It had been a busy Saturday evening at the record store and I was, as usual, working with Reynolds. It was nearly closing time and we were scrambling around, trying to finish up our allotted chores so that we could get the hell out on time.
Reynolds had already unplugged the OPEN sign and I’d jumped the gun a little by cashing out the back register, so we busied ourselves with wiping down the showcases and straightening up the racks to run out the final minutes of our shift.
I asked Reynolds if he had already locked the door, and he shook his head and said that he’d gotten sidetracked by a phone call just after he’d helped that final customer, so I volunteered to go back up to the front and lock up while the last strands of Pink Floyd’s “Outside the Wall” drifted from the speakers.
As I passed the front register the door opened and a couple of young guys in olive drab jackets walked in.
“Hey guys, we’re getting ready to close,” I said, but they ignored me. They brushed past and my eyes followed as they walked straight to the back of the store and began to browse. Reynolds, who was still straightening up the racks in the back, looked up at me and spread his hands in an exasperated display of “What the fuck?!” I gave an exaggerated shrug that he would be sure to see, and then turned to lock the door.
Which is when another group of people—a much larger group this time--came through the door. I tried to stop them, tried to block their way, but they continued to surge forward and I found myself walking backwards, telling them that the store was closing up for the night. They acted as if I wasn’t even there! I heaved my way through them, like a salmon swimming upstream, to get to the door, but just as my hands reached the handle the door jerked open again and still more people piled in. It was like a stampede, and I pressed my back against the singles wall to keep from getting overrun.
By this time Reynolds had fought his way to the front and with a steady stream of obscenities we locked the door—me fumbling with the deadbolt while he struggled to hold the door closed, as those on the outside tugged with all their might to get it open.
Having locked the door, we turned to face the heaving throng—it was like being on the floor of a sold out rock concert. People where everywhere, elbow to elbow. Reynolds and I looked at each other, eyes wide with wonder and terror.
“How are we gonna get rid of all these people?!” he exclaimed.
“I know,” I said, “Grab the Yoko Ono single.”
“Shit, it’s not here!” he cried as he flipped through the O’s, then the N’s and the P’s, in the fleeting hope that it has been misfiled. It wasn’t there. We were royally fucked.
I climbed onto the front checkout counter and stood up so that I could be seen, taking care not to bump my head into the heavy wooden sign bearing the words “Check-Out” hanging overhead.
“Hey! Hey! Can I have your attention!” I bellowed through cupped hands. The crowd paused to look up at me.
“Please bring your purchases to the front counter RIGHT NOW! We are closing!”
They continued to stare, momentarily, and then simply went back to flipping through the racks and yacking away with nary a care in the world.
I climbed back down and tried to convince Reynolds to give it a go, but he wasn’t very eager. Said he didn’t want to look like an ass. I set my jaw and shot him a look, then took another quick look at the mob. Folding my arms, I leaned back against one of the t-shirt showcases, trying to figure out our next plan of attack. Reynolds seemed to be out of ideas and pulled out the little yellow sticker-covered stepstool and plopped down, chin in hand.
I glanced at the digital LED display on the credit card machine and did a double take. It read 1:18 a.m.! Holy hell, I began to panic. It was two hours past closing time and the store was still swimming with people. I turned around to give Reynolds the news, and saw that he was zipping up his black wool jacket.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m outie” he proclaimed, and walked over to the door.
‘Dude! You CANNOT leave me here alone!” I spat at him, dread filling every pore of my being. “Just look at them!” I flailed my arms, gesturing toward the back of the store, where towering piles of albums and CDs teetered precariously in their hands. Reynolds didn’t care. He turned on his heel and walked out, giving ten more people time to slip through the door before I managed to race around the counter, pull it shut and flip the deadbolt.
I woke up gasping for breath.
This was my recurring nightmare, suffered at least once a month for as long as I worked there. Sometimes I was with TC, or Shelly, or Tom instead of Reynolds, but it always started out the same, and ended the same, and my panic always hit its zenith when I glanced at the digital clock and saw the teal blue 1:18 a.m. winking at me.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Thursday, December 28, 2006
"From a starship over Venus to the sun..."
