RECORD STORE TALES #1157: The Lone Classic Hard Rocker

For almost my entire tenure at the Beat Goes On, I was pretty much the only “classic hard rocker”.  By that I mean, the guy who not only liked Rush, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath, but also Poison, Dokken, Motley Crue, Kiss, and the Scorpions.  I started in 1994, and hard rock was definitely the black sheep of the musical family back then.  The entire genre had received a hard thrashing from the new generation of bands, who had cleaned the slate and wiped the charts of the old guard.  For a little while, anyway.  When I began in 1994, hard rock was all but banned from store play.  That’s obviously a broad statement, as I distinctly recall giving a store play copy of Tesla’s Bust A Nut a shot while working with the boss.  He didn’t like it, but there was no way I was going to play Poison in the store with him around.

“Nobody’s buying that stuff,” he would say, and he wasn’t wrong.

When Trevor started later that year, he too liked a lot of hard rock bands, but he probably more into the current crop of groups.  Brother Cane, and this new snotnosed group out of the UK called Oasis.  He discovered all that Britpop stuff on a trip to England, and he was quick to adapt to electronic and dance beats too.  While he enjoyed some Poison and Motley Crue, I don’t think he would have played them in store.  I don’t think he would have called himself a hard rocker.

When I was bestowed my own store to manage in 1996, my staff gave me a nickname:  Cheeser.

The reason being, I listened to “cheesey” music, such as hard rock.  They wouldn’t give me credit for the jazz albums, or the Faith No More collection.  They only looked at the Dokken and the Brighton Rock.  I should have said, “Don’t call me Cheeser.  I’m your boss.”  Not that I was opposed to nicknames.  Many employees had nicknames of their own, but that one really bugged me.  It was unfair and it was uncool.  It was one-dimensional.  I remained the only classic hard rocker at the store.  Oh sure, one guy liked the Black Crowes.  Another guy had a soft spot for classic 70s Kiss.  They were not hard rockers in that classic “cheeser” sense.

I look back on those days, and I was very different then.  I was not assertive.  I was eager to fit in.  So, I let them call me Cheeser.

I felt like a second-class citizen due to my musical tastes.  The boss seemed to think playing a Poison in the album would lose us sales.  He wanted a family-friendly atmosphere, and I tended to be the rebel when he wasn’t around.  I was told to remove AC/DC from the CD player once.  An band that has sold about 200 million copies worldwide, incidentally, but with God as my witness, my boss hit the “stop” button one morning and took it off himself.

This is why I had low sales, I was assured.  You wanted people to linger and shop.  People would leave the store if the music was too heavy.  I only saw it happen a couple times, but no more than I saw it happen with other genres of music such as rap and dance.  It was rare you’d have a walk-out due to the music, but I will argue that hard rock did not get this reception any more than other genres.  I do remember one guy giving me credit for playing Poison’s Native Tongue one afternoon.

“I’ve never heard this before in a music store!” he said, with his compliments.

I would get the occasional surprised reaction when people would ask what the cool music I played was.  Motley Crue?  Poison?  No way!  That doesn’t sound like Poison.

Our store was very generic “music store circa late 90s early 2000s” when you walked in.  There would be music playing from the current charts, lots of indi bands with cool haircuts, and the requisite Motown, soul, and 60s albums.  Exactly the music you expected to hear, and I suppose that was the point.  If my manager reviews were poor, one of the gripes was the music I chose to play.  I broke the rules, and they made note of it.  I became quite despondent.  I would pick five CDs in the morning, that I picked for the soul purpose of not getting in shit that day, and I hit shuffle.  I’d leave them in all day.  Or, I would just leave in whatever the previous shift had playing.  I literally stopped caring, because those above me had sucked me dry.  I had no soul left.  My heart was empty.  It was time to go.

By the end, my only motivation was survival.  There was no enjoyment.  There was no challenge.  There was nothing to look forward to, except a day off.  I was dead inside.  I couldn’t care about music anymore.  The music I played in the store towards the end…I can’t remember the bands.  I seem to remember names like Death Cab For Cutie, Death From Above 1979, and Metric, but I cannot tell you if those were bands we played in the store, or bands that the staff liked.  Eventually, some of their musical tastes wore off on me.  I did buy a Killers CD, and I did buy one Bright Eyes.  If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, but I have not played either in over 15 years.

I know some of my old co-workers and staffers were surprised to hear all these revelations from me.  What can I say?  I was fakin’ it.  I was fighting, quite frankly, to stay alive at that place.  You can take that to mean whatever you like.  In those days, I was not aware of the importance of mental health.  The store was run with a real old school “pick yourself up by the bootstraps” methodology.  I remember one day, my boss handed me a business card with the name of a counselling service on it.  I didn’t ask for this, and I considered it a huge invasion of my privacy.  I also considered it an invasion of my privacy when he called my parents behind my back at their home.  Yet, when I wanted him to listen to me, the only person who could possible change my fate, he didn’t listen.  He waited to talk.  He lectured.  The bullying situation at the store had reached unacceptable levels, and he was so biased towards certain people, that I had no hope.  None at all.

I went from being the lone classic hard rocker, to completely alone.  It was a very dark time in my life.  I am sorry if my old friends do not understand why I had such anger for the people in charge.  I know I am not the only person to feel alone, but what happened, happened.  It was an emotional time and I wrote about it emotionally.  It was a necessary expulsion of bad feelings and poison.

But not Poison.  Today there’s nobody calling me Cheeser.   They might shrug and wonder why I need so much Poison, but the difference is respect.