things i didn't say at the record store

its actually not that bad! my corner of the world is sleepy. at least they only come in one at a time. i like to complain but i can't complain. it used to bug me when people would say "It must be nice to sit and listen to records all day" because i know how hard i hustle to keep a full store of decent stuff all the time - let alone for 14 years - but now i'm like: uh, you know what, it IS nice to listen to records all day.

meanwhile , i just bought 30,000 records so i'll see you in...january.

<3

new name. new bags. only took 14 years. i always raise an eyebrow when people start selling shirts for their record store before they actually open. i wanted to make sure i was ready.

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nice merch! really dig the logo

"are the prices hard?"

"uhhhhh, huh? the prices are the prices..."

"what's with all these different prices...5...10...15...??"

"uhhhhh, yeah, things have different prices...?? Do you wish they were the same...? i don't understand.."

do you know what store is...

sometimes i don't get it. i guess they wondered how i came up with prices? they also mentioned that there was no condition on the record...

like i'm gonna put the condition on every record?

people baffle me.

then some guy said "i don't see any bargain cd area..."

and i said "like dollar CDs? no, there is a salvation army around the corner though. i think those are $1.99 plus tax..."

then my pal willie lane came in and everything was alright again. willie is an excellent musician who puts out his own records in small batches and then he never reissues them. though feeding tube did actually reissue an old one recently. he doesn't reissue them himself though.

i'm in the back working and maria is up front listening to sadness and responding in kind: "oh wow yeah your family loves the beatles..."

last parting quote from sadness: "i don't have any money..."

thanks for stopping by.

Willie Lane is great! tell him good job

i will!

tooooooooooooooooo many copies around here of:

david bromberg (jesus, so many. holy shit. you couldn't pay me to listen to one. same with leo kottke and leo sayer.)

joan armatrading (love you joan but you rival national geographics in sheer land mass in the great commonwealth of massachusetts)

the roches (weeeeee are maggie, terre, and we are friggin' everywhere...)

mccggarrigglle sisters (you wish roches our records actually mate and give birth to more of our records forever......)

sweet honey in the...(okay you get the picture.)

i refuse all records by: tom rush, fogeldork, kenny dorkins, dorkins & logorrhea, wet willie, les dudek, chi-raqo, muddy blahs...so many more.

really no Moody Blues? I would think those would sell?

with u on the rest tho

ehhh every blue moon i sell one. but the problem is when someone has one moody blues record they have 20 moody blues records all in the same dusty VG shape. tooooo many of them. even for a dollar they sit.

no offense to the MBs. they are fine by me.

I treasure my original Willie Lane Known Quantity LP

i want scratch ticket to play at my store. willie and sunburned rob and sunburned john. best local power trio! but i don't think they have played a show since before covid.

Hey Scott, would you be interested in having Glenn Jones play at your store too? Serious inquiry...

Glenn plays at my friend Josh's store, Mystery Train, pretty regularly. They are friends. right around the corner.

That's great! A few months ago he was itching to play more gigs but said he didn't have too many lined up - I told him I'd ask around.

I've been digging into the early Leo Kottke records recently, and they're really lovely! Rich cascades of acoustic guitar flowing out of clean black vinyl - nobody told me. I would believe that the market has little need for any more beat-up, sawdust-filled copies though.

my brother-in-law turned me on to that Circle 'Round The Sun record by Leo years ago and I will always be fond of it. listening to it super stoned on top of a mountain outside Woodstock. Pat Metheny at the bottom of the hill! that's the first time I ever heard Red Hash by Gary Higgins and I had a similar lovely experience with that.

The key isn’t how good something is; it’s how many people want it. Leo is great. I’ve all but given up trying to sell the wonderful Martha & the Muffins and Doug & the Slugs records. You can’t give away Kristofferson. Etc etc

LOL this all reminds me of the time years ago when I walked into Au Go-Go records in the 90s waving Scritti Polittis first 2 7" and asking what they were worth, and the guy just gave me this dead in the eyes look and said "nothing, nobody even likes Scritti Politti anymore".

Never ever tried that again lol.

does the seller ever try to min/max on the customer's "i have $40. here are the records i saw, what can i get from this?" and be generous to the customer? my favorite spot did that years and years ago.