Larry was another of our mentally challenged regulars. I’m not sure how much of his disability was inborn and how much of it was foisted upon him by his overbearing, stiflingly repressive, weird mother, but he definitely had some issues.
Larry always had a happily dazed look about him, as if he was watching a fireworks display for the first time, and since he was only 4’9” he was forever looking upward anyway. Skyrockets in flight.
As with most of our mentally challenged regulars, Larry was very malleable when it came to parting with the money he made as a trash man, or as he liked to call it, a “waste manage corn ater.” He’d come shooting through the door at top speed, already halfway through a scrambled sentence by the time he screeched to a halt in front of the tape counter. Larry always bought tapes. He never seemed to care what he bought as long as he was assured that it was “a Hot One.” He was very concerned that his taste reflected those of the masses. He’d ask us what our top sellers were, then he’d ask us to read off the top ten Billboard albums of that week. If something we were selling jived with the Billboard chart, he wanted it. No matter what the genre—although it has to be said that he didn’t really care much for rap and metal—he’d still buy it, because it was “a Hot One.”
Sometimes he’d barrel into the store and rush to the tape counter, slap his palm onto the glass showcase and proclaim, “Metallica. It’s a Hot One!” And yes, we’d agree, Metallica was a Hot One. “Whitney Hoosen! She’s a Hot One!” Again, we’d agree that Whitney was indeed a Hot One. He’d be so excited to be on a roll that he’d start to laugh, and Larry’s laugh sounded to a certain extent like Peter Lorre’s. He’d nod his head in abject excitement, his pointy teeth protruding from a gigantic grin as he chanted “yeah, yeah, it’s a Hot One!” Even funnier was when he missed the mark and called out the name of something that was definitely not a Hot One. “Huey Lewis! He’s a Hot One!” and we would shake our heads, to which Larry’s head would automatically swivel from a nod to a shake and he’d mutter “no, no, no, that’s not a hot one.” Then his face would light back up and he’d proclaim, “But he used to be hot!” and we’d agree.
As his reading level was that of your average seven year old, his mispronunciation of artists was legendary around the store. Paula Abdul was Paula Bull. The Fine Young Cannibals were Five’n’Pineapples. A Tribe Called Quest was Time Q. (no, I have no idea what brought that one on) Milli Vanilli was, of course Milli Vanilla. Primal Scream was Pride and Stream. And to this day, I still refer to a certain country singer as Billy Ray Cypress. (as an aside, we also had a customer who referred to Whitesnake as Wotsnok, but that’s another kettle of fish entirely)
Although Larry enjoyed talking with us and reveled in his pseudo-celebrity status at the store (there were times we all applauded when he burst in, and he’d wave like Queen Elizabeth), he felt we’d led him astray once or twice. For instance, I had persuaded him to buy Psychocandy, which he hated, and Reynolds talked him into a Jellyfish tape once, which he might have actually enjoyed had it truly been a Hot One, but it wasn’t—so usually he was keen to let Billboard mandate his choices.
Regardless of his intellectual failings, he could occasionally come up with nuggets of abject brilliance. He once combined chart topping singles by Kylie Minogue and The Beach Boys when he requested the song “Kokomotion.” Another time he was standing at the tape counter when someone walked in and asked for Anita Baker, Milli Vanilli and Neneh Cherry. Larry turned to me without missing a beat and said, “Vanilla, cherries, baker. Someone wants a pie!” And then he’d laugh like Peter Lorre.
Now behind his back the staff referred to him as “Shorty.” Mainly this was because we couldn’t bring ourselves to refer to him as Hot One Larry, and we needed to differentiate between our other Larry regulars, one of which we referred to as Leisure Suit Larry, not because he wore a leisure suit, nor because of the video game of the same name, but because he only ever bought remixed 12” dance singles, which reminded us of Saturday Night Fever, which equated with 70’s polyester threads. Hell, it turned out later that Leisure Suit Larry wasn’t even called Larry, but the name seemed to fit and we continued to refer to him as such, even after we found out his real name was Felix.
