”  One day a guy pulled up on a bike with a milk crate full of records on the back.  It was close to 40 degrees (celcius) that day but he pulled up on a bike.  A bicycle, leather jacket, 40 degrees, milk crate full of records.  He was really pissed off when we told him we didn’t take records.  “Well you should fucking advertize that!  Do you know who I am?”  Obviously a mover and a shaker, you and your whack bike.

9. Remember that Japanese lady that was asking me about Chris Cornell when I first started at the record store?  If not, read back.  She kept coming back, and back, and back.  We’ll call her N.  One day, N came in, and she was in a bad mood already.  “Where’s my treat?  Where’s my treat?”  What?  “My treat?  Are you retarded?  Where’s my treat?”  We had a sign outside that that, “bring your used CDs in for some brand new beats, come in you owe yourself a treat!”

10. “This right here…this is the best CD in the whole store,” said a kid holding a Creed album.

11. This next one, I mean absolutely no disrespect or meanness.  It was just cute, ’tis all.   A young fellow with a Scottish accent came in one day, and said, “Excuse me sir, but do you have any of Mr. Arrow Smith?”  I got him their latest, which was Big Ones at the time.

12. “Whoops.  I just tooted!” said N another time.

13. Again, this one was frequent.  “Do you have anything by that country guy who always wears the hat?”

14. “Is it true that Marilyn Manson once killed a kid?  And he tried to get rid of the body by burning it in the oven?  But the cops came, and Manson escaped out the back door.  The cops said, ‘Smells like children’ when they opened the oven, but Manson was outside listening and that’s how he named the album Smells Like Children, right?”

 15. Yes, the above is a real question.

16. There was another Manson one, this one about time travel.  If you check one of his albums, whichever one was released in 1996, the liner notes reveal one song was written and recorded 1997.  Typo or mindfuck, or…time travel?  My customer said to me, “Manson travelled forward in time to 1997, to the day the world will end.  Then he travelled back in time to now, to warn us about the end of the world.”  Marilyn Manson invented time travel?  Well then what the fuck has Stephen Hawking been doing all these years?