Month: April 2012

(I Was Born in a) Laundromat

Camper Van Beethoven – (I Was Born in a) Laundromat

I was just checking out the Radio Time Machine (thank you kottke.org) which has a slider you can move to check out what was popular on mainstream radio stations in the past. My fellow college radio DJs will remember that music played on mainstream radio at the time was awful. That’s why college radio was so important to us. Even if my college’s station was a weak AM station that you could pick up in about three dorms, we saw it as our mission to play music you were not going to hear anywhere else.

One of my fellow DJs was a big Camper Van Beethoven fan. It took me a while but eventually I came around and became a Camper fan myself. This came in handy when I graduated and moved back home to Maine without any plans for my future.

Luckily, an entrepreneurial college student had decided to open a record store that summer. This small town had a record store before but it trended more to classical and jazz and really wasn’t remotely close to the kind of record store I’d grown accustomed to in the Philadelphia area while in school. So I eagerly awaited the opening day of the new store. I think I was their first customer. Before summer had ended I had talked my way into being their first full-time employee. The owner and his two friends who had helped him get it off the ground hadn’t really worked out who was going to run things when they were in classes since none of them had graduated yet. There I was, ready to jump into the gap.

The owner was a huge Camper fan and their new album, Key Lime Pie, was coming out in September. He ordered lots of copies of it, imagining it would fly off the shelves. If you listen to the songs on the Radio Time Line from 1989, you’ll see two Milli Vanilli songs, two Phil Collins songs, three Paula Abdul songs, and so forth. While the new Camper album was the most mainstream thing they’d done to date, it was still well out of the ordinary. Needless to say we had several copies left.

Not long ago I got an e-mail from the owner of the record store. He has not only survived but grown a little chain of stores and one of those two friends who had helped him get that first store off the ground is the person who created Record Store Day. They are going to be profiled in a book about record stores and he wanted to include me as the first employee. I’m almost famous!

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

Pills

New York Dolls – Pills (live)

I’m reading Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever and although I’m not old enough to have been aware of the music scene during those five years (I was 6-11 years old and we lived just outside New York City not in it), much of the book is familiar.

Thanks to my older brother exposing us to bands like the Ramones, the Velvet Underground (and solo Lou Reed), the New York Dolls, and my own memories of hazy, dirty, hot summers, and a city with huge crime and drug problems, I don’t have a hard time picturing the events he chronicles.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

Isolation

Joy Division – Isolation

I live in a small town, I work in a city an hour away. I am not at home enough to get to know many people beyond our immediate neighbors, almost all of whom are retirees and, while very nice people, not exactly a go-to group for new friends.

I like a lot of the people I work with but having that hour commute looming at the end of the day kind of puts a damper on any after work activities and on a weekend, the last thing I want to do is make that drive.

Isolation, even when surrounded by people.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

Off the Wall

Lee Ranaldo – Off the Wall

I always meant to go see Sonic Youth* but the timing never worked out. Now that seems like a slim possibility. But Lee Ranaldo has a new solo album out, Between The Times and The Tides, and I like what I’ve heard so far. He’s also touring! Opening up for Wilco nearby in August, and for M. Ward in May. I’m really going to try to make it out to one of those this time.

*Back in the early 90s, I thought it would be cool to name a hypothetical son Thurston, until a friend pointed out that most people would make a connection with Thurston Howell III and not Thurston Moore. I guess it’s going to end up in the names not used pile.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

Driver 8

R.E.M. – Driver 8

Southern Serves the South.

I bought train tickets today. I decided that with the cost of gas and tolls, it would be no more expensive, and maybe even cheaper, to take the train down to Philadelphia in May. I will travel the same route I’ve traveled more times than I could count, though I haven’t done it in a long time. 

In looking up the schedules and fares, I discovered that one leg of my trip happens to fall on National Train Day. National Train Day! Where was this holiday when I was in college? Events taking place in NYC at Grand Central, Chicago Union Station, Los Angeles Union Station, and Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station. That’s MY station. I do love the train, but the station holds more than just the prospect of a train trip for me. It’s all the hopes and dreams, all the expectations, all the heartache, all the cool, all the sadness, all the delays, all the people watching. I’m thrilled that 30th St. made the list, and I’ll be there.

I read somewhere that all the train arrival and departure signs have been modernized and are digital now and don’t make that tell-tale clickity-clackity sound anymore. That’s a little sad, but I’ve got the train tape modernized and digitized and loaded on the iPod, the angel statue is still there, and there’s probably soft pretzels for sale in there somewhere.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)