Back in 2003, I was working with this…fucking idiot. We’ll call him Dandy. Easily the most superficial person I’ve ever had the displeasure of associating with. We’ll be talking more about him later on, believe me.
When Dandy told me there was this new band that would be right up my alley called The Darkness, I wanted nothing to do with it. Not only did I hate pretty much everything he raved about, but he meant it sort of as a joke. Like, “Watch me get Mike into a shitty band like The Darkness.”
Anyway, the way he decribed them to me sounded spoofy, and I hate 96.5% of spoofy music. I take my hair rock seriously.
A few months later, we opened another franchise in St. Catharines (a shitty hour and a half long drive in the mornings), and I was assigned training duty for their new manager. We worked side by side daily for a couple weeks and I found him to be a good guy. When he put The Darkness on, I was skeptical, but by no means opposed, because he obviously wasn’t a shitface like Dandy. He wasn’t trying to yank my chain.
Yet, I’d never heard this band before…who the hell were they? Some new band from England that looked like a cross between Queen and Aerosmith. And sounded something like a cross between Queen, AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses. Yet was nothing at all like anything that was coming out at the time. And they could play.
I like bands with unique singers, and Justin Hawkins is definitely unique. I was into it! Dandy was wrong — this wasn’t a spoof. These guys were serious.
We played that album any time we could get away with it — which wasn’t often since Permission To Land is loaded with “fucks”. I grew to love every song. Great songs like “Growing On Me” and “Friday Night” kept me going on the really bad days, like a shot of Liquid Schwartz in the ol’ engine. They quickly became my Favourite New Band, and pretty much have remained that for the last ten years!
When the second album came out, I remember one of the head office people made a point of telling me how much she hated it.
“The new Darkness…sucks.”
“Oh yeah?” I responded, not really surprised I’d hear that from this person. They loved to rain on my musical parades. They thought they were doing me a favour, trying to get me out of “cheesey” music, and onto “good” music.
“There’s this one song where all he does is sing, ‘I love what you’ve done with your hair,’ over and over again,” they complained. (Note: The song is called “Knockers”, of course.)
Predictably, I loved the second album, although it took a few listens to absorb. Today I find myself leaning more towards the second Darkness album. I think their ambition got the better of them in a lot of ways though. I think One Way Ticket was more appropriate as a fourth album, but as a second, a little shocking for the masses to absorb. And so, in my store at least, they ignored it in droves!
I followed them through the breakup, Hot Leg and Stone Gods, and now cannot wait to hear the long awaited third record, Hot Cakes, on August 21. Welcome back, The Darkness!
Everybody always wanted to know how awesome it was to work in a record store. They all had this Empire Records idea of it when the truth is much closer to High Fidelity. I kind of considered myself a combination of the John Cusack and Jack Black characters. I ran the place like Cusack, but I was a Jack Black-like smartass. Black played a character named Barry. You know that scene where the guy in the suit is looking for the song, “I Just Called To Say I Love You”?
Customer: Hi, do you have the song “I Just Called To Say I Love You?” It’s for my daughter’s birthday.
Barry: Yeah, we have it.
Customer: Great great… Well, can I have it?
Barry: No, you can’t.
Customer: Why not?!
Barry: Because it’s sentimental tacky crap that’s why! Do we look like a store that sells “I Just Called to Say I Love You”? Go to the mall!
Customer: What’s your problem?!
Barry: Do you even know your daughter? There’s no way she likes that song! Oh oh oh wait! Is she in a coma?
Customer: Oh, okay buddy. I didn’t know it was Pick on the Middle-Aged Square Guy Day. My apologies. I’ll be on my way.
Barry: Buh-bye!
Customer: Fuck you!
I never quite went that far, but I was always fond of the subtle insults. I was also known for being stubbornly obtuse. Like for example, the guy who couldn’t pronounce “Triumph”. I knew very well what band he was looking for, but he kept saying, “Tramp”. He didn’t know how to spell it either. Just the very idea that he couldn’t spell nor pronounce the word “triumph”…how could I not have fun with that guy? I eventually sold him The Sport of Kings, when I felt like he’d earned it.
Spelling was an issue in this part of town. We had a lookup terminal where you could search for inventory on your own. The best question I ever got at that terminal was, “Mike, how do you spell ‘metal’? I don’t spell so good.”