(also when anyone tells me about terrible experiences they had with a multitude of record stores and dealers over decades of time i say to myself: "uh oh i'm probably next. what terrible new story will i give this guy to tell to other record store people in the future?")

― scott seward

also good advice if you're dating someone and they tell you about how all their exes are terrible fwiw

re: early kottke - i got in the mood to listen, hadn't heard in a while, and found a video of kottke playing vaseline machine gun on... cnn?!?!? cnn isn't really a channel i associate with great live music.

sold a near mint u.s copy of Keep On Movin' today. i put it out yesterday. i was really tempted to keep it. so pretty. like new! even though i have the CD. hard to find such a nice vinyl copy. maybe not in the U.K. but here it is. or for me it is. i always see beat to hell Soul II Soul singles and that's about it.
i don't like when things stick around to tempt me so its good when they go fast. priced to move!
finally sold that copy of Edgar Froese's Stuntman too. one of those records i look at in the stacks and think of rescuing like a stray cat. but now its gone!
sold some george duke. some albert king. sold a lot of stuff.
i sold the second One Way album to my friend Ryan. love that group.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcpkN66sKdw

there needs to be a term for when you look up the price of a dollar chad everett album because you are afraid that large professor looped a beat from it for a big pun remix or something and made it a $50 record. you never know! i'm not a rap encyclopedia or something. i did listen to all 4 Eric B. and Rakim albums today while working though. Let The Rhythm Hit 'Em holds up like crazy. god i love that record. my top latter-day sleeper tracks are "In The Ghetto", "Mahogany", "Relax With Pep", and "Know The Ledge". though "Know The Ledge" is kinda well-known. "Teach The Children" is so prescient. But I wouldn't expect anything less from a prophet like Rakim.

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what i didn't say today: fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck you.

guys brings in a big box of CDs. says: "do you sell CDs...???" he's standing in front of huge shelves filled with CDs but never mind that. then he says: "i don't want much for them...just a little something. i really just want to get rid of them."

i quickly look at the horrible trash he has thrown on my counter - beat up crust-covered michael bolton CDs... - and say that i don't need them. so then he says: "can i just give them to you? i have more in the car..."

i think: eh, i always need cases. i'll cannibalize them for plastic. so i say "sure, yeah, i can take them." i have a dumpster out back.

he brings in two more hideous boxes and then says: "you should do good with those. THEY SHOULD HELP YOU STAY IN BUSINESS. i hate to see so many business go under..."

and i say: "uh, we've been here for 14 years..."

anyway, I'M GLAD HE SAVED MY BUSINESS.

i don't know how me taking out his garbage turned him into bill gates spreading the wealth but what are you gonna do?

and i said thank you. instead of: "fuuuuuuck you get out of here with your trash i was having a good day you ain't saving shit fuckface!"

don't know if i already ranted about this but the thing people do when they come in and ask for something very specific and when i tell them i don't have it and tell them they can easily buy it online and they say "well i know but i just really want to help local businesses when i can." then they leave. and i want to yell "then buy something else, fuckface!"

guy who sells records online and who came in today and who has told my wife twice now when i wasn't there that i ALWAYS give him a 20% discount? he will get an earful the next time i see him.

i'm sure these people are wonderful people. really. but people don't think sometimes. it's out of my system! see, the power of venting on a computer. it gets a lot of negative press but venting can be a healing force. #oneworld #onevibe #blessed

One thing I will say about the specific thing shoppers - I can easily understand the thought process: want thing, check local shop first, resort to non-local means if unsuccessful. I don’t think it’s an empty gesture of local business support... they’re taking your advice about getting the thing online but choosing to take the time to make sure they can’t just get it from you first, where they’d also get to see what they’re buying in person.

Sorry for being the fuckface that responds to your venting but was having a hard time not seeing the logic of the fuckface with that one.

oh no need to be sorry for anything.

i think its just that sometimes people kinda go out of there way to tell me that they wanted to shop local so then it just feels like kind of a bummer that i didn't have that one specific thing that they wanted. you know? amazon would have had it. mom & pop struck out! haha! we have fun.

really no Moody Blues? I would think those would sell?