For a few weeks each year, Shorty attended some sort of camp for the challenged. He always came in a day or two prior to leaving so he could stock up on the Hot Ones and impress his campmates. During one summer camp he managed to get himself a girlfriend, and he brought her into the store one evening on a date and introduced her. She had the same diminutive stature as him, had the same moon-faced dazed expression, and was something of a shrinking violet—the perfect foil for Shorty’s overblown excitability. It was clear they were made for each other. Despite our cynical nature, we all found it irresistibly sweet to see them wandering around the store, holding hands, as he pointed out the hot ones to her.
Somehow he managed to keep the relationship secret for a few months, but eventually his domineering old cow of a mother found out and put the brakes on the relationship. Although he was obviously quite broken-hearted he made it clear to us that he didn’t wish to tangle with his mom, so we quietly dropped the issue and stopped asking about Violet.
We all truly enjoyed seeing Shorty, and genuinely liked him, even if he could sometimes overstay his welcome. I think the longest he ever hung around asking about Hot Ones was 4 ½ hours. It wasn’t like we were working on commission, so we didn’t really mind that he hung around, but sometimes he got in the way when we were busy. Unlike some of the other regulars who didn’t know when to leave, with Shorty we could simply tap an imaginary watch and say, “Larry, it’s getting late.” He’d snap a Hot One from the perusable pile, peel off the cash and off he’d go on his merry way, out the door with a wave and a grin.
Every now and then Shorty, who was nothing if not a victim of instant gratification, would decide that he wanted to special order something. Mainly I think he did it because he saw other customers doing it, and therefore it was the hot thing to do. But there was the odd time or two when he was very sure that the Hot One he wanted was worth waiting for. In his mind I think he reckoned the item was so hot we couldn’t keep it in stock, which meant that he HAD TO HAVE IT. He’d stop in every day thereafter until the coveted Hot One had arrived. Which was fine by us, because none of us wanted to risk having to phone his house to let him know the cassette was ready for pick up. This was because he wasn’t allowed to answer the phone, so we had to deal with his scary mother, who would screech and snarl and accuse us of paving a path to hell for her little boy. Larry was, at the time, in his mid-30’s. Sometimes she’d ring up the store looking for him, and if he was there she’d cut loose as soon as the receiver was passed to him, or she’d feign some urgent illness that needed his immediate attention, and if he wasn’t there when she rang she’d cut loose on us, just for good measure.
Although he couldn’t read above a second-grade level and had a relatively child-like outlook on life, Shorty held a driving license, which just goes to show that anyone can get a driving license in America, because he seriously shouldn’t have had one. He could barely reach the pedals for a start.
And it was the combination of that license and his tyrannical mother that caused the accident. Shorty was doing his garbage round when dispatch radioed in that his mom was having yet another of her many episodes. Apparently this one sounded serious enough that dispatch had gone ahead and radioed the information to the truck, instructing the driver to swing back and drop Larry off at the yard so he could go home and tend to her. By the time Larry reached his car he had worked himself into a hyperventilating frenzy. He raced toward home, never even noticing the stop lights along State Route 725. The car he t-boned was carrying a young newlywed couple, both of whom were pronounced dead at the scene. Larry suffered severe injuries and was out of commission for nearly a year. Philbert tried once to visit him in the hospital, but Larry’s mother chased him away.
Once recovered, we saw very little of him. His driving privileges having been revoked, he resorted to walking everywhere, and because our store wasn’t convenient to get to from his house, and because his mother had frightened him into believing that riding a bus would send his soul to the devil, he stopped his weekly visits. When he did stop by, he told us he could no longer buy his beloved Hot Ones, because his wages were being garnished toward the settlement of the dead couple’s estate.
But on a snowy cold December evening last year, Larry was one of the regulars who proudly showed up at the funeral home to pay his respects to The Sav. It was a six mile round trip, on foot, in the snow.
Now that’s a loyal customer.
Larry always had a happily dazed look about him, as if he was watching a fireworks display for the first time, and since he was only 4’9” he was forever looking upward anyway. Skyrockets in flight.