In short, stuff grinds your gears just like it does at anybody’s job. There are times when you saw a number on call display and just did not want to answer. Just like any job. Annoying callers, annoying customers, lazy customers who made you do absolutely everything for them, including pick what they want to buy!
You had sales quotas just like any day job. You had responsibilities to get done. If they weren’t done, you can’t just say “we were really busy” if your sales numbers weren’t big. And you had to do things accurately. In any environment where you buy and sell used goods, you had to be sure of what you were buying and what you were paying for it. This is made just as difficult in a music store as anywhere else, due to the multiple versions, reissues, special editions, and imports of a CD that determine just what it’s worth. You could go from offering $2 to $20 for a single album, the exact same title, just a different version thereof.
Same album different versions, and none of these are even the standard version. How would you price them?
And customers really hated being told their discs were “too scratched to re-sell.” They really hated that one.
You got to listen to tunes all day, that was true. That is something that I thankfully still do today, thanks to the radio. I actually prefer the radio to choosing store play discs. You were so tightly constrained by various rules, which narrowed the scope. I actually loathed picking store play discs. If I was working to someone else, I often just said, “You pick, I’ll pick something later.”
Lo and behold, I still have a copy of the store play rules! I’m a packrat. I keep everything.
Forbidden bands list: Kiss, Rush, Frank Zappa, Spinal Tap, Dio, Judas Priest
Nothing heavier than Metallica’s “black” album
No musicals, no classical, no instrumental
Must play one new release in every shift
Must play 5 discs in shuffle mode, must never play album all the way through except in specific promotional cases
Each of the 5 discs must be a different genre
No songs with swearing
No rap
No comedy
Could only play discs that were in stock for sale instore
Jazz, soul, indy, and oldies were encouraged. Hard rock was especially discouraged.
Of course we broke the rules. If I knew there was no chance of getting caught, I’d bring in my own discs from home all the time. The best shift I ever had, I played all 5 discs of the Kiss box set, in a row! I played lots of shit with swearing, all the time. It wasn’t intentional of course, it’s just that sometimes a great album has swearing on it, and I like to listen to great albums. Sinatra at the Sands, for example.
We sold Sinatra at the Sands in minutes, by the way…by playing it instore.
I played Dio all the time when I could get away with it, even though he was strictly off limits.
I remember Tom walking in, during Holy Diver.
“Wow. That’s ballsy man,” he said.
I played Spinal Tap once, but one of my buddies got written up for doing the same thing. Seriously. That time I was playing Spinal Tap, there was this guy seriously rocking out to it. He didn’t look like a fan though. He walked up to me and said, “Sounds like you got some Sons of Freedom going on here!” Oops!
And I played heavy stuff too. I know I played Maiden in the store, any night I could. (Astute readers will recall that Maiden is where we started. Go back to Part 1 if you haven’t.) I remember two little kids laughing at Bruce Dickinson’s shrieking during a live take of “Fear of the Dark”. But, I also remember lots of cool kids in Kiss shirts, buying their first rock albums, and it was cool corrupting those kids.
So what did I have to complain about? Well, I only played those albums when I could get away with it. Which wasn’t often. There was usually someone in there store who could give you shit for it.
So you’d have to put up with the following: Much Dance xx, Big Shiny Tunes, TLC, Christmas music all day while seasonal, Dave Matthews band, Linkin Park, plenty of new country, and whatever was the flavour of the month at the time. There’s a reason I know entire albums inside and out by shitty band like The Dandy fucking Warhols. I could tell you every fucking song on the first two Coldplay CDs. I had the unfortunate fate of having to listen to the self titled album by Blur every fucking day for a month. There are bands that I legitimately like, such as Oasis and Kula Shaker, that I rarely play at home anymore because I have heard them so many Goddamn times. It sucks when you can’t stand music you actually like.
The record store will do that if you spend too many years there, and I spent too many years there. Gratefully, I love music again.
The worst thing about the record store though were the cliques, and from what I’ve heard, many record store were like this. You either fit in or you didn’t, and I definitely did not fit in. They were all into the latest indy rock bands, and all wore sunglasses. I’ve never been a sunglasses kind of guy. Indoors, I think they’re just pretentious. I tried, oh but I did try. I went to their shitty bars and drank and pretended to have a good time, but I just couldn’t pretend that I liked the Dandy fucking Warhols.
But, if I didn’t experience all that, I guess I wouldn’t be LeBrain!
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