― out-of-print LaserDisc edition (sleeve), Thursday, August 10, 2023 12:19 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

god no there are so many copies of all the good Moodys albums in every shop i go to

i know i paint a bleak picture sometimes. its really not like that. i just don't write at length about all the smiling faces and tears of joy at the store. where's the fun in that?

i do legit feel blessed! i work a ton but i don't care because you never live a day if you love your mom. your job. live your job. that's it.

maria had 4 bands play on sunday. right on the sidewalk out front.

we had a nice chat in a u-haul truck this morning. maria says i should get over any stupid thing a stranger says in 15 minutes. then she totally got mad at me for something that happened months ago at the store.

i do try. that's the big reason why i asked maria to take the front of house position and let me work in back. i just couldn't take people anymore. i just want to work. years and years of being up front in corner stores in philadelphia and in my own store in philly way back when...and 14 years here. my customer service was really going off the rails even before the pandemic. AFTER the pandemic...shit, i'm still trying to figure out how to interact with the cashier at walgreens let alone some rando peppering me with questions about my store and my livelihood (this happens all the time now...)

it hasn't been long since we started the new arrangement but its been good. she is very nice to everyone. i get a ton of stuff listed online and keep the store full. we sell a lot. and, in general, when she hasn't been here, it has been easier for me with people because i don't do it everyday now. its a novelty. i'm happy to see the people i'm happy to see. the bugs don't tend to bug me.

the last five years have been very hard for me for a lot of reasons. and i finally feel like i'm in a good place. and i promise i'll be nice even if you are dumb in my store.

just got the last of the big haul. took a while due to schedules. oof. that was a lot of boxes. added up to be about 350 u-haul boxes.

gonna go play some.

come on by! you get an ilx friend and family discount. just tell me who you are.

Would love to visit! Totally get how you can get worn down by The Tropes Of The Rando

How many records are 350 boxes?

prob 35K or so

that's not a collection that's the Library of Congress (unless you are Joe Bussard)

We constantly get people coming in trying to get us to transfer records to CDs, cassettes, whatever. I can't understand this. It would be like asking a guy at a grocery store if they would come over and till my soil.

"it's Hiatt, you dipshit. and what makes you think I work here?"

at a 65-ish-year old guy who walked up to me while I was browsing the CD stacks at Newbury Comics and asked if I had a copy of such-and-such CD by John Hate (spelled "H-A-I-T-T") because he didn't see it in the pop/rock section and it's probably out-of-print and he doesn't buy vinyl anymore, just CDs

except I was nice and polite and said something like "I actually don't work here, but if you go the counter you might be able to get it as a special order"

for my entire adult life I've been dealing with middle-aged/older men approaching me at record stores and asking "do you work here?" or launching into descriptions of what they're looking for. I guess they assume that a blandly dressed, nerdy young man like me couldn't possibly be shopping for music and thus I must be there only to serve them? or maybe they don't care if I work there and they just want to evangelize about Don Henley and Phil Collins? I'm still trying to figure that out

Big dumbass opinion alert: some folks who don’t really shop for records tend to see record stores as these quaint charming little museums, so when they see someone engrossed in browsing they look at them like the dude emptying the garbage at McDonald’s

hmm, I'm sure people like that exist, but these particular goateed boomer men seem extremely excited about picking up the latest Paul Simon CD and letting every clerk and customer in the building know that they're picking up the latest Paul Simon CD. I don't get the sense that they aren't earnest (if annoyingly conspicuous) shoppers or that they view record buying as some weird novelty interest

just a week or two ago i had an older guy drag another older guy into the store JUST to tell me that the one guy he was dragging into the store was into The Clash before anyone else was. then they left.

funny to have heard the sound of silence Hi9story of Rock finally. & hear that the first line of the song had become an in joke at teh time taht Simon was trying to create himself into a folkie.
So he'd been seen to be a pseud before he became famous but is somehow seen to be authentic by some now.

hi skot i love you.

i'll work in your record store if you want.

love you too. you'll have to wait until maria retires. and you would have to know how to deal with this guy and his handy system of remembering what records he's interested in.

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