As with most of our mentally challenged regulars, Larry was very malleable when it came to parting with the money he made as a trash man, or as he liked to call it, a “waste manage corn ater.” He’d come shooting through the door at top speed, already halfway through a scrambled sentence by the time he screeched to a halt in front of the tape counter. Larry always bought tapes. He never seemed to care what he bought as long as he was assured that it was “a Hot One.” He was very concerned that his taste reflected those of the masses. He’d ask us what our top sellers were, then he’d ask us to read off the top ten Billboard albums of that week. If something we were selling jived with the Billboard chart, he wanted it. No matter what the genre—although it has to be said that he didn’t really care much for rap and metal—he’d still buy it, because it was “a Hot One.”
Sometimes he’d barrel into the store and rush to the tape counter, slap his palm onto the glass showcase and proclaim, “Metallica. It’s a Hot One!” And yes, we’d agree, Metallica was a Hot One. “Whitney Hoosen! She’s a Hot One!” Again, we’d agree that Whitney was indeed a Hot One. He’d be so excited to be on a roll that he’d start to laugh, and Larry’s laugh sounded to a certain extent like Peter Lorre’s. He’d nod his head in abject excitement, his pointy teeth protruding from a gigantic grin as he chanted “yeah, yeah, it’s a Hot One!” Even funnier was when he missed the mark and called out the name of something that was definitely not a Hot One. “Huey Lewis! He’s a Hot One!” and we would shake our heads, to which Larry’s head would automatically swivel from a nod to a shake and he’d mutter “no, no, no, that’s not a hot one.” Then his face would light back up and he’d proclaim, “But he used to be hot!” and we’d agree.
As his reading level was that of your average seven year old, his mispronunciation of artists was legendary around the store. Paula Abdul was Paula Bull. The Fine Young Cannibals were Five’n’Pineapples. A Tribe Called Quest was Time Q. (no, I have no idea what brought that one on) Milli Vanilli was, of course Milli Vanilla. Primal Scream was Pride and Stream. And to this day, I still refer to a certain country singer as Billy Ray Cypress. (as an aside, we also had a customer who referred to Whitesnake as Wotsnok, but that’s another kettle of fish entirely)
Although Larry enjoyed talking with us and reveled in his pseudo-celebrity status at the store (there were times we all applauded when he burst in, and he’d wave like Queen Elizabeth), he felt we’d led him astray once or twice. For instance, I had persuaded him to buy Psychocandy, which he hated, and Reynolds talked him into a Jellyfish tape once, which he might have actually enjoyed had it truly been a Hot One, but it wasn’t—so usually he was keen to let Billboard mandate his choices.
Regardless of his intellectual failings, he could occasionally come up with nuggets of abject brilliance. He once combined chart topping singles by Kylie Minogue and The Beach Boys when he requested the song “Kokomotion.” Another time he was standing at the tape counter when someone walked in and asked for Anita Baker, Milli Vanilli and Neneh Cherry. Larry turned to me without missing a beat and said, “Vanilla, cherries, baker. Someone wants a pie!” And then he’d laugh like Peter Lorre.
Now behind his back the staff referred to him as “Shorty.” Mainly this was because we couldn’t bring ourselves to refer to him as Hot One Larry, and we needed to differentiate between our other Larry regulars, one of which we referred to as Leisure Suit Larry, not because he wore a leisure suit, nor because of the video game of the same name, but because he only ever bought remixed 12” dance singles, which reminded us of Saturday Night Fever, which equated with 70’s polyester threads. Hell, it turned out later that Leisure Suit Larry wasn’t even called Larry, but the name seemed to fit and we continued to refer to him as such, even after we found out his real name was Felix.
For a few weeks each year, Shorty attended some sort of camp for the challenged. He always came in a day or two prior to leaving so he could stock up on the Hot Ones and impress his campmates. During one summer camp he managed to get himself a girlfriend, and he brought her into the store one evening on a date and introduced her. She had the same diminutive stature as him, had the same moon-faced dazed expression, and was something of a shrinking violet—the perfect foil for Shorty’s overblown excitability. It was clear they were made for each other. Despite our cynical nature, we all found it irresistibly sweet to see them wandering around the store, holding hands, as he pointed out the hot ones to her.
Somehow he managed to keep the relationship secret for a few months, but eventually his domineering old cow of a mother found out and put the brakes on the relationship. Although he was obviously quite broken-hearted he made it clear to us that he didn’t wish to tangle with his mom, so we quietly dropped the issue and stopped asking about Violet.
We all truly enjoyed seeing Shorty, and genuinely liked him, even if he could sometimes overstay his welcome. I think the longest he ever hung around asking about Hot Ones was 4 ½ hours. It wasn’t like we were working on commission, so we didn’t really mind that he hung around, but sometimes he got in the way when we were busy. Unlike some of the other regulars who didn’t know when to leave, with Shorty we could simply tap an imaginary watch and say, “Larry, it’s getting late.” He’d snap a Hot One from the perusable pile, peel off the cash and off he’d go on his merry way, out the door with a wave and a grin.
Every now and then Shorty, who was nothing if not a victim of instant gratification, would decide that he wanted to special order something. Mainly I think he did it because he saw other customers doing it, and therefore it was the hot thing to do. But there was the odd time or two when he was very sure that the Hot One he wanted was worth waiting for. In his mind I think he reckoned the item was so hot we couldn’t keep it in stock, which meant that he HAD TO HAVE IT. He’d stop in every day thereafter until the coveted Hot One had arrived. Which was fine by us, because none of us wanted to risk having to phone his house to let him know the cassette was ready for pick up. This was because he wasn’t allowed to answer the phone, so we had to deal with his scary mother, who would screech and snarl and accuse us of paving a path to hell for her little boy. Larry was, at the time, in his mid-30’s. Sometimes she’d ring up the store looking for him, and if he was there she’d cut loose as soon as the receiver was passed to him, or she’d feign some urgent illness that needed his immediate attention, and if he wasn’t there when she rang she’d cut loose on us, just for good measure.
Although he couldn’t read above a second-grade level and had a relatively child-like outlook on life, Shorty held a driving license, which just goes to show that anyone can get a driving license in America, because he seriously shouldn’t have had one. He could barely reach the pedals for a start.
And it was the combination of that license and his tyrannical mother that caused the accident. Shorty was doing his garbage round when dispatch radioed in that his mom was having yet another of her many episodes. Apparently this one sounded serious enough that dispatch had gone ahead and radioed the information to the truck, instructing the driver to swing back and drop Larry off at the yard so he could go home and tend to her. By the time Larry reached his car he had worked himself into a hyperventilating frenzy. He raced toward home, never even noticing the stop lights along State Route 725. The car he t-boned was carrying a young newlywed couple, both of whom were pronounced dead at the scene. Larry suffered severe injuries and was out of commission for nearly a year. Philbert tried once to visit him in the hospital, but Larry’s mother chased him away.
Once recovered, we saw very little of him. His driving privileges having been revoked, he resorted to walking everywhere, and because our store wasn’t convenient to get to from his house, and because his mother had frightened him into believing that riding a bus would send his soul to the devil, he stopped his weekly visits. When he did stop by, he told us he could no longer buy his beloved Hot Ones, because his wages were being garnished toward the settlement of the dead couple’s estate.
But on a snowy cold December evening last year, Larry was one of the regulars who proudly showed up at the funeral home to pay his respects to The Sav. It was a six mile round trip, on foot, in the snow.
Now that’s a loyal customer.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
"All is quiet on New Year's Day..."
It’s been seven years since I left the record store, but I still find myself shuddering involuntarily at least once during the week leading up to New Year’s Day. It’s only after I’ve had a good shudder that I remember that I no longer have to curtail my New Year’s Eve celebrations, because I no longer have to be at the store at 5 a.m. on New Year’s Day to do inventory.
Yep. 5 a.m.
For twelve years I dragged my sorry arse into the store on New Year’s Day at some ungodly hour for our year-end inventory stock-taking. There were times I went in hung over, and there were times I went in having had the barest minimum of sleep, but I always made it in. It was the one day of the year The Sav treated us to free doughnuts, as if that would somehow make it all better.
Inventory usually took all day. The Sav would divide the staff into teams and give us a section of the vinyl and CD alphabet to inventory. Usually Reynolds and I were paired up together, partly because we were quick and efficient, partly because The Sav knew we worked well together, and partly because our banter made everyone laugh and kept spirits high.
There were also the usual bets. Before inventory began, we’d place our bets as to which artists had the most product left over from the holiday, which artists had sold the most during the holiday, which artists had sold the most all year, and which titles hadn’t moved at all, all year. There were a few titles that hadn’t moved in YEARS. Why The Sav kept them in stock is anyone’s guess, but we suspected it was because he harbored a soft spot for the artist in question. Crystal Gayle’s “Nobody Wants to Be Alone,” for example. We knew The Sav had a thing for Crystal Gayle, but that album was a real stinker, and it languished in the bin for Christ only knows how long. I’m willing to bet it was still there when the store closed permanently earlier this year.
Likewise The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards “Amazing Grace.” Oh sometimes we were lucky and had sold a copy of it during the year (usually to some poor schmuck looking for something with bagpipes), but sometimes it gathered dust for a year or two before we could unload it onto some unfortunate soul. And The Sav always reordered it. It was a given that the store would never be Dragoon-less, be it tape or CD. Crystal Gayle we could understand, because she was a looker, but why in the world The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards?! It was one mystery we never solved.
Another item that never sold was the 7” single of Yoko Ono’s “Touch Me” (flipside “Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking For Her Hand in The Snow)”). It’s a damn good thing that single never sold—and honestly, what self-respecting music fan was ever going to buy that piece of shit?! But it was a good thing nonetheless, because it was our secret weapon. Whenever we found ourselves with a store full of customers at closing time, we simply walked over to the singles bin, rummaged to “O” and slapped that baby on the turntable. It was guaranteed to clear the store in under 30 seconds. Occasionally one of us got carried along in the stampede toward the door, but it was our own fault for being in the way of the exit.
Then there were the Orion albums. The Sav had long since stopped keeping an inventory card for “Reborn” and “Sunrise,” but we still knew they were there, and would always be there. I remember when I first started working at the store and The Sav pulled those two albums out of the rack and told me the “legend” that Orion was supposedly Elvis. It was quite obvious that he believed the hype, or at least had believed it at one time and liked perpetuating the myth.
The Sav liked his myths. He also kept a copy of Klaatu’s first album in the racks, murmuring in hushed tones that it was really an anonymous effort by The Beatles. He also tried to convince us that The Dukes of Stratosphear’s “Psonic Psunspot” was a long-lost Brian Wilson effort, but I set him straight by immediately recognizing Andy Partridge’s voice and clueing him in that it was actually an XTC effort. He didn’t like the album nearly as much after that.
Another album that we always seemed to keep in stock was an import 12” Samantha Fox picture disc. Yes, she had her tits out. I have no idea how many of those The Sav actually had, because the inventory card always indicated we had one in stock, but sometimes we sold it and then the next day it would be back in the rack again. I know The Sav had a large storage locker somewhere, and I can only assume he had an unlimited quantity of the Sam Fox-gets-her-tits-out picture disc.
I’m sure that picture disc aided quite a few young men over the years, but none so much as the chubby, pimply faced Asian kid who used to come into the store to browse while waiting for his mom to come and pick him up after his bi-weekly visit to the Rec Center across the road. I happened to be inventorying the albums--this wasn’t the big year-end inventory, but the twice-weekly stock taking of the Billboard 200, which we did every Thursday and Sunday evening—and the kid was idly flipping through the “F’s” when he hit the jackpot. He stopped in mid-flick and stood stock still for a full 90 seconds. He turned to look toward the register to make sure the staff hadn’t noticed—never bothering to check behind him, which is where I was standing—and then slowly leaned closer to the disc for a good, nudie ogle. After a few minutes it was obvious that he wasn’t going anywhere for awhile, because he had his junk pressed up against the wooden rack in a vain effort to disguise his raging boner. Naturally, at the height of stiffydom, his mom decided to show up.
Poor kid never stood a chance.
Yep. 5 a.m.
For twelve years I dragged my sorry arse into the store on New Year’s Day at some ungodly hour for our year-end inventory stock-taking. There were times I went in hung over, and there were times I went in having had the barest minimum of sleep, but I always made it in. It was the one day of the year The Sav treated us to free doughnuts, as if that would somehow make it all better.
Inventory usually took all day. The Sav would divide the staff into teams and give us a section of the vinyl and CD alphabet to inventory. Usually Reynolds and I were paired up together, partly because we were quick and efficient, partly because The Sav knew we worked well together, and partly because our banter made everyone laugh and kept spirits high.
There were also the usual bets. Before inventory began, we’d place our bets as to which artists had the most product left over from the holiday, which artists had sold the most during the holiday, which artists had sold the most all year, and which titles hadn’t moved at all, all year. There were a few titles that hadn’t moved in YEARS. Why The Sav kept them in stock is anyone’s guess, but we suspected it was because he harbored a soft spot for the artist in question. Crystal Gayle’s “Nobody Wants to Be Alone,” for example. We knew The Sav had a thing for Crystal Gayle, but that album was a real stinker, and it languished in the bin for Christ only knows how long. I’m willing to bet it was still there when the store closed permanently earlier this year.
Likewise The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards “Amazing Grace.” Oh sometimes we were lucky and had sold a copy of it during the year (usually to some poor schmuck looking for something with bagpipes), but sometimes it gathered dust for a year or two before we could unload it onto some unfortunate soul. And The Sav always reordered it. It was a given that the store would never be Dragoon-less, be it tape or CD. Crystal Gayle we could understand, because she was a looker, but why in the world The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards?! It was one mystery we never solved.
Another item that never sold was the 7” single of Yoko Ono’s “Touch Me” (flipside “Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking For Her Hand in The Snow)”). It’s a damn good thing that single never sold—and honestly, what self-respecting music fan was ever going to buy that piece of shit?! But it was a good thing nonetheless, because it was our secret weapon. Whenever we found ourselves with a store full of customers at closing time, we simply walked over to the singles bin, rummaged to “O” and slapped that baby on the turntable. It was guaranteed to clear the store in under 30 seconds. Occasionally one of us got carried along in the stampede toward the door, but it was our own fault for being in the way of the exit.
Then there were the Orion albums. The Sav had long since stopped keeping an inventory card for “Reborn” and “Sunrise,” but we still knew they were there, and would always be there. I remember when I first started working at the store and The Sav pulled those two albums out of the rack and told me the “legend” that Orion was supposedly Elvis. It was quite obvious that he believed the hype, or at least had believed it at one time and liked perpetuating the myth.
The Sav liked his myths. He also kept a copy of Klaatu’s first album in the racks, murmuring in hushed tones that it was really an anonymous effort by The Beatles. He also tried to convince us that The Dukes of Stratosphear’s “Psonic Psunspot” was a long-lost Brian Wilson effort, but I set him straight by immediately recognizing Andy Partridge’s voice and clueing him in that it was actually an XTC effort. He didn’t like the album nearly as much after that.
Another album that we always seemed to keep in stock was an import 12” Samantha Fox picture disc. Yes, she had her tits out. I have no idea how many of those The Sav actually had, because the inventory card always indicated we had one in stock, but sometimes we sold it and then the next day it would be back in the rack again. I know The Sav had a large storage locker somewhere, and I can only assume he had an unlimited quantity of the Sam Fox-gets-her-tits-out picture disc.
I’m sure that picture disc aided quite a few young men over the years, but none so much as the chubby, pimply faced Asian kid who used to come into the store to browse while waiting for his mom to come and pick him up after his bi-weekly visit to the Rec Center across the road. I happened to be inventorying the albums--this wasn’t the big year-end inventory, but the twice-weekly stock taking of the Billboard 200, which we did every Thursday and Sunday evening—and the kid was idly flipping through the “F’s” when he hit the jackpot. He stopped in mid-flick and stood stock still for a full 90 seconds. He turned to look toward the register to make sure the staff hadn’t noticed—never bothering to check behind him, which is where I was standing—and then slowly leaned closer to the disc for a good, nudie ogle. After a few minutes it was obvious that he wasn’t going anywhere for awhile, because he had his junk pressed up against the wooden rack in a vain effort to disguise his raging boner. Naturally, at the height of stiffydom, his mom decided to show up.
Poor kid never stood a chance.
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